DECEMBER 16, 2008
For Most Cubans, Film Is the Only Way to Travel
By EMILY PARKER
Havana
Visiting Cuba can be like a trip to the dark side of the moon. Your
cellphone goes dead to the world. Your U.S. credit card becomes a
useless piece of plastic. You may not stumble across a single foreign
newspaper. This isolation helps explain why the International Festival
of New Latin American Cinema is such a big deal here. It is one of those
rare occasions when the world, or at least part of it, comes to Cuba.
The film festival hosts a competition of 114 recent Latin American films
and also showcases many more from around the globe. Tickets are cheap,
and the films are shown at local cinemas. The festival runs for 10 days,
and a kind of joyful madness sweeps over the city. Lines are long and
the theaters are packed. Some Cubans take about two weeks of vacation
from work, half of their yearly allowance, just to attend the festival
that concluded on Friday. Foreign films are available at other times of
the year -- but nothing like this. Eager to soak in as much as possible,
Cubans might hit three, four, or even five films a day.
"Cuba is very isolated and has a very strong culture, but it is not a
culture that is closed in on itself," says Iván Giroud, 51, director of
the festival. The public certainly embraces these foreign films, perhaps
in part as windows into other cultures and societies. Sadly, this may be
the clearest glimpse that some Cubans will get. "Life is hard here,"
says Mr. Giroud, echoing a sentiment I heard countless times in Havana.
A main challenge is scraping up enough money to get by. A big part of
the problem is Cuba's bizarre dual-currency system: Salaries are low and
paid in national currency, which is a fraction of the value of the
convertible currency in which many desirable goods are sold. "For many
Cubans, travel is not in their universe of possibilities," Mr. Giroud
says. He describes the film festival as "another mode of travel."
The festival brings in more than just films. Walk into a bar and you
might end up having a drink with a Costa Rican or Brazilian director.
Play your cards right and you could even run into Puerto Rico-born actor
Benicio Del Toro, or Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez,
both in town during the festival.
Of course, this is not Cannes. Revolutionary slogans are splashed across
the city's walls, and images of Fidel Castro are scattered throughout.
The festival's inauguration took place in a venue called the "Teatro
Karl Marx." Most of the Spanish-language films I saw were not subtitled.
While Havana does boast some very comfortable, attractive theaters,
there were some technical glitches. Smack in the middle of an important
conversation during an entertaining Puerto Rican film, "La Mala," the
screen inexplicably went blank. The audience waited, but the movie never
came back. Perhaps fairly accustomed to such setbacks, the crowd, after
a few noises of protest, calmly filed out of the theater. I caught the
end of "La Mala" at another screening several days later.
The Cuban premiere of "Che," directed by the American Stephen
Soderbergh, was one highlight of the festival. The more than four-hour
film, based on the life of Che Guevara, also opened in New York and Los
Angeles this past Friday. The event in Havana was attended by "Che"
himself -- Mr. Del Toro -- and other members of the cast. Crowds swarmed
the theater, and I only just managed to get a seat.
Ernesto, a 20-year-old university student, said it made him "emotional"
to see "such a loyal depiction of Cuban history from a director from a
country that is supposed to be our 'enemy.'" The fact that it was
screened in Havana at all implies Cuban government approval. This all
raises the obvious question: Was the film too easy on Che? I brought
this up with Mr. Del Toro (also co-producer of the film) when I managed
to get his attention for a brief moment at the Hotel Nacional. He
replied: "Whatever we show there, it did happen."
"Che" may have been the festival's headline grabber. But other films,
such as Argentina's "Leonera," are more captivating. The drama, which
opened the festival, begins with a woman waking up in her home near the
bloody bodies of two men, and only one of them survives. She goes to
prison and gives birth to a son. The film, a powerful and subtle look at
both maternity and imprisonment, leaves questions unanswered. I spent a
good amount of time debating with various Cubans about whether the
protagonist was guilty of murder. "Leonera" won a special jury award.
The festival's top prize went to Chile's "Tony Manero," a complex and
disturbing film set in 1978 during the dark days of the Augusto Pinochet
dictatorship. The film is about one man's desperate attempt to
impersonate "Saturday Night Fever"'s Tony Manero. His obsession drives
him to violence. "Tony Manero" makes its point indirectly, but the film
could be interpreted as a portrait of the despair and hopelessness of
life under dictatorship.
The lineup of films was strikingly diverse. Brazil's "Maré: Nossa
História del Amor" is a combination of "City of God," "West Side Story"
and a hip-hop video. Cuba's "Omerta," set against the backdrop of the
Cuban revolution, is a fairly comic look at a man who was a bodyguard of
a gangster. There are so many films that it is a challenge to keep them
all straight. Jorge Luis, 29, a vendor in a food market, showed me a
paper on which he marks films he has seen with initials to distinguish
between the good, the bad and the just OK (B, M, or R -- buena, mala,
regular). He says he took two weeks off for the festival. While he seems
to be enjoying himself, he suggests that this was not the ideal way to
spend a vacation. He tells me he dreams of having a car, or of visiting
Canada or Puerto Rico. Cubans, he says, "don't do what they want; they
do what they can."
Still, it's hard not to be moved by the sight of Cubans lining up for
their chance to see the world. Marlen, a 41-year-old nurse, says she is
seeing about four films a day. She likes all the "movement" of the
festival. She happily describes hopping from one film to the next,
sometimes not going home from morning until night. The festival, she
explains, "is practically a fiesta."
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