Cuba's Great Filmmaker, Eduardo Del Llano, Censored at Annual Film
Festival in Havana
Posted: 11/18/11 12:30 AM ET
The year's most anticipated month is December, with its cold fronts that
allow us to "bundle up" and with the films of International Festival of
the New Latin American Cinema. I remember, in particular, one evening in
1992 when the glass in the doors of the Acapulco cinema shattered before
the onslaught of hundreds of people wanting to see a film from
Argentina, The Dark Side of the Heart. I'm not exaggerating the
enthusiasm, since it was only in this last month of the year that we
could enjoy something other than Soviet movies, something with more
artistic value than the American thrillers on national television. Very
few, at that time, had a VCR to play videos, and the magic of the dark
hall with the projector purring behind us was almost intact.
But the Festival, now in its 33rd incarnation, has been losing ground in
the cultural life of Havana. In part because the pirated serials, soap
operas and Hollywood productions lead many to prefer to stay home to
enjoy their DVD player or clandestine satellite dish. Movie-goers are
also discouraged by the fact that dozens of neighborhood movie theaters
have closed, such as the comfortable Bayamo of my childhood, the
majestic Rex and Duplex, or the centrally-located Cuba cinema. But the
principal festival of Latin American film has had other setbacks that
spring from within, limitations arising from its own structure.
Censorship, works shown only once while others hog the schedule, authors
not accepted for having "exceeded" social and political criticism, are
some of the incidents that have impoverished the festival. The
centralization of decision making, personified in the figure of Alfredo
Guevara, imparts an effect on the festival similar to that generated by
the excessively vertical government in our country. With such
antecedents, the exclusion on this occasion of the film Vinci, from the
director Eduardo del Llano, shouldn't even surprise us. In response to
the letter of protest from the creator of shorts such as Monte Rouge and
Exit, the Festival's senior management could only appeal to thematic
considerations. But many of us know what it's really about: Del Llano is
an uncomfortable author and his productions are accepted with clenched
teeth because they touch the wounds of a reality that the official
discourse tries to cover over with make-up. Fortunately, the same
alternative networks that broadcast the Brazilian soap operas and
reality shows, might also propagate -- briefly -- the rejected film. So,
we'll just turn off the lights in our own living rooms, click the remote
control and start the projection, a private function where no one can
decide what we can see and what we can't.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/eduardo-del-llano-censored_b_1100556.html
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