Cuba Film Censorship Grip Loosens

Cuba Film Censorship Grip Loosens
03.09.13 | 07:43AM PT
Digital distribution helps ease export problems
Anna Marie De La Fuente

A new breed of filmmaker is emerging in Cuba, where travel restrictions
to and from the U.S. have eased, allowing digital-savvy helmers — many
of them alumni of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez-founded Escuela
Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV), which has spawned two generations of
Latin American and Cuban filmmakers — to aim at a wider audience.

Helmer-scribe Alejandro Brugues' zombie satire "Juan of the Dead" drew
thousands of rabid filmgoers at its Havana Film Fest preem in 2011, and
has been sold to 40 countries. Now he's prepping his first English-lingo
pic, to be shot in Cuba. Tentatively titled "The Wrong Place," the pic
tracks a retired thief who has been exiled to the island nation, with
his dwindling funds motivating him to pull one more heist.

"Our government didn't notice 'Juan' until it became successful, and
then they realized they didn't like it," says Brugues, whose satire
takes some sharp digs at the current state of affairs in Cuba. "They say
censorship has loosened, but that's not entirely true."

National film org Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria
Cinematograficos (ICAIC) wanted Havana's December Festival of New Latin
American Cinema to pull the plug on Carlos Lechuga's feature debut
"Melaza" (Molasses) for its political tone, says Brugues, who
co-produced the drama. The pic is set against the closure of a sugar
mill and the impact the shuttering has on a young couple. ICAIC, the
sole distributor of Cuban pics on the communist island nation, has no
intentions of releasing the pic, but Lechuga has been fielding offers
from various fests, and has taken the film to Rotterdam. Next up is
Miami, where it will have its U.S. debut.

Lechuga, who adapted another Havana Fest feature debut, Charlie Medina's
black-and-white "Penumbra," based on the allegorical baseball play
"Penumbra en el noveno cuarto" by Amado del Pino, is prepping a more
mainstream project, "Vampires on Bicycles." "Vampires" is set in the
early 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Cuba's key trade
partner and benefactor, plunged it into economic crisis. In Lechuga's
pic, the ensuing famine turns people into vampires. One of them converts
a Yank Tank — slang for the vintage American cars that pepper Havana's
streets — into a taxi, and preys on his passengers.

One sign that the grip of censorship may be loosening somewhat is that
helmer Daniel Diaz Torres' wry comedy "La Pelicula de Ana," (pictured)
about an actress who pretends to be a prostitute in order to earn extra
money, is being released by ICAIC, which backs just four to five
nonfiction Cuban pics a year, as well as a handful of co-productions. At
the Havana fest, the film took home prizes for screenplay and actress
(for Laura de la Uz) and scored a distribution deal with Venezuela's
Amazonia Films.

Docus are also making headway in Cuba, but with subject matter seemingly
more in line with the national agenda. Last year, says ICAIC senior
adviser Luis Notario, the funder invested in 10 docs.

Standouts include Catherine Murphy's short docu "Maestra," a chronicle
of Cuba's groundbreaking 1961 literacy program that sent thousands of
students and teachers into the countryside to teach peasants to read and
write. Murphy, who was given access to ICAIC's national film archives
but leaned on private funding, uses archival footage and testimonies of
women who participated in the program in their teens to recount the
effort, which raised the national literacy rate to 96%. The docu has
screened at some 30 film festivals worldwide.

"As a result of making this film, I found out that literacy is the
biggest factor that determines the life expectancy of women in the
world," Murphy says.

Cuban women are also the focus of docu "The Cuban Wives" by Alberto
Antonio Dandolo; the pic features the spouses of five Cubans imprisoned
in the U.S. over espionage allegations.

Meanwhile, EICTV has grown into a breeding ground not only for Latin
American filmmakers but also for film students from around the world,
representing some 36 countries. Charging an annual tuition of €5,000
($6,676), EICTV is arguably the most affordable film school in the
world, says its director, Rafael Rosal.

Getting in, however, isn't easy.

"We get 400 to 500 applications a year, of which 40 are accepted," Rosal
says. Lechuga, Diaz Torres and Brugues are former students; the latter
two now mentors.

Mirtha Ibarra, the grand dame of Cuban cinema ("Strawberry and
Chocolate," "Guantanamera," both helmed by her late husband Tomas
Gutierrez Alea), is impressed with the nation's fresh crop of talent.

"There's a new generation of filmmakers making interesting films," she
says simply.

http://variety.com/2013/biz/international/cuba-film-censorship-grip-loosens-1200005905/