About twenty Cuban feature films and four animated shorts Elpidio Valdés They will be restored in collaboration with the Cinemateca of the Italian city of Bologna and the Colombian Film Heritage Foundation.
Alexis Triana, president of Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematographic Industry (ICAIC)announced on Tuesday the first shipment of 14 films to the Cinemateca de Bologna, a world reference in the film restoration, although it did not transcend which are the films sent.
In total, there will be 25 films that must be restored thanks to this collaboration with Italy, according to Triana.
The objective, according to the official, is to preserve the audiovisual memory of Cuba, threatened by air conditioning problems that affect 2500 titles.
“We had achieved other restoration actions, but not this dimension,” assured Triana at a press conference reviewed by Latin press (PL)in which he compared this process with the recovery of the Latin American ICAIC news and five works by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.
Elpidio, in Colombia
Meanwhile, Luciano Castillo, director of Cinemateca de Cuba, informed that three short films of Elpidio Valdés (The machete (1975), Elpidio Valdés assaults the convoy (1976) and The Clarín Mambí (1976) were already restored by the Colombian Film Heritage Foundation.
After that restoration, the public’s acceptance was “shocking,” Castillo said, cited by Pl.
A short quarter of Colonel Mambí is currently in process, although it is “more difficult” than the previous ones, because “the starting material is 16 millimeters, which is not the same result as that of 35 millimeters.”
Despite this, Colombia’s restorers “are excited,” he said.
For its part, Alexandra Falla, director of the Colombian Film Heritage Foundation, said by videoconference that they achieved “to understand what Juan Padrón means in Cuba and what it means as the legacy of Latin Americans.”
Last year, the ICAIC had announced the digitalization and restoration of the first two animated shorts of the character, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
In addition, it transpired that they were “making efforts to do so with Elpidio Valdés, the movie (1979) and Elpidio Valdés against dollar and cannon ”, He said to Oncuba Silvia Padrón, daughter of the creator of Elpidio, who is in charge of the La Manigua project and the great company that is to digitize and preserve her father’s work in what will be A great documentary fund.
Then, it was announced that in 2025 efforts would be made to find funds that allowed digitizing the film Vampires in Havana (1985), another animated classic by Juan Padrón who turns 40.
At the beginning of July The project La Manigua confirmed that this process had already begun in Spain.
