Rose Gregorio, the Tony-nominated actress who played Nurse Carol Hathaway’s (Julianna Margulies) mom on NBC’s ER from 1996-99, has died. She was 97. The veteran star passed away of natural causes on August 17 in her Greenwich Village home, her nephew, Robert Grosbard, told The Hollywood Reporter. Born on October 17, 1925, in Chicago, Illinois, Gregorio began her career in theatre productions in Chicago and New York City during the 1950s and 1960s, becoming more active on television in the 1970s. Her first on-screen role came in the Armstrong Circle Theatre episode “The Fortune Tellers” in 1961, but after that, she moved to New York, where she would go on to have a successful career on Off-Broadway and Broadway, starring in the likes of William Snyder’s The Days and Nights of BeeBee Fenstermaker and Jack Gelber’s The Cuban Thing. ER/YouTube Throughout the 1970s, she appeared in many TV series, including The Doctors,...
- 9/21/2023
- TV Insider
Rose Gregorio, who received a Tony nomination for her performance as the browbeaten daughter of Geraldine Fitzgerald’s declining old woman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama The Shadow Box, has died. She was 97.
Gregorio died Aug. 17 of natural causes in her Greenwich Village home, her nephew Robert Grosbard told The Hollywood Reporter.
Gregorio was married to Belgium-born stage and film director Ulu Grosbard from 1965 until his death in 2012, and she appeared for him as the ex-wife of Dustin Hoffman’s character in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971); as a local madam in True Confessions (1981); and as the mother of Treat Williams’ character in The Deep End of the Ocean (1999).
On television, she had a recurring role on NBC’s ER as Nurse Carol Hathaway’s (Julianna Margulies) mom from 1996-99.
Gregorio also landed a Drama Desk nom and a Clarence Derwent...
Gregorio died Aug. 17 of natural causes in her Greenwich Village home, her nephew Robert Grosbard told The Hollywood Reporter.
Gregorio was married to Belgium-born stage and film director Ulu Grosbard from 1965 until his death in 2012, and she appeared for him as the ex-wife of Dustin Hoffman’s character in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971); as a local madam in True Confessions (1981); and as the mother of Treat Williams’ character in The Deep End of the Ocean (1999).
On television, she had a recurring role on NBC’s ER as Nurse Carol Hathaway’s (Julianna Margulies) mom from 1996-99.
Gregorio also landed a Drama Desk nom and a Clarence Derwent...
- 9/21/2023
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Museum of the Moving Image
A particularly outstanding weekend for “See It Big! Action” offers Big Trouble in Little China on Friday, a John Woo double-bill of Hard Boiled and Face/Off on Saturday, and Die Hard this Sunday.
A Carlos Reygadas series is underway, with all of his pre-Our Time features screening through Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A particularly outstanding weekend for “See It Big! Action” offers Big Trouble in Little China on Friday, a John Woo double-bill of Hard Boiled and Face/Off on Saturday, and Die Hard this Sunday.
A Carlos Reygadas series is underway, with all of his pre-Our Time features screening through Sunday.
- 6/6/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The Criterion Channel launches Monday, replacing that void left in cinephile hearts everywhere after the shuttering of FilmStruck just four months ago.
Subscribers can expect very little difference on the new service that wasn’t previously available on the Criterion Collection’s home at FilmStruck.
The service’s core, permanent library available on launch day is the over 1,000 movies, 350 shorts and 3500 supplemental materials that make up the Janus Film library. These are the classic arthouse films that for decades have been a mainstay in DVD restorations as part of the Criterion Collection.
Also Read: Why the New Criterion Channel Streaming Service Won't Be a 'Netflix Killer'
Criterion President Peter Becker referred to The Criterion Channel as “an art house at your house,” adding that the library is made up of the “last name” filmmakers that any movie buff should know well: (Michelangelo) Antonioni, (Jean-Luc) Godard, (François) Truffaut, (Akira) Kurosawa,...
Subscribers can expect very little difference on the new service that wasn’t previously available on the Criterion Collection’s home at FilmStruck.
The service’s core, permanent library available on launch day is the over 1,000 movies, 350 shorts and 3500 supplemental materials that make up the Janus Film library. These are the classic arthouse films that for decades have been a mainstay in DVD restorations as part of the Criterion Collection.
Also Read: Why the New Criterion Channel Streaming Service Won't Be a 'Netflix Killer'
Criterion President Peter Becker referred to The Criterion Channel as “an art house at your house,” adding that the library is made up of the “last name” filmmakers that any movie buff should know well: (Michelangelo) Antonioni, (Jean-Luc) Godard, (François) Truffaut, (Akira) Kurosawa,...
- 4/8/2019
- by Brian Welk
- The Wrap
Perhaps the top cinematic output of Cuban filmmaking is this investigation of a man that doesn’t embrace the revolution. Wishing to remain apolitical, the handsome Sergio prefers to pursue attractive women, as well as illusions of his own superiority. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s account of life with Castro doesn’t shirk from an honest view of conditions in the embargoed island, between The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Memories of Underdevelopment
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 943
1968 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Memorias de subdesarrollo / Street Date August 28, 2018 / 39.95
Starring: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Núñez, Omar Valdés’ René de la Cruz.
Cinematography: Ramón Suárez
Film Editor: Nelson Rodríguez
Original Music: Leo Brouwer
Written by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Edmundo Desnoes, from his novel
Produced by Miguel Mendoza
Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Welcome to the revolution. Top Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s feature...
Memories of Underdevelopment
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 943
1968 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Memorias de subdesarrollo / Street Date August 28, 2018 / 39.95
Starring: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Núñez, Omar Valdés’ René de la Cruz.
Cinematography: Ramón Suárez
Film Editor: Nelson Rodríguez
Original Music: Leo Brouwer
Written by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Edmundo Desnoes, from his novel
Produced by Miguel Mendoza
Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Welcome to the revolution. Top Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s feature...
- 8/14/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Appearing on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time, Robert M. Young's The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez will be released by the Criterion Collection in August 2018. Inspired by a true story, the film stars Edward James Olmos and is "a thrilling chase film and a nuanced procedural," per the press notes. From Cuba comes Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, which "provides a biting indictment of its protagonist's disengagement and an extraordinary glimpse of life in postrevolutionary Cuba." The critically-acclaimed film will appear in a new 4K restoration. I regret to say I have not seen either of those films, which I hope to remedy in August. On the other hand, I have seen the other three titles set for release by Criterion....
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 5/16/2018
- Screen Anarchy
2018 likely will see more than the usual number of 50th-anniversary remembrances, given the tumult of 1968 in America and elsewhere around the globe. For Cuba, this is the golden anniversary of one of the nation's best-regarded films, Tomas Gutierrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment. Released Stateside in a fresh 4K restoration, the daring blend of personal and political looks back at the birth of the U.S./Cuba rift, foreshadowing conflicts that remain relevant while standing alone as a distinctive work of art.
Based on a novel by Edmundo Desnoes, the film follows Sergio (Sergio Corrieri, I Am Cuba), a member of...
Based on a novel by Edmundo Desnoes, the film follows Sergio (Sergio Corrieri, I Am Cuba), a member of...
- 1/12/2018
- by John DeFore
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
2018 is apparently the year of anniversaries and The Criterion Collection. While the film world prepares anxiously for Janus Films’ Ingmar Bergman centennial retrospective, the theatrical distribution label from which The Criterion Collection is an extension kicks off the year with a 50th anniversary restoration and theatrical run of the legendary Cuban masterpiece, Memories Of Underdevelopment.
Running for one week only at New York’s Film Forum from January 12-18, Memories is director Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s masterpiece, a profoundly moving look at life at a specific moment in the specific history of a specific nation.
Memories of Underdevelopment introduces viewers to life in post-revolution Cuba, through the eyes of Sergio. Played by Sergio Corrieri, Sergio is an intellectual whose family just fled the country in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, which sends his life into a spiral of introspection. Isolated from much of his world, he both reflects...
Running for one week only at New York’s Film Forum from January 12-18, Memories is director Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s masterpiece, a profoundly moving look at life at a specific moment in the specific history of a specific nation.
Memories of Underdevelopment introduces viewers to life in post-revolution Cuba, through the eyes of Sergio. Played by Sergio Corrieri, Sergio is an intellectual whose family just fled the country in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, which sends his life into a spiral of introspection. Isolated from much of his world, he both reflects...
- 1/12/2018
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
Carol (Todd Haynes)
From the first note of Carter Burwell‘s magnificent score and opening shot of Edward Lachman’s ravishing cinematography — introducing a Brief Encounter-esque opening bookend — Todd Haynes transports one to an intoxicating world of first love and its requisite heartbreak. Carol excels at being many things: a romantic drama; a coming-of-age story; an exploration of family dynamics and social constructs of the time; an acting...
Carol (Todd Haynes)
From the first note of Carter Burwell‘s magnificent score and opening shot of Edward Lachman’s ravishing cinematography — introducing a Brief Encounter-esque opening bookend — Todd Haynes transports one to an intoxicating world of first love and its requisite heartbreak. Carol excels at being many things: a romantic drama; a coming-of-age story; an exploration of family dynamics and social constructs of the time; an acting...
