A handful of twelve films make up the Spanish Film Festival that will take place from November 5 to 13 in Havana theaters, through a program that was created by the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) and the Spanish Embassy on the island.
The Yara and 23 and 12 cinemas will host the screening of 11 feature films and one animated short film, announced at a press conference by the president of Icaic, Alexis Triana, the director of the Cuban Cinematheque, Luciano Castillo, and the cultural advisor of the Spanish diplomatic headquarters in Havana, Alicia Morel, specified a dispatch from the agency Latin Press.
“For Spain, Cuban cinema has great prestige; this exhibition is an annual milestone of our cultural programming, one of those that we prepare with the greatest enthusiasm,” said the official, highlighting that no film has been made for more than two years.
In an exercise of cinematographic appreciation, Morel especially recommended four films from the selection to viewers: “El Salto”, “La infiltrada”, “Tardes de Soledad” and “La guitar flamenca de Yerai Cortés”, all productions from 2024. That last film will open the show on Wednesday, November 5 at 6:00 p.m., local time, at the Yara cinema.
Directed by Antón Álvarez (aka C. Tangana) in his debut as a filmmaker, The flamenco guitar of Yerai Cortés is a work that explores the creative process behind a new album by virtuoso guitarist Yerai Cortés, while revealing a secret deeply rooted in his family.
Through a narrative that combines music, emotion and personal revelations, the documentary offers a sincere look at the world of contemporary flamenco and the life of one of its most promising exponents.
With a duration of 95 minutes, the film premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival in September 2024 and later in Spanish theaters in December of the same year on Wikipedia. In addition to Cortés, the film features figures such as Farruquito and Patricia Benjumea, and has been recognized for its artistic sensitivity and its ability to connect art with personal identity.
Among the proposals on the Spanish film billboard also include the animated short film “Cafuné” and the feature films “Mariposas negra”, “Salve María”, “Segundo Premio”, all from last year and “The teacher who promised the sea” (2023).
Projects chosen for the Development Fund
This week, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic) announced the results of the seventh delivery of the Promotion Fund for Cuban Cinema (FFCC) to projects by Cuban filmmakers from almost all the provinces of the country.
According to the breakdown obtained by the agency Latin Press, In this seventh edition, 53 short films were received in total, divided into 30 fiction projects, 15 documentaries and 8 animation projects.
The short films “Tutifruti” and “Fruta Luminous” were awarded in the Animation category; “Rodando”, “Decide tú” and “El balcony de otro” obtained the approval of the Fiction jury; while in the Documentary section, “Aleja”, “Pass Key”, “On the Path of the Stars”, and “Color Counts” won the award.
“The work of the jury is always very difficult because all the projects presented and approved are very good; I think that the conclusion reached was the most correct and that it can help develop independent cinema,” evaluated filmmaker Lourdes de los Santos.
For his part, the actor and comedian Kike Quiñones, characterized that “there is a tendency to continue talking about migration, of those who leave, of those who return and meet the criterion of those who stay, but we discover other ways of looking at cinema; young people are worrying about looking at current circumstances in a different way.”
The jury was made up of the rector of the University of the Arts and actor Enrique (Kike) Quiñones Amador, the film director Alejandro Gil, the producers Adriana Moya and Aramís Acosta and the documentary filmmaker Lourdes de los Santos.
For six editions, the FFCC has promoted the growth and diversity of the cinematographic arts, offering opportunities for the development of a hundred projects to date.
Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers forms its working commissions, including Censorship and Exclusion
However, despite being legitimized with the FFCC award, several Cuban films have later been censored or excluded by the film authorities themselves, generating controversy inside and outside the union.
Among the most famous cases are “La Habana de Fito”, directed by Juan Pin Vilar, which unleashed a media and institutional stir after its pirated broadcast on television, “Corazón Azul”, by Miguel Coyula, and “Sueños al pairo”, a short documentary film about the Cuban singer-songwriter Mike Porcel, who lived in the United States and was marginalized in the 1980s on the island.
In January 2024, the still unrecognized Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers published a list of more than 250 works excluded from local theaters in the last three decades, some of them with previous support from the FFCC.
