The Academic Council of the San Antonio de los Baños International Film and Television School (EICTV), in Mayabeque, expressed its disagreement with the imposition, by the Ministry of Culture, of Waldo Ramírez as the new director of the center. The measure, described as “abrupt, arbitrary, and silent,” adds to the list of recent clashes between the filmmakers’ union and the island’s cultural authorities.
“We are unaware of the new appointment because of the way it happened and we demand a transparent decision process, as it should have happened,” said the releasewhich was signed by 13 members of the Council.
The arrival of Ramírez –founder of Televisión Serrana, in Santiago de Cuba, and representative on the island of the Venezuelan multinational chain Telesur– to EICTV is the indirect consequence of the dismissal of Ramón Samada from the presidency of the Cuban Institute of Art and Industry Cinematographic (Icaic) and the assumption of the position by the vice president of the Institute, Susana Molina, former director of EICTV.
Numerous filmmakers, teachers and students linked to the School have also personally expressed their non-recognition of the new directive
Numerous filmmakers, teachers and students linked to the School have also expressed in their personal capacity, on their social networks, their non-recognition of the new directive, protected by the statutes of the institution. They also demand that “the due process of selection” be carried out in a transparent and “consensus” manner, counting on the opinion of the student body –in which foreign students are included– and the workers.
The community of teachers, graduates and filmmakers linked to the EICTV also opened a form so that everyone involved with the School can express their support to the Academic Council with their signature. “We believe in the possibility of restoring a useful and necessary art for our nations, as well as promoting the only path that we believe possible: making a free cinema,” the letter concludes.
The Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers will also uttered this Sunday on the decisions of the ICAIC. In their statement they made it clear that “Cuban cinema does not belong to a ministry or an institution. They [las instituciones] they have to put themselves at the service of the artists and not the other way around”.
“It is not Samada, it is the structure that puts and removes Samada that must be reviewed, transformed or, if necessary, suppressed”
Film critic and professor Gustavo Arcos also shared on his Twitter account Facebook your opinion on the debate. “It is not Samada, it is the structure that puts and removes Samada that must be reviewed, transformed or, if necessary, suppressed. Managers and officials make mistakes, nobody is perfect but there is a system, a model of order and command that has sustained, for too long, that institutional violence that once again we have just perceived”.
It is not the first time that the EICTV has caused headaches for art officials in Cuba. Last May, some students, mostly foreigners, had complained about the poor conditions of the school by writing on the walls of the center “Down with the management. Thieves.” Cuban writer Wendy Guerra, a graduate of the center and currently residing in the United States, warned So that the film school “is a non-governmental institution” where Cuban students and “some young foreigners” receive scholarships or pay for their training, so it is natural that “minimum conditions” are required for the stay .
At the end of June, the malaise of filmmakers provoked that more than a hundred directors, scriptwriters and actors hold a meeting with leaders of the Ministry of Culture and the Communist Party to address the controversy unleashed by the censorship and unauthorized dissemination of the documentary Fito’s Havanaby director Juan Pin Vilar.
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