- 9/22/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
It’s a given that their Main Slate — the fresh, the recently buzzed-about, the mysterious, the anticipated — will be the New York Film Festival’s primary point of attraction for both media coverage and ticket sales. But while a rather fine lineup is, to these eyes, deserving of such treatment, the festival’s latest Revivals section — i.e. “important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners,” per their press release — is in a whole other class, one titanic name after another granted a representation that these particular works have so long lacked.
The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...
The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...
- 8/21/2017
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Aaron is joined by Jon Laubinger, a superfan of the show and yet another cinephile from the great city of Boston. He is about to leave for Sweden for Bergman Week, so he may be the most envied guest of all time. We exchanged lists of our favorite films of the 21st century, talked about Dheepan, revenge films, David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai, and we speculated on what the upcoming September announcements could be.
Episode Links Bergman Week NY Times – Top 25 Best Films of the 21st Century Aaron’s Top Films of the 21st Century Jon’s Top Films of the 21st Century Twin Peaks Podcast Riverrun Film Festival – Memories of Underdevelopment Blu-ray – WB Titles Going Out of Print Whit Stillman Comments About Recent Films Harvard Film Archive – The Complete Jean Renoir Episode Credits Aaron West: Twitter | Website | Letterboxd Jon Laubinger: Letterboxd Criterion Now: Twitter | Facebook Group Criterion Cast: Facebook...
Episode Links Bergman Week NY Times – Top 25 Best Films of the 21st Century Aaron’s Top Films of the 21st Century Jon’s Top Films of the 21st Century Twin Peaks Podcast Riverrun Film Festival – Memories of Underdevelopment Blu-ray – WB Titles Going Out of Print Whit Stillman Comments About Recent Films Harvard Film Archive – The Complete Jean Renoir Episode Credits Aaron West: Twitter | Website | Letterboxd Jon Laubinger: Letterboxd Criterion Now: Twitter | Facebook Group Criterion Cast: Facebook...
- 6/13/2017
- by Aaron West
- CriterionCast
Giuseppe Tornatore’s ode to the Italian love of movies was a major hit here in 1990, despite being severely cut by Miramax. In 2002 the director reworked his long version into an almost three-hour sentimental epic that enlarges the film’s scope and deepens its sentiments.
Cinema Paradiso
Region B Blu-ray
Arrow Academy
1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / Special Edition / 174, 155, 124 min. /
Nuovo cinema Paradiso / Street Date March 21, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Philippe Noiret, Antonella Attili, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin, Agnese Nano, Brigitte Fossey, Pupella Maggio, Leopoldo Trieste
Cinematography: Blasco Giurato
Production Designer: Andrea Crisanti
Film Editor: Mario Morra
Original Music: Ennio and Andrea Morricone
Produced by Mino Barbera, Franco Cristaldi, Giovanna Romagnoli
Written and Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
Your average foreign import movie, it seems, makes a brief splash around Oscar time and then disappears as if down a rabbit hole. A few years back I saw a fantastic Argentine movie called The Secret in Their Eyes.
Cinema Paradiso
Region B Blu-ray
Arrow Academy
1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / Special Edition / 174, 155, 124 min. /
Nuovo cinema Paradiso / Street Date March 21, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Philippe Noiret, Antonella Attili, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Jacques Perrin, Agnese Nano, Brigitte Fossey, Pupella Maggio, Leopoldo Trieste
Cinematography: Blasco Giurato
Production Designer: Andrea Crisanti
Film Editor: Mario Morra
Original Music: Ennio and Andrea Morricone
Produced by Mino Barbera, Franco Cristaldi, Giovanna Romagnoli
Written and Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
Your average foreign import movie, it seems, makes a brief splash around Oscar time and then disappears as if down a rabbit hole. A few years back I saw a fantastic Argentine movie called The Secret in Their Eyes.
- 3/14/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Nick Meyer and Jonathan Kier at the sales team will kick off talks with buyers on the project from Bold Films, for whom Sierra/Affinity handles exclusive sales.
Brady Corbet wrote and directed Vox Lux, about the life and times of a pop superstar who rose to fame after a life-changing event. Production is set to begin this month.
Bold Films is fully financing and Michel Litvak and Gary Michael Walters produce with Christine Vachon and David Hinojosa of Killer Films, and Brian Young of Three Six Zero Entertainment. Bold’s Svetlana Metkina and Sia are executive producers.
Film Independent and animation maestros Laika have announced a second year of the Laika Animation Fellowship in Project Involve. The Fellowship provides a $10,000 grant to an animator in the diversity mentorship programme.Silvatar Media has signed Timo von Gunten to direct action heist feature Eiffel. Morgan Hage wrote the screenplay from a story by von Gunten and an earlier...
Brady Corbet wrote and directed Vox Lux, about the life and times of a pop superstar who rose to fame after a life-changing event. Production is set to begin this month.
Bold Films is fully financing and Michel Litvak and Gary Michael Walters produce with Christine Vachon and David Hinojosa of Killer Films, and Brian Young of Three Six Zero Entertainment. Bold’s Svetlana Metkina and Sia are executive producers.
Film Independent and animation maestros Laika have announced a second year of the Laika Animation Fellowship in Project Involve. The Fellowship provides a $10,000 grant to an animator in the diversity mentorship programme.Silvatar Media has signed Timo von Gunten to direct action heist feature Eiffel. Morgan Hage wrote the screenplay from a story by von Gunten and an earlier...
- 2/3/2017
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Could there be a more perfect moment than this? Sitting in the garden behind the Hotel Nacional, looking at the Cuban flag so proudly waving over the Straits of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. The same site where the defense was built during the Cuban Missile Crisis, this moment of time marks a particularly precarious balance between peaceful coexistence and military aggression as we contemplate the recent death of Castro and election of Trump, wondering how it will play out in 2017.Hotel Nacional, Headquarters of Festival de Cine Nuevo Iberoamericano, Havana, Cuba
Cuba, ten days after the death of Fidel Castro, head of state for 52 years,may be a bit more subdued, but life here goes on, even with the influx of American tourists (other tourists have always been here); there is a sense of harmony. And in spite of the scarcity of luxuries for its people, the people...
Cuba, ten days after the death of Fidel Castro, head of state for 52 years,may be a bit more subdued, but life here goes on, even with the influx of American tourists (other tourists have always been here); there is a sense of harmony. And in spite of the scarcity of luxuries for its people, the people...
- 12/29/2016
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
The New York Film Festival has established itself as a haven for film purists, a place where the masters of cinema are treated like titans and auteurism supersedes all other other religions. In keeping with that spirit, the fest has always made sure to steer an uncommon (and greatly appreciated) degree of attention towards the history of the medium, complementing their roster of contemporary films with in-depth retrospectives and well-curated revival screenings.
Read More: Nyff Announces Retrospective Selections Inspired By Bertrand Tavernier’s ‘My Journey Through French Cinema’ – Exclusive
Nyff 54 is no exception. In fact, this year’s retrospective section offers two programs for the price of one — centering on director Bertrand Tavernier, the wonderfully expansive sidebar doesn’t just appreciate its subject as a filmmaker, but as a film thinker as well. Only showing one of Tavernier’s narrative features, the retrospective focuses instead on his unmissable new cinematic essay,...
Read More: Nyff Announces Retrospective Selections Inspired By Bertrand Tavernier’s ‘My Journey Through French Cinema’ – Exclusive
Nyff 54 is no exception. In fact, this year’s retrospective section offers two programs for the price of one — centering on director Bertrand Tavernier, the wonderfully expansive sidebar doesn’t just appreciate its subject as a filmmaker, but as a film thinker as well. Only showing one of Tavernier’s narrative features, the retrospective focuses instead on his unmissable new cinematic essay,...
- 9/28/2016
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the lineup for the Revivals section, taking place during the 54th New York Film Festival (Nyff). The Revivals section showcases masterpieces from renowned filmmakers whose diverse and eclectic works have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners.
Read More: Ava DuVernay’s Netflix Documentary ‘The 13th’ Will Open 54th New York Film Festival
Some of the films in the lineup include plenty of Nyff debuts returning once again: Gillo Pontecorvo’s “The Battle of Algiers,” which was the the Nyff Opening Night selection in 1967, Robert Bresson’s “L’argent,” and Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County USA.” Also included are a program of Jacques Rivette’s early short films, Edward Yang’s second feature “Taipei Story,” Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu,” and Marlon Brando’s solo directorial effort “One-Eyed Jacks.”
The Nyff previously announced three of the films screening...
Read More: Ava DuVernay’s Netflix Documentary ‘The 13th’ Will Open 54th New York Film Festival
Some of the films in the lineup include plenty of Nyff debuts returning once again: Gillo Pontecorvo’s “The Battle of Algiers,” which was the the Nyff Opening Night selection in 1967, Robert Bresson’s “L’argent,” and Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County USA.” Also included are a program of Jacques Rivette’s early short films, Edward Yang’s second feature “Taipei Story,” Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu,” and Marlon Brando’s solo directorial effort “One-Eyed Jacks.”
The Nyff previously announced three of the films screening...
