Festival of New Latin American Cinema

Only in Cuba will billboards boast both a revolution and a film festival. Remarkably, Cuba's staunch devotion to film has survived an ongoing economic crisis which began with the 1989 collapse of the island's greatest ally, the Soviet Union, and was recently worsened with a tighter U.S. embargo. But at the base of Cuba's cinematic survival lies a strong history. For the past 17 years, Havana's Festival of New Latin American Cinema has ruled South American film, opening Cuba's doors and screens to the rest of the world in an attempt to buttress its own film tradition, and now, more than ever, in an attempt to save it.

The confusing feel of this year's Festival was best captured by its opening night at the Karl Marx Theater, with an entrance blazed with bright lights while inside attendees in blue jeans mingled with glamorous women in ball gowns - it was as though three or four parties had accidentally booked the same room. Inside the theater, a beautiful, yearning piano piece, played live, brought the lights up as dancers appeared followed by a wide-eyed man in a red coat. With a rose in his mouth, he bowed to the audience and left; more curtains opened to a screen which soon filled with the same man's face. The film, Think of Me, was the festival's debut feature.

"It wasn't my idea," said the film's 27-year-old director, Arturo Sotto, as we walked around Havana the next day. Sotto was anxious to hear the public's response, or what he called "the word of the village." Havana undeniably feels more like a village than a city, and among the forces which unify this village, film is paramount. One of Fidel Castro's first moves after the revolution in 1959 was to create an official filmmaking body in Cuba, Instituto Cubano de Arte y Industria Cinematographicos (ICAIC). Cuba's prestigious International School of Film and Television, where Sotto studied, was founded ten years ago and remains an important component in the country's tradition of filmmaking. "Cubans were raised on film and this creates a strong film culture," says Sotto. "But it's hard to tell how people will react to something."

Sotto's elaborate film follows the antics of a magician named Jesus who performs fake miracles for people. The film makes obvious references to Che Guevera and John Lennon in suggesting that cult leadership and myths are manipulative - a gutsy conclusion to draw in a country so powerfully led by one figure, and one which gave Sotto reason to worry. Word travels fast in Havana, and all day long as we walked, acquaintances stopped Sotto to tell what they'd heard about the film, which ranged from good to bad to great stuff, depending on who did the talking.

To witness the connection between Cubans and film is to know that this place, perhaps more than any other, thrives on cinema. On Havana's main street alone, five movie theaters stand within the same mile stretch. During a fortnight of festival screenings, these and other theaters drew great hordes of resident moviegoers - an estimated 70,000 - in lines which wrapped around blocks for the long wait to buy tickets.

In contrast, much of the activity for distributors and producers centered around Havana's palatial Hotel Nacional, where film vendors sat under high, white arches. The atmosphere here was tense and less celebratory than in years past. Castro did not make his usual appearance, cancelling a banquet scheduled for the last week of the Festival after a challenging trip to China and Vietnam. While in the 1980s the Festival drew the participation of Hollywood figures like Francis Ford Coppola and Robert De Niro, this year the parties lacked the celebrity constituency. Harvey Keitel and Richard Gere were rumored to attend but never arrived. Instead, social engagements gleaned the presence of smaller scale stars like Victoria Abril.

Business for many South American filmmakers translates to one word: coproduction. In the '80s, Cubans were making ten to 15 films a year, whereas now they're lucky to turn out three. Without the help of production studios in Europe, films like Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Strawberries and Chocolate could not be made. The Wave, a Cuban film by Enrique Alvarez, funded entirely by ICAIC reserves last year was an exception. A lack of physical resources also makes production difficult, especially for the few Cuban producers who work outside of the state-run ICAIC. As independent producer Harold Sanchez Sanchez put it, "You try flying enough lights and equipment into Cuba to shoot a feature film."

Of the Cuban films which did manage to get made last year, Alea's Guantanamera and Daniel Diaz Torres' Love Me and You'll See garnered the most attention. Both films deal humorously with adventure through personal voyage. In Guantanamera, a coffin is transported from one Cuban province to another on its way across the country; nobody has enough gas to make the full drive. The sharing of the weight hints at the cultural solidarity which Cuba, in recent hard times, has come to test. The film, which was better received in Spain, placed second, after the festival's grand winner, Midaq Alley.

Based on Naguib Mahfouz's novel of the same title, this Mexican film by Jorge Fons cleverly recaps, with soap opera feeling, the same moment from the lives of various barrio members. The alley becomes a Machiavellian outpost where hookers and thieves survive, the virtuous meet their demise, and few are left in between. The acting is good, the humor dark, and the melodrama high as can be.

Argentine director Eliseo Subiela's latest film, Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You Go, is as klutzy and dramatic as its title but somehow works. An inventor is visited, first in his dreams and then in his daily life, by the phantom of a gorgeous woman who claims to be his soulmate from previous lives. As they reconcile their inability to connect materially, the film begins to look like a version of Ghost.

An excellent Bolivian film, A Matter of Faith, follows the journey of three men as they truck a life-size Virgin Mary through mountainside towns to make a religious offering. The low-budget aesthetic is offset by a raucous script and brilliant performances. Directed by Marcos Loayza, the film won two Festival awards.

The Festival featured a total of 475 films and videos from 38 countries and included a showcase of silent film, Japanese film and films by Wim Wenders. Special screenings of Quiz Show and Pulp Fiction gave Cubans the chance to see American indies which the Cuban government can no longer afford to buy. Ironically, while Americans can afford to see Cuban films, we have been denied access to them. The Festival of New Latin American Cinema is undoubtedly Cuba's most important vehicle for film; if it continues to lose support, we won't be the only ones missing the show.

The Cannes Film Festival by Noah Cowan
Los Angeles Independent Film Festival by Andrew O. Thompson
The New York Underground Film Festival by Pamela Grossman
Festival of New Latin American Cinema by Andrea Elliot
Palm Beach International Film Festival by Peter Steinberg