By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer Sun Mar 4, 2:46 PM ET
HAVANA - The man on the screen weeps as talks about going jobless in
Havana, simply because he's an outsider from Cuba's distant east. "The
children are screaming for something to eat and I don't know what to
do!" he cries, his voice reverberating through the crowded theater.
The real-life drama is part of a 21-minute documentary called
"Buscandote Havana" — "Looking for You, Havana." Its inclusion among
more than two dozen short films screened late last month in an
officially sanctioned film festival has raised hopes that Cuba is
becoming more open to criticism of its harsher social realities.
"When there are so many of us expressing something, that's something;
something is happening," said Alina Rodriguez, the 22-year-old maker of
"Buscandote Havana."
It comes at a delicate juncture in
Fidel Castro's 47-year-old regime.
The five-day film festival at Cuba's official Cinematography Cultural
Center took place just weeks after Cubans got an unwelcome blast from
the past in the shape of two censors from the repressive 1970s who
turned up on state-controlled television talking about culture.
Appearing on separate shows, they praised the successes of Cuban culture
without mentioning their earlier roles in marginalizing homosexuals and
outspoken artists.
Their appearance alarmed writers and artists who feared that with
80-year-old Castro ailing, the island might be in for a repeat of the
censorship of the "five gray years" — 1971-76 — when many artists and
writers were fired from their jobs and hounded into exile.
Bombarded with anxious e-mails from Cuban literati, the official
National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba expressed its own
"indignation" and said the "five gray years" would not be repeated.
The assurance was significant, given that the union is
government-controlled and open only to approved members, while others
have difficulty exhibiting art, publishing writings, traveling abroad on
book and music tours or accessing the island's tightly controlled
Internet service.
Several leading artists such as poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela were
expelled from the union in 1991 when they signed an open letter calling
for amnesty for political prisoners and freedom to travel.
The union may have been emboldened by acting President Raul Castro, who
has been filling in since his brother Fidel had intestinal surgery last
July and has been encouraging young people to honestly debate Cuba's
realities — though within the government structure.
These days many are recalling the line that Fidel Castro laid down in
1961 when he told intellectuals to keep their criticism within limits:
"Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing."
Rodriguez's harsh look at the struggles of migrants from Cuba's east,
her thesis project at Havana's Higher Institute of Art, was indeed
critical. And it wasn't the only one.
A 14-minute documentary called "Las camas solas" — "The Lonely Beds" —
highlighted Cuba's housing shortage, showing a group of families who
leave their dilapidated Havana apartment building for a government
shelter in 2004, seeking safety from Hurricane Ivan.
"It's a shame the building has been allowed to be destroyed like this,"
a woman says as the camera pans over her rundown home.
Politics, democratic reform and the legitimacy of more than 40 years of
unchallenged communist rule don't figure in these documentaries. But still,
Sandra Gomez worried she was crossing a line when she made "The Lonely
Beds."
"I thought that it was going to be too critical and that it would never
be allowed to be shown in a space such as this," said Gomez, 30, a
graduate of Havana's International School of Film and Television. "I was
really surprised."
Still, the filmmakers doubt their critical works will ever make it to
television.
"This is a documentary not to be seen only by intellectuals," said
Rodriguez, creator of "Buscandote Havana." "It's for all the people ...
so that they can see what is happening, and that is not what they see
every day on television."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070304/ap_en_mo/cuba_open_to_criticism_1
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