- 8/4/2016
- by Vikram Murthi
- Indiewire
As much as we’re excited for the already enticing line-up for the 2016 New York Film Festival, their Revivals slate is always a place where one can discover a number of classics or revisit favorite films. This year is no different as they have newly restored films from Robert Bresson, Edward Yang, Jacques Rivette, Marlon Brando, Kenji Mizoguchi, and more. Check out the line-up below and return for our coverage this fall. If you don’t live in New York City, there’s a good chance a number of these restorations will travel in the coming months (or year) as well as get the home video treatment.
L’argent
Directed by Robert Bresson
1983, France, 83m
Robert Bresson’s final film, an adaptation of Tolstoy’s story The Forged Coupon, is simultaneously bleak and luminous, and sharp enough to cut diamonds. The story of a counterfeit bill’s passage from hand...
L’argent
Directed by Robert Bresson
1983, France, 83m
Robert Bresson’s final film, an adaptation of Tolstoy’s story The Forged Coupon, is simultaneously bleak and luminous, and sharp enough to cut diamonds. The story of a counterfeit bill’s passage from hand...
- 8/4/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The Film Society Of Lincoln Center announced on Thursday the line-up of digitally remastered classics set to play at the 54th New York Film Festival from September 30–October 16.
Among the Revivals section are Gillo Pontecorvo’s Nyff opening night selection The Battle Of Algiers (pictured), Robert Bresson’s L’argent, Marlon Brando’s sole directorial effort One-Eyed Jacks, and Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning chronicle of a Kentucky miners’ strike, Harlan County USA.
Also screening are Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s depiction of the Cuban revolution, Memories Of Underdevelopment, as well as Edward Yang’s Taipei Story.
Revivals will also feature Jacques Rivette’s recently discovered and long-lost first three shorts films.
As previously announced, Ava Duvernay’s The 13th will open the festival, while Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women will be the centrepiece screening and James Gray’s The Lost City Of Z will close the event.
To read the full Revivals programme click here.
Among the Revivals section are Gillo Pontecorvo’s Nyff opening night selection The Battle Of Algiers (pictured), Robert Bresson’s L’argent, Marlon Brando’s sole directorial effort One-Eyed Jacks, and Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning chronicle of a Kentucky miners’ strike, Harlan County USA.
Also screening are Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s depiction of the Cuban revolution, Memories Of Underdevelopment, as well as Edward Yang’s Taipei Story.
Revivals will also feature Jacques Rivette’s recently discovered and long-lost first three shorts films.
As previously announced, Ava Duvernay’s The 13th will open the festival, while Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women will be the centrepiece screening and James Gray’s The Lost City Of Z will close the event.
To read the full Revivals programme click here.
- 8/4/2016
- by govi2016@lawnet.ucla.edu (Alec Govi)
- ScreenDaily
Section to include world premiere of Bertrand Tavernier doc; a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin and a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman.
Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).
The revered French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”
Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.
As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored prints of 20 international classics including rare gems...
Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).
The revered French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”
Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.
As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored prints of 20 international classics including rare gems...
- 4/20/2016
- ScreenDaily
Section to include a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin, the 70th anniversary of the Fipresci prize, a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman and the double Palme d’Or of 1966.
Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).
The legendary French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”
Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.
As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored...
Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).
The legendary French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”
Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.
As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored...
- 4/20/2016
- ScreenDaily
Now that most of the Cannes Film Festival 2016 line-up has been settled when it comes to new premieres, their Cannes Classics sidebar of restored films is not only a treat for those attending, but a hint at what we can expect to arrive at repertory theaters and labels like Criterion in the coming years.
Today they’ve unveiled their line-up, which is toplined by Bertrand Tavernier‘s new 3-hour and 15-minute documentary about French cinema, Voyage à travers le cinéma français. They will also be screening William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer following his masterclass. Along with various documentaries, both classics in the genre and ones about films, they will also premiere new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Masculin féminin, two episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s The Decalogue, as well as films from Kenji Mizoguchi, Marlon Brando, Jacques Becker, Mario Bava, and more.
Check out the line-up below.
Today they’ve unveiled their line-up, which is toplined by Bertrand Tavernier‘s new 3-hour and 15-minute documentary about French cinema, Voyage à travers le cinéma français. They will also be screening William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer following his masterclass. Along with various documentaries, both classics in the genre and ones about films, they will also premiere new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Masculin féminin, two episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s The Decalogue, as well as films from Kenji Mizoguchi, Marlon Brando, Jacques Becker, Mario Bava, and more.
Check out the line-up below.
- 4/20/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Get yer terrific long-suppressed film history right here, folks -- this is what it takes to get your movie banned in East Germany in 1965: Günter Stahnke makes a drama revealing forbidden capitalist-style competitiveness and dastardly backstabbing in a state-run industry. Think any of those Party censors would object? Spring Takes Time DVD Defa Film Library 1965 / B&W / 1:37 flat / 76 min. / Der Frühling braucht Zeit / Street Date March 2016 / available through The Defa Film Library / 29.95 Starring Eberhard Mellies, Günther Simon, Doris Abesser, Karla Runkehl, Rolf Hoppe, Erik S. Klein, Friedrich Richter, Elfriede Née. Cinematography Lothar Erdmann, Eckhardt Hartkopf, Hans-Jürgen Sasse, Kurt Schütt Film Editor Erika Lehmphul Original Music Gerhard Siebholz; 'The Sputniks' Written by Hermann O. Lauterbach, Konrad Schwalbe, Günter Stahnke Produced by Defa Directed by Günter Stahnke
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
So you think artists over Here have it bad... Günter Stahnke experienced some late-career fame at the 1990 Berlinale film festival,...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
So you think artists over Here have it bad... Günter Stahnke experienced some late-career fame at the 1990 Berlinale film festival,...
- 3/12/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
** New Update: Two more American films have come to my attention through readers of the blog:
Alison Klayman wrote to say "I know you said at least two films, but I wanted specifically to alert you to the fact that my film "The 100 Years Show" is also playing in the Panorama Documental sections (same as Pj Letofsky's film). "The 100 Years Show" is about 100-year old Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera, and was produced with RatPac (Brett Ratner) Documentary Films. I'll be attending the festival too.
Alex Mallis wrote in to say: "Our short narrative, "La Noche buena" (the first American-directed since the embargo) is also screening at the festival.
Original Blog:
At least two films by American filmmakers will screen this year at the Havana Film Festival, whose official name is Festival de Cine Nuevo Latinamericano. As the Centerpiece Film, Bob Yari, producer of almost 50 films, will screen his second directed film “Papa” about Ernest Hemingway. It can be called “the first [official or legal] American film made in Havana in the last fifty years”, though underground films have been made (e.g., “Love & Suicide”). “Papa” is being sold at Afm by Elias Axume’s Premiere Entertainment.
Doc filmmaker Pj Letofsky will also be screening his film “ Tarkovsky: Time Within Time” which just premiered at the Sao Paolo Film Festival.
Many U.S. citizens are now interested in going to Havana. To give an in-depth look at Cuba’s film business, I am publishing a [long] chapter of what I hope will soon be published, my book on Iberoamerican film business. I will also be publishing another [shorter] interview here soon with Havana Film Festival Director, Ivan Giroud.
Cuba (Chapter Seven)
Officially the Republic of Cuba, or in Spanish, República de Cuba, the nation is comprised of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. To the north of Cuba lies the United States; the Bahamas are to the northeast, México to the west, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica to the south, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are to the southeast.
Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, and with over 11 million inhabitants.
Cuba is undergoing a transition into a market, entrepreneurial economy under the Presidency of Raul Castro. With this transition, the cinema industry is also undergoing great changes. The state mandated organization, Icaic, which has been running the cinema industry, is now under scrutiny. New legislation concerning the film industry is slowly underway as a result of discussions ongoing within the film community. Hopefully the establishment of diplomatic relations will the U.S. last October will propel changes, though without lifting the embargo, it may not.
History of Cinema of Cuba
Cuba’s elite has always stayed in touch with the latest in culture as it developed in Europe during the Spanish colonial era. Cuba’s tradition of cinema dates back to 1897 when the Lumiére Brothers representative from France stopped in Havana to show their films on a tour of the Antilles Islands, México, Venezuela, and the Guineas. Cuba’s particular style of cinema, called the “Cinema of the Greater Antilles”, evolved from the theater of melodrama and comedy and from the radio dramas of Felix B. Caignet, all of which formed the popular melodramas and comedies we still see today.
Mexican coproductions and U.S. filmmakers escaping the monopolistic Edison came to Cuba as well as to California in the early days of film. Federico Garcia Lorca arrived in Cuba in 1930 with a screenplay, “Voyage of the Moon”, and a print of “Un Chien Andalou” hoping to break from the Paris-Berlin monopoly, but his plans never took shape. Many films from Spain, México, Argentina and Uruguay also played in Cuba. Some leading Cuban actors had a strong presence in México and Argentina. Musicians such as Ernesto Lecuona, Bola de Nieve and Rita Montaner performed in movies in several countries.
Cuba, along with Mexico and Argentina, has the most developed cinema culture of Latin America. At its most prosperous, it had the third largest number of theaters in Latin America until the special period when Ussr withdrew its support. Today it has 39 movie theaters. Three of them, including the Yara in Havana, had been built especially for 3D in the 1950s.
