He Havana International Festival of New Latin American Cinema this Wednesday awarded the Mexican actor Gael García Bernal the Coral of Honor award, in recognition of his career and contributions to cinema in the region.
The ceremony was held at the Habana Libre hotel as part of the 46th edition of the film event, where the jury highlighted the career of the interpreter of emblematic films such as Dog loves, And your mom too and Babel.
With the Coral in his hands and a bouquet of flowers, the actor, born in Jalisco in 1978, said moved that in moments like this he thinks a lot about his family, the people who accompany him and those who introduced him to cinema.
Thus, he remembered “people like my grandmother, my father, my friends” and also the San Antonio de los Baños Film and TV School (EICTV). In this center he attended a course when he was barely 16 years old and there, he said, “in addition to having a great time, I learned a lot of things and discovered many dimensions of cinema that fascinated me.”
Then, in statements to the press collected by the Spanish agency EFEGarcía Bernal stated that his career has been “a joy.”
“I have really enjoyed being able to make films. It has been a gift (…) and that in general has to do with Latin America. Because here there is a brutal complexity to tell a number of stories,” he said.
Links with Cuba
The actor’s ties with Cuba go back to his family history: his grandfather went into exile in Mexico during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in the late 1950s. Before studying at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, García Bernal went through the aforementioned experience at EICTV.
His relationship with the island is also reflected in his filmography. He played the Argentine guerrilla Ernesto “Che” Guevara twice: in the miniseries Fidel! (2002) and in the celebrated film motorcycle diaries (2004), by Brazilian director Walter Salles.
In addition, he recorded part of the film in Cuba Wasp Network (2019), about Cuban agents in the United States.
Asked about EFE about his stay on the island, the winner of the Golden Globe in 2016 for the series Mozart in the Jungle He joked: “It’s a good thing cell phones with cameras didn’t exist back then because we would have gotten into a lot of trouble.”
The recognition to García Bernal is added to the one given last week to the Churubusco Studios, also from Mexico, the guest of honor country in this edition of the festival.
Before presenting the Coral to the actor, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) signed a collaboration agreement with the Churubusco to promote co-productions, technical and artistic exchanges, and the training of talent, according to the Mexican embassy.
Alfredo Guevara, tribute on paper
This Wednesday’s day was also marked by the presentation of the book My passion beyond cinemadedicated to Alfredo Guevara (Havana 1925-2013), a fundamental figure in Cuban culture and cinema. The event took place at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, within the framework of the centenary of his birth and as part of the same festival, the agency reported Latin Press.
The work, published by Ediciones ICAIC, brings together articles by Guevara in the magazine Cuban cinema for five decades. The volume has a prologue by filmmaker Arturo Sotto and editorial coordination by Mercy Ruiz, as well as a gallery of images from the institution’s photographic archive.
“We decided to order the publications chronologically because it allows the reader to see the evolution of Alfredo Guevara’s thought over the years,” explained Sotto.
Among the collected texts are A new stage of cinema in Cuba, Tribute to René Portocarrero; Nazism near a festival; October, a new era; The Cuban feat of starting over; Milestones of life and art and The realization of a dream.
Radical and defiant, Guevara addressed the problems of Cuban culture with depth and without concessions.
The book’s photo gallery shows him alongside national and international figures, offering young people a closer view of the founder of the ICAIC and the Festival of New Latin American Cinema, considered one of the most emblematic cultural icons of the 20th century in the American subcontinent.
A festival with history
The 46th edition of the Havana International Festival of New Latin American Cinema has a selection of 222 works from 42 countries and will end on December 14. The Coral awards ceremony is scheduled for this Friday.
The event opened its doors for the first time on December 3, 1979, conceived as a continuation of the meetings in Viña del Mar (1967 and 1969), Mérida (1968 and 1977) and Caracas (1974), ultimately all truncated along the way.
Since then, the Havana event, now the longest running, has brought together prestigious Cuban filmmakers and from other parts of the world around Latin American filmography, consolidating itself as one of the sector’s benchmarks in the region and the so-called Global South.
Its drawing power has been endorsed by stars and personalities of world and regional cinema.
Among those who have attended the event are figures such as Juliette Binoche, Pedro Almodóvar, Francis Ford Coppola, Gregory Peck, Isabel Coixet, Benicio del Toro and Lucrecia Martel, who are joined by icons of Cuban cinema such as Alfredo Guevara himself, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Julio García Espinosa and Fernando Pérez.
