New York Times
By
VICTORIA BURNETT
HAVANA — Sebastián Miló barely had enough money to put gasoline in the
aged bus that ferried his crew to the set each day, let alone to pay
actors a salary.
Attendees of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.
But Mr. Miló, a 33-year-old Cuban filmmaker, had a Canon 5D digital
camera and a story to tell. So, during one frenetic week in May 2011, he
shot “Truckdriver,” a tense 25-minute film about bullying at one of the
vaunted rural boarding schools where millions of Cubans used to spend
part of their high school education.
“It was something I went through myself, and so did many people I know,”
said Mr. Miló, referring to incidents of bullying that dogged him at
school and, later, during military service. “The subject struck a
chord.”
Mr. Miló is one of hundreds of Cuban filmmakers who, armed with digital
technology, are laying the foundations of an independent movie industry
outside the state apparatus that has defined Cuban cinema for much of
the Castro era — and still, much to the frustration of some filmmakers,
controls access to the island’s movie theaters.
Around the country, Cubans are making features, shorts, documentaries
and animated works, often with little more than a couple of friends and
some inexpensive equipment — and little input from the state-supported
Cuban Institute of Cinematic Art and Industry.
Mr. Miló, who received about $10,000 in financing from a Spanish
production company, Idunnu Music and Visual Arts, said that the crew and
actors worked for next to nothing. “They said they felt strongly about
what the film was saying,” he said.
The global boom in digital filmmaking has rippled across Cuba over the
past decade, letting filmmakers create their work beyond the oversight
of state-financed institutions. Independent movies have become a new
means of expression in a country where, despite freedoms and economic
reforms introduced by President Raul Castro since 2006, the state still
carefully controls national press, television and radio, and access to
the Internet is very limited.
While there is no official tally of independent movies, they have gained
prominence on the national scene. They dominate the Cuban offerings at
the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana and
scored a new level of commercial visibility last year with
“Juan of the Dead,” a zombie movie that was released in several countries, including the United States.
“They’re bringing fresh ideas; they’re experimenting,” said Javier
Ernesto Alejándrez, 21, a humanities student waiting in line last month
to see the independent feature
“Pablo,” shown as part of the film festival.
“There’s a lot of creativity, and they are really thinking about stuff,” said Alexandra Halkin, the director of
the Americas Media Initiative, a nonprofit group that distributes and promotes Cuban film overseas. “They just need more tools and more space.”
For decades, the film institute was an important tool of the
government’s program to educate Cubans and build a national narrative
under the Communist system, annually producing dozens of documentaries
and features and nurturing acclaimed directors, including Tomás
Gutiérrez Alea (known as Titon), Humberto Solás and Fernando Pérez. The
institute’s financing plummeted after the Soviet Union collapsed, and it
now relies on foreign sources to produce a handful of features each
year.
The explosion of independent film has yielded an uneven jumble of movies
that draw on genres eschewed by the establishment — like thrillers and
horror — and that offer raw depictions or biting satire about the darker
side of life on the island.
Miguel Coyula, whose surreal, fragmentary feature
“Memories of Overdevelopment” was shown at the
Sundance Film Festival
in 2010, said that while no specific trend had emerged, there was a
greater willingness to tackle riskier and risqué subjects — even Fidel
Castro — and document issues not covered by the official press.
Some movies offer a glimmer of a promising new generation, experts and
filmmakers say, citing the experimental documentaries of Marcel Beltrán
and Armando Capó, which will be included in a program at the Museum of
Modern Art in February; Victor Alfonso’s humorous animated shorts about a
high school nerd; Carlos Machado Quintela’s feature-length movie
“The Swimming Pool,”
about a group of physically disabled children and their swimming
instructor; and the work of more established practitioners like Mr.
Coyula and Esteban Insausti, whose work has been screened at many
foreign festivals, including Cannes.
Carlos Lechuga, 29, whose debut feature film, “Melaza” (“Molasses”),
tells a story of social degradation in a sugar town whose mill has been
shuttered, said that independent movies were nourishing a conversation
among Cubans keen to see the hard realities of their lives dealt with on
screen.
But even with the technology much more accessible, filmmakers must
struggle to get their work seen. The film institute controls Cuba’s
theaters; Internet access remains rare, expensive and too slow for
downloading movies. Instead, Cubans pass around DVDs.
Karel Ducasse, for example, has made about 500 copies of his 2007
documentary, “Zone of Silence,” which is about censorship, to sell and
hand out at festivals. He believes the problems with distribution are no
accident.
“The state has become afraid of digital media,” he said. “They know anything can be passed around the island.”
Aside from longing for better distribution, Cuban producers are anxious
for regulations that would let them establish private production
companies and seek permits without going through the film institute,
whose bureaucracy eats into meager budgets.
Dozens of small production companies have sprouted in recent years,
offering camera-rental services and help with permits and logistics, but
they have no legal status.
“Look at what countries like Colombia have done in recent years to
attract filmmaking,” said Claudia Calviño of Producciones de la 5ta
Avenida, which made “Melaza” in production with French and Panamanian
financing. She was referring to a Colombian law that offers movie
producers rebates of 20 to 40 percent of the cost of production
services, catering, accommodation and transportation. “Cuba must do
this. We need laws, we need mechanisms.”
The institute has opened up to independent cinema, establishing an
annual festival of work by filmmakers younger than 35, and supporting
independent productions with props and permits. But the institute
remains a bureaucratic leviathan that even its founder, Alfredo Guevara,
considers obsolete.
“I designed the organization, but I say, ‘It doesn’t work anymore,’ ”
said Mr. Guevara, who left the institute 12 years ago and is president
of the Havana film festival. Mr. Guevara said he believed the institute
should stop producing films and be limited to, say, renting out sets and
distributing movies.
There are also limits to the institute’s openness: after helping with
production permits and other logistics for “Melaza,” institute officials
— apparently nervous about the film’s critical tone — demanded that its
name be removed from the credits, according to three people involved in
the production who spoke on condition of anonymity because they wished
to preserve good relations with the institute. Officials at the
institute could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Guevara said that he believed that the state would slowly adapt to
the reality of an independent industry, and that Cuban cinema could one
day recover the luster of movies like Mr. Gutiérrez Alea’s
“Memories of Underdevelopment” (Mr. Coyula’s film is a sequel) or the later
“Strawberry and Chocolate,” and Mr. Solás’s
“Lucia.”
“A new generation will emerge,” he said. “There may not be another
Titon, another Humberto Solas. But there will be someone, I am sure.”
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Photo:The director Carlos Lechuga at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana - Jose Goitia for The New York Times
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