Movie going is one of Cuba’s national pastimes, rating perhaps as high as baseball. The average Cuban sees one and a half films a year. However, the lack of international appeal for most of its comedies and melodramas has held its international growth in check up to today. That is now changing.
The international nature of Cuban cinema was consciously defined after the Revolution of 1959 when the Institute for Cuban Art and Industry Cinematography (Icaic) was created by Fidel Castro and entrusted to his university classmate, Alfredo Guevara. The law creating Icaic was incorporated into the Cuban Constitution itself just three months after the Revolution and was an important part of the Nuevo Cine Latinoamerico, a movement throughout Latin America as the Latin American nations threw off their dictatorships. Film, according to this law, is "the most powerful and provocative form of artistic expression, and the most direct and widespread vehicle for education and bringing ideas to the public.”
Cinema was created for theatrical exhibition, for individuals and groups to share in smaller collectives, and for television.
The law ordaining Icaic to control every cinematographic activity created no further rules about financing, about submitting, reading and approving project proposals or regarding any required time frames. Icaic functions very internally with no outside surveillance.
Actually it is possible to make films without Icaic participation, the point is that without Icaic a film cannot get national distribution.
Over the past decade Icaic has loosened its monopolistic administration. Every sector and every level of cinema is discussing the concept of a new Law of Cinema with the government’s interest in formalizing as law a more inclusive infrastructure with more transparent rules and regulations.
Under the leadership of Raul Castro, the island has been undergoing a gradual economic reform process allowing entrepreneurs to license their own businesses after decades of state monopoly. The measures include the authorization of self-employment in more than 200 small trades and activities. According to the government, there are currently 442,000 registered as “self-employed”. The Castro administration hopes for this emerging sector to absorb over a million state workers to be laid off in the coming years.[ii]
In October 2014, the state closed down many private cinemas which had emerged avowing to the love of cinema of the people. Many were 3D “salons” in homes or in separate rooms in restaurants. Authorities pressed for "order, discipline and obedience" in the growing small business sector. Needless to say, the films shown were pirated and not licensed by the rights holders. Nor was there ever any official licensing to privately owned theaters (yet).
However, these could provide a good source of taxation. It needs to be decided what shall be taxed, how tax monies should be apportioned for film funding, film education, what tax incentives the government might offer, how distribution will be subsidized, how archives may be maintained and presented, how to regulate screenings, dvd, TV and online platforms, what cash incentives might bring in production from the outside, what joint ventures within the Caribbean might be developed and how Icaic is approaching and incorporating the changing environment. The Director of Icaic, Robert Smith de Castro. is facing more challenges than its previous longtime Director, Alfredo Guevera, ever faced when the government provided everything. Now it must find answers from its neighbors and its own internal producers and procedures.
In general, funding a film, renting equipment and shooting in Cuba all need to be approved by Icaic. This has changed somewhat as other players have come to take a role, like Rtv Commercial, which is in fact the production company of Cuban National Television.
Rtv Commercial coproduced the newest Cuban hit, “Conducta” (“Behavior”) with Icaic. It premiered at Ficg 2014 (Guadalajara International Film Festival) and played at Tiff 2014 and other festivals such as the Málaga Spanish Film Festival 2014 where it won five awards.
New Developments in Cuban Cinema
In 2014 there were 14 productions and coproductions made, compared to seven in 2009 and 4 in 2000 according to FnCl and Ocal, databases of Latin American film.
At Cannes’ Cinema du Monde in May 2014 and in San Sebastian’s Coproduction Forum, “ August” (“Agosto”) was one of 15 projects selected to be seen and discussed by the international community of sales, distribution and financial executives. Directed by Armando Capó Ramos and produced by La Feria Producciones’ Marcella Esquivel, it is a coproduction between Costa Rica and Cuba. It will shoot next year in Havana and is now raising funds through crowdfunding. Also featured among the 15 in San Sebastian was “Wolfdog” (“Hombre entre perro y lobo”) directed by Irene Gutiérrez and produced by El Viaje Films, a Spain-Cuba coproduction.
Seeking modes of financing outside of government funding began in 2002 with the Festival of New Filmmakers showcasing projects was created by young people outside the Icaic system. As a result of the 2002 event, five years later, a funding mechanism called Hacienda Cine was created by pulling productions from Icaic Cuban television into centers and foundations that have other areas for audiovisual production. Pitch sessions for each selected entity were set up. The prize for production services worth 20,000 Convertible Cuban Pesos (equivalent to Us $20,000) was set up by Icaic Production. There are currently also smaller groups creating smaller formats, scientific or otherwise who are fomenting alternative forms of financing as well.
Lia Rodriguez Nieto is an attorney who was mentored by and worked fourteen years, until his death, with Camilo Vives, Icaic’s head of production, first as an attorney and then as a producer. She has now taken charge of the industry section at the Havana Film Festival which Vives began in 2009. She and Antonio López, recently produced a Cuba-Panama-France coproduction “ El Acompañante” (“The Companion”) directed by Pavel Giroud. She states that over the last five to seven years, private (not state institutional) productions have co-existed with institutional production. However, it would be important for independent producers to have a more regulated and confident relationship with Icaic in a more normalized fashion in order to have easier access to filming permits, forms of financing, banking relations, coproduction treaties, and a number of other elements which are essential to film production.
Rebeca Chávez is a director and a member of one of the groups pushing for a new cinema law which will, in principle, establish a new system incorporating the democratic participation of all people in the business, including techs, writers, directors, producers, actors, etc. and where all will have a democratically designed access to funds. In1984 she began her career as documentary director and her work has been given different national and international awards. She is the second woman in Cuba who has made feature films. She has taught several seminars on theory and practice of documentary cinema and on the Cuban experience in the genre in different institutions in the United States, Puerto Rico, England and Spain. She has worked as advisor for scripts of documentaries and feature films.
It is most important that the state has the will to make these changes, and it has stated it is open to changing the laws. Omar González who succeeded Alfredo Guevara as the head of the Icaic was replaced in 2013 by 30 year Icaic employee Roberto Smith de Castro who is now faced with reorganizing Icaic and implementing new laws which are yet to be formulated. He is considered to be a patient and attentive man who listens and will work to incorporate the diverse opinions into a new working reality.
The son of the famed director Daniel Diaz Torres whose controversial film “Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas” (“Alice in the City of Wonders”) in 1991 was so critical of the bureaucracy of the government at the time of the Soviet collapse that it caused the resignation of Icaic’s director Espinosa, independent producer Daniel Diaz Ravelo points out that the independent producer is neither legal nor illegal but exists in a sort of limbo, free to produce whatever he or she wants but needing legal sanctions to access necessary permits, equipment, etc. And a filmmaker has no bank account so fiscal responsibility is difficult. One must get a certificate from Icaic but there is no registration rule on how this is to be done.
And it gets more complicated. It is difficult to raise a Us$400,000 budget without networking with filmmakers from other countries and yet travel is not easy for Cubans. They can travel -- Cuba no longer has a problem with that -– but often they cannot get the visa required from the country they want or need to travel to. Daniel’s father had a problem in traveling to find financing for his last film, “La Pelicula de Ana” (“Ana's Movie”), from former producers of his films. It did receive some funding from Icaic and from former funding friend, Icestorm in Germany, and a loan from Ibermedia. Unfortunately Daniel Diaz Torres, Sr. recently died an early death and did not see the fruits of his labor in the 2013 Havana premiere.
The new generation today in Cuba is highly independent; it knows that diversity of film subjects and of filmmakers is key to Cuban cinema today and it is finding diverse sources of financing and distribution. It needs more information as well because everything depends upon contacts. Cineastes traveling to Cuba will find a vibrant group open to coproducing.
2015 marks the eighth year of the Havana Film Festival’s Works in Progress. The Post Production Award, Nuestra América Primera Copia, is an international competition for films from Latin America and from Cuba, with no restrictions; films can be produced by Icaic or independently. For example, in 2013 awards went to four films, one from Chile, “I’m Not Lorena” (“No Soy Lorena”), which premiered at Tiff 2014; one from Argentina, “La Salada”, which premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival 2014 and Tiff 2014; and two from Cuba -- one Icaic film, “His Wedding Dress” (“Vestido de novia”), and the independent, “Venice” which was also Tiff 2014.
Thanks to an initiative by La Muestra, a group of Cuban production companies (including several independent ones), once a year support is awarded to four or five projects by young filmmakers. The independent film “Melaza” by Carlos Lechuga with the 5ta Avenida Productions premiered on October 3, 2013.
Rubén Padrón Astorga, writing for On Cuba [iii], November-December 2013 [1] writes:
The best prospects for our cinema today emerged like an earthquake in late April of this year, when Kiki Álvarez, the director of “Jirafas”, “La ola” and “Marina” and “Venezia”, initiated a debate on the problems that the country has with two vital filmmaking processes (production and distribution). Close to 60 audiovisual makers responded with a meeting where they formed a Filmmakers Committee to represent the rest of the country’s professionals.
Soon after its creation, the Committee announced that its objectives included ensuring the active participation of Cuban filmmakers in every decision that was made about [our] cinema, and protecting and developing its production at the industrial and independent levels. At this time, they are working together with Icaic and the Ministry of Culture to pass a decree-law defining the autonomous audiovisual creator, which would legitimize filmmakers as a legal concept, with full rights to exercise their profession. However, the decree-law, which was drafted seven years ago and ratified by the most recent Uneac Congress, was rewritten by the Filmmakers Committee so that it is not limited to recognizing audiovisual practice as individual work, but as collective, and so that it legally protects independent producers.
This committee, together with the so-called Ministry of Culture Temporary Working Group for the Transformation of Icaic, is actively participating in drawing up a diagnosis of Cuban cinema’s problems, which will be followed with the drafting of policies and actions for solving those problems. This step will clear the way for the long-term creation of a comprehensive film law. This law, which would involve widening the scope of the law passed in 1959 for Icaic’s founding, or drafting a new one, would include the creation of a film commission that would support production and make it viable; a promotion fund that would be governed by an arts council, and to which all independent and institutional artists could aspire; financial incentives that would promote the support of private and state companies and sponsors; and a general legal framework that conceives of cinema systemically, inspired by the useful experiences that have taken place in other countries in the region, such as Colombia, Argentina, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.
A convocation of cinema directors was held May 4, 2013 in Strawberry and Chocolate Cultural Center, Havana to address the need to participate in all plans and activities planned for Cuban cinema. The meeting chose a working group composed of Enrique Kiki Álvarez, Enrique Colina, Rebeca Chávez Lourdes de los Santos, Daniel Diaz Ravelo, Pavel Giroud, Magda González Grau, Inti Herrera, Senel Paz, Fernando Perez, Manuel Perez and Pedro L. Rodríguez.
The main objective of this group is to represent the filmmakers at all levels and events, promote and ensure the active participation of the same in all decisions and projects that relate to Cuban cinema, and strive for the protection and development of these arts and industries and their makers, which is our right and duty as protagonists of this art. At its first meeting, the group reached the following conclusions and agreements (verbatim):
1 -. We recognize the Cuban Film Institute and the Film Industry (Icaic) as the rector of the Cuban film industry state agency; born with the revolution and its long history is a legacy that belongs to all filmmakers. At the same time, we believe that the problems and projections of Cuban cinema today do not concern only the Icaic, but also other institutions and institutional groups or independently involved in their production, without whose help and commitment is not possible to achieve meaningful and lasting solutions. For that reason, its reorganization and promotion can not be done only in the context of this organism.
2 -. We understand the Cuban film produced through institutional, independent mechanisms, co-production with third or mixed formulas, and as filmmakers to all creators, technicians and Cuban specialists of these arts and industries that do their work inside or outside the institutions , whatever they may be aesthetic, content or affinity group. Consequently, it is imperative the adoption of Decree Law Media Creator recognition. This decree should be enriched with all additional legal supplements necessary.
3 -. We consider essential enacting a Film Law, whose production and given all participate and to be the legal body to order and protect the artistic and economic activity in the country.
4 -. We consider it important to study and implement a Film Development Fund, to which all authors in accessing equal rights and conditions, and open call to an independent jury whose selection parameter is the quality and feasibility of the whole project.
5 -. At this stage, the filmmakers give priority to the organization and remodeling of the methods of production and realization of works, the concept that these are, first and last instance being essentially the way we express ourselves and connect with the public. Similarly, we propose a systemic boost our activity covering the organization and remodeling of the forms of production, distribution, exhibition and national and international projection of Cuban cinema.
6 -. Start work, reviewing and updating the document "Proposals for a renewal of Cuban cinema", adopted at the Seventh Congress of the Uneac in 2008. As progress is made, they will be sharing all the proposals with the filmmakers.
7 -. Exchanging proposals and views with the State Commission working on the development of proposals for the transformation of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry.
8 -. To express our deep concern for all matters concerning international relations and Cuban cinema projection, which was a revolutionary vanguard movement in the Latin American and global context. We strive for a quick recovery and exchange relationships with filmmakers from Latin America and the world, and the continuity of the Festival of New Latin American Cinema, in its next edition turns 35.
9 -. This representation group performed their work in ongoing dialogue and communication with all filmmakers through regular meetings, which shall have the power to ratify or renew the group members, making decisions of common interest and to identify priorities and lines of job.
Filmmakers Group in the Assembly elected Cuban Filmmakers Saturday May 4 at the Centro Cultural Fresa y Chocolate, after its first meeting on May 8.
Havana, May 8, 2013. This was a verbatim article in Cubarte Magazine. [iv]
Festivals/ Markets
In 1979 Icaic created the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema aka Havana Film Festival as a way to disseminate its ethical convictions about developing film that was nonconformist, irreverent, critical of social injustice and rebellious against the pressures of the market across the continent. The event hosted over 600 filmmakers from Latin America and had as presidents of juries Gabriel García Márquez (Fiction ) and Santiago Álvarez (Documentaries and Cartoons.) The Coral Grand Prize winners were Geraldo Sarno (“Colonel Delmiro Gouveia”, Brazil) and Sergio Giral (“Maluala”, Cuba), in Fiction, Patricio Guzmán (“The Battle of Chile: the Struggle a People Without Arms”, Chile), Documentary, and Juan Padrón (“Elpidio Valdés”, Cuba) in Animation.
However, the contradiction of Icaic’s exercising a central control over maverick innovations is obvious since it controlled the production criteria and the right to decide what type of film was convenient to make and what was not.
An official competition of unpublished scripts for feature films is held by International Festival of New Latin American Cinema for authors from Latin America and the Caribbean for original scripts (no literary adaptations), written in Spanish and with Latin American themes. Scripts whose production rights have been transferred to third parties are not eligible. [v]
Icaic also supports the Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre de Humberto Solas[vi] for low budget films and Festival Internacional de Documentales “Santiago Alvarez in Memoriam”[vii].
Muestra Joven is a festival for Cuban youth with premiere fiction, doc and animated films. It has collateral activities of debates about the films in the festivals, master classes, meetings about contemporary issues and themes in the audiovisual community, workshps and onferences, poster exhibitions and homages.
In April 2014 the Mediateque of Women Directors, based in Cuba formally affiliated with The Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in creating the the Caribbean Film Market. The project is also in association with The Foundation for Global Democracy and Development of the Dominican Republic, The Association for The Development of Art and Commercial Cinematography of Guadalupe, The Foundation for New Latinamerican Cinema, The Regional and International Film Festival of Guadalupe and the Mediateque of Women Directors.
Education
Icaic was in charge of training and promotion of talented young people not only in cinema but in other arts like music for which it created the Experimental Sound Group.
Isa
Most of the new independent filmmakers are young graduates of the Higher Art Institute’s (Isa) Faculty of Audiovisual Communication Media and its provincial affiliates. The University of Arts of Cuba - (Isa), Instituto Superior de Arte - was established on September 1, 1976 by the Cuban government as a school for the arts. Its original structure had three schools: Music, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts. At present the Isa has four schools, the previous three and the one for Arts and Audiovisual Communication Media. There are also four teaching schools in the provinces, one in Camagüey, two in Holguín and one in Santiago de Cuba. Isa offers pre-degree and post-degree courses, as well as a wide spectrum of brief and extension courses, including preparation for Cuban and foreign professors for a degree of Doctor on Sciences in Art. Predegree education has increased to five careers: Music, Visual Arts, Theatre Arts, Dance Arts and Arts and Audiovisual Communication Media. In 1996, the Isa established the National Award of Artistic Teaching, conceived for recognizing a lifework devoted to arts teaching.
Eictv
Eictv, the International School of Cinema and Television was founded December 15, 1986 at the Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana with the support of then-President Fidel Castro on the initiative of Latin American cultural figures such as Argentine director, “Father of the New Latin American Cinema”, Fernando Birri, Julio and Gabo and Colombian Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez who donated his prize money to establish the school.. It is located in San Antonio de los Baños near Havana, on land donated by the Cuban government.
Hundreds of young students from all over Latin America have studied direction, script, photography and edition. Since its founding , 810 students have graduated and it has become one of the region’s most important and well-grounded cultural projects.
Students pay 15,000 euros (about $19,700) to attend for the full three-year program. The fee includes food, lodging and equipment. Tuition income accounts for just 15 percent of the school's budget. Funding comes from international agencies such as Ibermedia; countries including Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Panama; and regional organizations like the Alba alliance of leftist Latin American nations.
For the past eight years, Nuevas Miradas, organized by the Eictv Production Department has held its presentations at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema for bringing new projects to the attention of international professionals.
Also in the late 1980s, Cuba created the Third World Film School to train students from various third world countries in the art of filmmaking.
Film Funding
Icaic has been the only body to fund films. How the selection of what films would receive funding has never been a public matter.
There are no instruments for private companies or individuals to contribute to film production in Cuba yet. There are however, international funds that may help finance films, such as Hubert Bals Fund from The Netherlands, World Cinema Fund from Germany, Fonds Sud from France, the Norwegian Fund, Sor Fond, Acp, etc. The best actively kept lists are found in Ocal[viii] and Online Film Financing [ix].
Coproduction with Cuba
As early as 1948 coproductions were common between Cuba and México. During the 70s and 80s Russian coproductions included Mikhail Kalatozov’s classic 1964 film “I Am Cuba” (“Soy Cuba”). Spain has played a role in coproducing Latin American and Cuban films since the 30s but in the 1990s it began to invest more heavily. In 1997 Ibermedia was created for the purpose of promoting coproduction between Spain and Latin American countries. Cuba is one of the fourteen countries involved in this organization.
In addition, Cuba has bilateral coproduction treaties with Italy, Canada, Venezuela, Spain and Chile. So far nothing has resulted from the Chile accord.
Two examples of Cuban coproduced films are Humberto Solás’ 1982 film “Cecilia” (Cuba - Spain) and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s 1992 Academy Award-nominated “Strawberry and Chocolate” (“Fresa y chocolate”) (Cuba – México – Spain - U.S.).
In September 2013 at San Sebastian International Film Festival’s 2nd Europe-Latin America Coproduction Forum, “The Companion”/ "El Acompañante" won the Best Project Award sponsored by Spain’s Audiovisual Producers’ Rights Management Association Egeda and carrying a 10,000 Euros (Us$13,000) cash award.
This is the third feature of Giroud after “The Silly Age” and “Omerta”. It is a coproduction of Cuba, Venezuela’s NativaPro Cinematográfica and France’s Tu Vas Voir owned by Edgard Tenembaum who produced Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries”. The film also obtained the collaboration of Programa Ibermedia and was selected for Cinemas du Monde.
Pavel Giroud is one of the most promising of young Cuban filmmakers today. “The Companion”/ "El Acompañante" is set in 1988 Havana and tells the story of the friendship which develops between Horacio Romero, a Cuban boxer who fails a drug test and a defiant patient at an AIDS center under military rule for whom Romero must serve as a warden or, in Cuban government parlance, a “companion”. Playing the role of Horacio is Yotuel Romero (Latin Grammy Award-winning and founding member of Cuban rap group Orishas). Orishas is one of the world’s most critically hailed Latin-urban artists. The co-protagonist is Cuban actor Armando Miguel Gómez who has received international recognition for his role in the recent films "Behavior”/ “Conducta" and “Melaza”. International sales are handled by the Brazil-based international sales agency, Habanero, which, coincidently is owned by Cuban Alfredo Calvino and Brazilian Patricial Martin who handle such outstanding films as “Juan on the Dead”, Carlos Lechuga’s “Melaza”, Sebastian Cordero’s “Pescador” and Francisco Franco’s “Last Call”. Habanero also sponsors distribution awards at Ficg and Ventana Sur’s Primer Corte, a showcase for pictures in post-production. All the updated information about these films, including festivals and awards is available at: www.habanerofilmsales.com.
Case Study of the Producer, Inti Hererra
Cuba’s first English language film, “Eating the Sun”, a coproduction with Canada, is being produced by Inti Herrera who also is heading the new night spot of avant garde popular entertainment, La Fabrica de Arte Cubano.
Inti Herrera, formerly of 5ta Avenida Productions and I first met in 2003 through the international sales agent Alfredo Calvino whose then-company Latinofusion was selling Inti’s first fiction feature, “Viva Cuba”, a road movie of two kids traveling across Cuba in search of one’s father.
Inti graduated Eictv and worked for a long time as an independent producer of documentaries.
In 2009, when Camilo Vives, Icaic’s head of production created the Industry Sector of the Havana Film Festival Inti became its director and managed it until 2010. In 2010 when he was still running the industry space he invited me to speak about New Media, and I spoke of Peter Broderick who was then invited to do a workshop at Eictv.
As an executive producer, Inti must raise financing from the development through the completion of film projects. Each project is of course different from the last. He and Alejandro Brugués were originally discussing working on a different sort of film, “Melaza”, but put it on hold and in 2010 and 2011 he worked instead on the commercial film, “Juan of the Dead”, which is the most exhibited film of Cuba.
“Juan of the Dead”, Cuba’s first truly independent movie, a zombie horror comedy was coproduced in 2011 by Spain's La Zanfoña Producciones, where it was post-produced, and Cuba's first independent production company Producciones de la 5ta Avenida which also produced “Personal Belongings” in 2006 and “Melaza” in 2012. The film was written and directed by Alejandro Brugués (“Personal Belongings”). It was executive produced by Inti Herrera, Claudia Calviño and Gervasio Iglesias.
The film was represented for international sales by Latinofusion, a Guadalajara based company sponsored by Universidad de Guadalajara and managed by Alfredo Calvino. It was shown in more than 50 festivals worldwide, winning 10 audience awards and the Spanish Film Academy’s Goya Award of the for best Iberoamerican film. It sold to 42 territories.
“Juan of the Dead” distributors:
Argentina (Condor/ Mirada), Bolivia (Londra Films P&D), Brazil (Imovision), Canada (A-z Films), Chile (Arcadia Films), Germany (Pandastorm Pictures), Hong Kong and Macau (Sundream Motion Pictures), Hungary (Ads Service), Italy ( Moviemax Media Group Spa), Japan (Fine Films), Latin American Pay TV (HBO Latin America), México and Central America (Canana), Netherlands (Filmfreak), Norway (Tromso International Film Festival), Puerto Rico (Wiesner), Russia and Cis territories (Cinema Prestige), Spain (Avalon), Switzerland (Ascot Elite), U.K and Ireland (Metrodome), U.S.(Theatrical Distributor Outsider Pictures, all other rights Focus World)
Today Inti is working with a new director, Alfredo Ureta on the Canadian coproduction and the first Cuban film in English. “Eating the Sun” is about a Canadian-Cuban couple who decides to live in Cuba. Before settling in they make a tour of the country and become involved in a psychological thriller. The Canadian producer is Gordon Weiske of Canwood Entertainment. They are discussing the male lead role with Kris Holden-Ried. The goal is to find new markets for this film, markets which Cuba has not targeted before.
Top 10 Films of Cuba is a selection of my own:
1. “Memorias del subdesarrollo” (“Memories of Underdevelopment”) (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)
2. “Lucia” (Humberto Solás, 1969)
3. “Vampiros en La Habana” (“Vampires in Havana”) (Juan Padrón, 1983)
4. “Soy Cuba” (“I am Cuba”) ( Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)
5. “La bella del Alhambra” (“The beauty of the Alhambra”) (Enrique Pineda Barnet, 1989)
6. “Fresa y Chocolate” (“Strawberry and Chocolate”) (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, 1993)
7. “Lista de Espera” (“The waiting list”) (Juan Carlos Tabío, 2000)
8. “Havana Suite” (“Suite Havana”) (Fernando Pérez, 2003)
9. “Juan of the Dead” (Alejandro Brugués, 2011)
10. “Melaza” (Carlos Lechuga, 2013)
[1] http://www.oncubamagazine.com/magazine/for-independent-and-industrial-cuban-cinema/
Cubacine. El Portal del Cine Cubano. http://www.cubacine.cu/index.html.
[ii] http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=99785#sthash.yCWbyCcU.dpuf
[iii] http://oncubamagazine.com/magazine-articles/for-independent-and-industrial-cuban-cinema/ Cubacine. El Portal del Cine Cubano. http://www.cubacine.cu/index.html.
[iv] http://www.cubarte.cult.cu/periodico/opinion/cineastas-cubanos-por-el-cine-cubano/24423.html
[v] http://www.cinelatinoamericano.org/ocal/direct.aspx?cod=1234
[vi] www.festivalcinepobre.org , www.cubacine.cu/cinepobre
[vii] www.cubacine.cu/festivalsantiagoalvarez/index.html
[viii] http://www.cinelatinoamericano.org/ocal/directorios.aspx?cod=8&par=2
[ix] www.olffi.com/...
Alison Klayman wrote to say "I know you said at least two films, but I wanted specifically to alert you to the fact that my film "The 100 Years Show" is also playing in the Panorama Documental sections (same as Pj Letofsky's film). "The 100 Years Show" is about 100-year old Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera, and was produced with RatPac (Brett Ratner) Documentary Films. I'll be attending the festival too.
Alex Mallis wrote in to say: "Our short narrative, "La Noche buena" (the first American-directed since the embargo) is also screening at the festival.
Original Blog:
At least two films by American filmmakers will screen this year at the Havana Film Festival, whose official name is Festival de Cine Nuevo Latinamericano. As the Centerpiece Film, Bob Yari, producer of almost 50 films, will screen his second directed film “Papa” about Ernest Hemingway. It can be called “the first [official or legal] American film made in Havana in the last fifty years”, though underground films have been made (e.g., “Love & Suicide”). “Papa” is being sold at Afm by Elias Axume’s Premiere Entertainment.
Doc filmmaker Pj Letofsky will also be screening his film “ Tarkovsky: Time Within Time” which just premiered at the Sao Paolo Film Festival.
Many U.S. citizens are now interested in going to Havana. To give an in-depth look at Cuba’s film business, I am publishing a [long] chapter of what I hope will soon be published, my book on Iberoamerican film business. I will also be publishing another [shorter] interview here soon with Havana Film Festival Director, Ivan Giroud.
Cuba (Chapter Seven)
Officially the Republic of Cuba, or in Spanish, República de Cuba, the nation is comprised of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. To the north of Cuba lies the United States; the Bahamas are to the northeast, México to the west, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica to the south, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are to the southeast.
Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, and with over 11 million inhabitants.
Cuba is undergoing a transition into a market, entrepreneurial economy under the Presidency of Raul Castro. With this transition, the cinema industry is also undergoing great changes. The state mandated organization, Icaic, which has been running the cinema industry, is now under scrutiny. New legislation concerning the film industry is slowly underway as a result of discussions ongoing within the film community. Hopefully the establishment of diplomatic relations will the U.S. last October will propel changes, though without lifting the embargo, it may not.
History of Cinema of Cuba
Cuba’s elite has always stayed in touch with the latest in culture as it developed in Europe during the Spanish colonial era. Cuba’s tradition of cinema dates back to 1897 when the Lumiére Brothers representative from France stopped in Havana to show their films on a tour of the Antilles Islands, México, Venezuela, and the Guineas. Cuba’s particular style of cinema, called the “Cinema of the Greater Antilles”, evolved from the theater of melodrama and comedy and from the radio dramas of Felix B. Caignet, all of which formed the popular melodramas and comedies we still see today.
Mexican coproductions and U.S. filmmakers escaping the monopolistic Edison came to Cuba as well as to California in the early days of film. Federico Garcia Lorca arrived in Cuba in 1930 with a screenplay, “Voyage of the Moon”, and a print of “Un Chien Andalou” hoping to break from the Paris-Berlin monopoly, but his plans never took shape. Many films from Spain, México, Argentina and Uruguay also played in Cuba. Some leading Cuban actors had a strong presence in México and Argentina. Musicians such as Ernesto Lecuona, Bola de Nieve and Rita Montaner performed in movies in several countries.
Cuba, along with Mexico and Argentina, has the most developed cinema culture of Latin America. At its most prosperous, it had the third largest number of theaters in Latin America until the special period when Ussr withdrew its support. Today it has 39 movie theaters. Three of them, including the Yara in Havana, had been built especially for 3D in the 1950s.
Movie going is one of Cuba’s national pastimes, rating perhaps as high as baseball. The average Cuban sees one and a half films a year. However, the lack of international appeal for most of its comedies and melodramas has held its international growth in check up to today. That is now changing.
The international nature of Cuban cinema was consciously defined after the Revolution of 1959 when the Institute for Cuban Art and Industry Cinematography (Icaic) was created by Fidel Castro and entrusted to his university classmate, Alfredo Guevara. The law creating Icaic was incorporated into the Cuban Constitution itself just three months after the Revolution and was an important part of the Nuevo Cine Latinoamerico, a movement throughout Latin America as the Latin American nations threw off their dictatorships. Film, according to this law, is "the most powerful and provocative form of artistic expression, and the most direct and widespread vehicle for education and bringing ideas to the public.”
Cinema was created for theatrical exhibition, for individuals and groups to share in smaller collectives, and for television.
The law ordaining Icaic to control every cinematographic activity created no further rules about financing, about submitting, reading and approving project proposals or regarding any required time frames. Icaic functions very internally with no outside surveillance.
Actually it is possible to make films without Icaic participation, the point is that without Icaic a film cannot get national distribution.
Over the past decade Icaic has loosened its monopolistic administration. Every sector and every level of cinema is discussing the concept of a new Law of Cinema with the government’s interest in formalizing as law a more inclusive infrastructure with more transparent rules and regulations.
Under the leadership of Raul Castro, the island has been undergoing a gradual economic reform process allowing entrepreneurs to license their own businesses after decades of state monopoly. The measures include the authorization of self-employment in more than 200 small trades and activities. According to the government, there are currently 442,000 registered as “self-employed”. The Castro administration hopes for this emerging sector to absorb over a million state workers to be laid off in the coming years.[ii]
In October 2014, the state closed down many private cinemas which had emerged avowing to the love of cinema of the people. Many were 3D “salons” in homes or in separate rooms in restaurants. Authorities pressed for "order, discipline and obedience" in the growing small business sector. Needless to say, the films shown were pirated and not licensed by the rights holders. Nor was there ever any official licensing to privately owned theaters (yet).
However, these could provide a good source of taxation. It needs to be decided what shall be taxed, how tax monies should be apportioned for film funding, film education, what tax incentives the government might offer, how distribution will be subsidized, how archives may be maintained and presented, how to regulate screenings, dvd, TV and online platforms, what cash incentives might bring in production from the outside, what joint ventures within the Caribbean might be developed and how Icaic is approaching and incorporating the changing environment. The Director of Icaic, Robert Smith de Castro. is facing more challenges than its previous longtime Director, Alfredo Guevera, ever faced when the government provided everything. Now it must find answers from its neighbors and its own internal producers and procedures.
In general, funding a film, renting equipment and shooting in Cuba all need to be approved by Icaic. This has changed somewhat as other players have come to take a role, like Rtv Commercial, which is in fact the production company of Cuban National Television.
Rtv Commercial coproduced the newest Cuban hit, “Conducta” (“Behavior”) with Icaic. It premiered at Ficg 2014 (Guadalajara International Film Festival) and played at Tiff 2014 and other festivals such as the Málaga Spanish Film Festival 2014 where it won five awards.
New Developments in Cuban Cinema
In 2014 there were 14 productions and coproductions made, compared to seven in 2009 and 4 in 2000 according to FnCl and Ocal, databases of Latin American film.
At Cannes’ Cinema du Monde in May 2014 and in San Sebastian’s Coproduction Forum, “ August” (“Agosto”) was one of 15 projects selected to be seen and discussed by the international community of sales, distribution and financial executives. Directed by Armando Capó Ramos and produced by La Feria Producciones’ Marcella Esquivel, it is a coproduction between Costa Rica and Cuba. It will shoot next year in Havana and is now raising funds through crowdfunding. Also featured among the 15 in San Sebastian was “Wolfdog” (“Hombre entre perro y lobo”) directed by Irene Gutiérrez and produced by El Viaje Films, a Spain-Cuba coproduction.
Seeking modes of financing outside of government funding began in 2002 with the Festival of New Filmmakers showcasing projects was created by young people outside the Icaic system. As a result of the 2002 event, five years later, a funding mechanism called Hacienda Cine was created by pulling productions from Icaic Cuban television into centers and foundations that have other areas for audiovisual production. Pitch sessions for each selected entity were set up. The prize for production services worth 20,000 Convertible Cuban Pesos (equivalent to Us $20,000) was set up by Icaic Production. There are currently also smaller groups creating smaller formats, scientific or otherwise who are fomenting alternative forms of financing as well.
Lia Rodriguez Nieto is an attorney who was mentored by and worked fourteen years, until his death, with Camilo Vives, Icaic’s head of production, first as an attorney and then as a producer. She has now taken charge of the industry section at the Havana Film Festival which Vives began in 2009. She and Antonio López, recently produced a Cuba-Panama-France coproduction “ El Acompañante” (“The Companion”) directed by Pavel Giroud. She states that over the last five to seven years, private (not state institutional) productions have co-existed with institutional production. However, it would be important for independent producers to have a more regulated and confident relationship with Icaic in a more normalized fashion in order to have easier access to filming permits, forms of financing, banking relations, coproduction treaties, and a number of other elements which are essential to film production.
Rebeca Chávez is a director and a member of one of the groups pushing for a new cinema law which will, in principle, establish a new system incorporating the democratic participation of all people in the business, including techs, writers, directors, producers, actors, etc. and where all will have a democratically designed access to funds. In1984 she began her career as documentary director and her work has been given different national and international awards. She is the second woman in Cuba who has made feature films. She has taught several seminars on theory and practice of documentary cinema and on the Cuban experience in the genre in different institutions in the United States, Puerto Rico, England and Spain. She has worked as advisor for scripts of documentaries and feature films.
It is most important that the state has the will to make these changes, and it has stated it is open to changing the laws. Omar González who succeeded Alfredo Guevara as the head of the Icaic was replaced in 2013 by 30 year Icaic employee Roberto Smith de Castro who is now faced with reorganizing Icaic and implementing new laws which are yet to be formulated. He is considered to be a patient and attentive man who listens and will work to incorporate the diverse opinions into a new working reality.
The son of the famed director Daniel Diaz Torres whose controversial film “Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas” (“Alice in the City of Wonders”) in 1991 was so critical of the bureaucracy of the government at the time of the Soviet collapse that it caused the resignation of Icaic’s director Espinosa, independent producer Daniel Diaz Ravelo points out that the independent producer is neither legal nor illegal but exists in a sort of limbo, free to produce whatever he or she wants but needing legal sanctions to access necessary permits, equipment, etc. And a filmmaker has no bank account so fiscal responsibility is difficult. One must get a certificate from Icaic but there is no registration rule on how this is to be done.
And it gets more complicated. It is difficult to raise a Us$400,000 budget without networking with filmmakers from other countries and yet travel is not easy for Cubans. They can travel -- Cuba no longer has a problem with that -– but often they cannot get the visa required from the country they want or need to travel to. Daniel’s father had a problem in traveling to find financing for his last film, “La Pelicula de Ana” (“Ana's Movie”), from former producers of his films. It did receive some funding from Icaic and from former funding friend, Icestorm in Germany, and a loan from Ibermedia. Unfortunately Daniel Diaz Torres, Sr. recently died an early death and did not see the fruits of his labor in the 2013 Havana premiere.
The new generation today in Cuba is highly independent; it knows that diversity of film subjects and of filmmakers is key to Cuban cinema today and it is finding diverse sources of financing and distribution. It needs more information as well because everything depends upon contacts. Cineastes traveling to Cuba will find a vibrant group open to coproducing.
2015 marks the eighth year of the Havana Film Festival’s Works in Progress. The Post Production Award, Nuestra América Primera Copia, is an international competition for films from Latin America and from Cuba, with no restrictions; films can be produced by Icaic or independently. For example, in 2013 awards went to four films, one from Chile, “I’m Not Lorena” (“No Soy Lorena”), which premiered at Tiff 2014; one from Argentina, “La Salada”, which premiered at the San Sebastian International Film Festival 2014 and Tiff 2014; and two from Cuba -- one Icaic film, “His Wedding Dress” (“Vestido de novia”), and the independent, “Venice” which was also Tiff 2014.
Thanks to an initiative by La Muestra, a group of Cuban production companies (including several independent ones), once a year support is awarded to four or five projects by young filmmakers. The independent film “Melaza” by Carlos Lechuga with the 5ta Avenida Productions premiered on October 3, 2013.
Rubén Padrón Astorga, writing for On Cuba [iii], November-December 2013 [1] writes:
The best prospects for our cinema today emerged like an earthquake in late April of this year, when Kiki Álvarez, the director of “Jirafas”, “La ola” and “Marina” and “Venezia”, initiated a debate on the problems that the country has with two vital filmmaking processes (production and distribution). Close to 60 audiovisual makers responded with a meeting where they formed a Filmmakers Committee to represent the rest of the country’s professionals.
Soon after its creation, the Committee announced that its objectives included ensuring the active participation of Cuban filmmakers in every decision that was made about [our] cinema, and protecting and developing its production at the industrial and independent levels. At this time, they are working together with Icaic and the Ministry of Culture to pass a decree-law defining the autonomous audiovisual creator, which would legitimize filmmakers as a legal concept, with full rights to exercise their profession. However, the decree-law, which was drafted seven years ago and ratified by the most recent Uneac Congress, was rewritten by the Filmmakers Committee so that it is not limited to recognizing audiovisual practice as individual work, but as collective, and so that it legally protects independent producers.
This committee, together with the so-called Ministry of Culture Temporary Working Group for the Transformation of Icaic, is actively participating in drawing up a diagnosis of Cuban cinema’s problems, which will be followed with the drafting of policies and actions for solving those problems. This step will clear the way for the long-term creation of a comprehensive film law. This law, which would involve widening the scope of the law passed in 1959 for Icaic’s founding, or drafting a new one, would include the creation of a film commission that would support production and make it viable; a promotion fund that would be governed by an arts council, and to which all independent and institutional artists could aspire; financial incentives that would promote the support of private and state companies and sponsors; and a general legal framework that conceives of cinema systemically, inspired by the useful experiences that have taken place in other countries in the region, such as Colombia, Argentina, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.
A convocation of cinema directors was held May 4, 2013 in Strawberry and Chocolate Cultural Center, Havana to address the need to participate in all plans and activities planned for Cuban cinema. The meeting chose a working group composed of Enrique Kiki Álvarez, Enrique Colina, Rebeca Chávez Lourdes de los Santos, Daniel Diaz Ravelo, Pavel Giroud, Magda González Grau, Inti Herrera, Senel Paz, Fernando Perez, Manuel Perez and Pedro L. Rodríguez.
The main objective of this group is to represent the filmmakers at all levels and events, promote and ensure the active participation of the same in all decisions and projects that relate to Cuban cinema, and strive for the protection and development of these arts and industries and their makers, which is our right and duty as protagonists of this art. At its first meeting, the group reached the following conclusions and agreements (verbatim):
1 -. We recognize the Cuban Film Institute and the Film Industry (Icaic) as the rector of the Cuban film industry state agency; born with the revolution and its long history is a legacy that belongs to all filmmakers. At the same time, we believe that the problems and projections of Cuban cinema today do not concern only the Icaic, but also other institutions and institutional groups or independently involved in their production, without whose help and commitment is not possible to achieve meaningful and lasting solutions. For that reason, its reorganization and promotion can not be done only in the context of this organism.
2 -. We understand the Cuban film produced through institutional, independent mechanisms, co-production with third or mixed formulas, and as filmmakers to all creators, technicians and Cuban specialists of these arts and industries that do their work inside or outside the institutions , whatever they may be aesthetic, content or affinity group. Consequently, it is imperative the adoption of Decree Law Media Creator recognition. This decree should be enriched with all additional legal supplements necessary.
3 -. We consider essential enacting a Film Law, whose production and given all participate and to be the legal body to order and protect the artistic and economic activity in the country.
4 -. We consider it important to study and implement a Film Development Fund, to which all authors in accessing equal rights and conditions, and open call to an independent jury whose selection parameter is the quality and feasibility of the whole project.
5 -. At this stage, the filmmakers give priority to the organization and remodeling of the methods of production and realization of works, the concept that these are, first and last instance being essentially the way we express ourselves and connect with the public. Similarly, we propose a systemic boost our activity covering the organization and remodeling of the forms of production, distribution, exhibition and national and international projection of Cuban cinema.
6 -. Start work, reviewing and updating the document "Proposals for a renewal of Cuban cinema", adopted at the Seventh Congress of the Uneac in 2008. As progress is made, they will be sharing all the proposals with the filmmakers.
7 -. Exchanging proposals and views with the State Commission working on the development of proposals for the transformation of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry.
8 -. To express our deep concern for all matters concerning international relations and Cuban cinema projection, which was a revolutionary vanguard movement in the Latin American and global context. We strive for a quick recovery and exchange relationships with filmmakers from Latin America and the world, and the continuity of the Festival of New Latin American Cinema, in its next edition turns 35.
9 -. This representation group performed their work in ongoing dialogue and communication with all filmmakers through regular meetings, which shall have the power to ratify or renew the group members, making decisions of common interest and to identify priorities and lines of job.
Filmmakers Group in the Assembly elected Cuban Filmmakers Saturday May 4 at the Centro Cultural Fresa y Chocolate, after its first meeting on May 8.
Havana, May 8, 2013. This was a verbatim article in Cubarte Magazine. [iv]
Festivals/ Markets
In 1979 Icaic created the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema aka Havana Film Festival as a way to disseminate its ethical convictions about developing film that was nonconformist, irreverent, critical of social injustice and rebellious against the pressures of the market across the continent. The event hosted over 600 filmmakers from Latin America and had as presidents of juries Gabriel García Márquez (Fiction ) and Santiago Álvarez (Documentaries and Cartoons.) The Coral Grand Prize winners were Geraldo Sarno (“Colonel Delmiro Gouveia”, Brazil) and Sergio Giral (“Maluala”, Cuba), in Fiction, Patricio Guzmán (“The Battle of Chile: the Struggle a People Without Arms”, Chile), Documentary, and Juan Padrón (“Elpidio Valdés”, Cuba) in Animation.
However, the contradiction of Icaic’s exercising a central control over maverick innovations is obvious since it controlled the production criteria and the right to decide what type of film was convenient to make and what was not.
An official competition of unpublished scripts for feature films is held by International Festival of New Latin American Cinema for authors from Latin America and the Caribbean for original scripts (no literary adaptations), written in Spanish and with Latin American themes. Scripts whose production rights have been transferred to third parties are not eligible. [v]
Icaic also supports the Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre de Humberto Solas[vi] for low budget films and Festival Internacional de Documentales “Santiago Alvarez in Memoriam”[vii].
Muestra Joven is a festival for Cuban youth with premiere fiction, doc and animated films. It has collateral activities of debates about the films in the festivals, master classes, meetings about contemporary issues and themes in the audiovisual community, workshps and onferences, poster exhibitions and homages.
In April 2014 the Mediateque of Women Directors, based in Cuba formally affiliated with The Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in creating the the Caribbean Film Market. The project is also in association with The Foundation for Global Democracy and Development of the Dominican Republic, The Association for The Development of Art and Commercial Cinematography of Guadalupe, The Foundation for New Latinamerican Cinema, The Regional and International Film Festival of Guadalupe and the Mediateque of Women Directors.
Education
Icaic was in charge of training and promotion of talented young people not only in cinema but in other arts like music for which it created the Experimental Sound Group.
Isa
Most of the new independent filmmakers are young graduates of the Higher Art Institute’s (Isa) Faculty of Audiovisual Communication Media and its provincial affiliates. The University of Arts of Cuba - (Isa), Instituto Superior de Arte - was established on September 1, 1976 by the Cuban government as a school for the arts. Its original structure had three schools: Music, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts. At present the Isa has four schools, the previous three and the one for Arts and Audiovisual Communication Media. There are also four teaching schools in the provinces, one in Camagüey, two in Holguín and one in Santiago de Cuba. Isa offers pre-degree and post-degree courses, as well as a wide spectrum of brief and extension courses, including preparation for Cuban and foreign professors for a degree of Doctor on Sciences in Art. Predegree education has increased to five careers: Music, Visual Arts, Theatre Arts, Dance Arts and Arts and Audiovisual Communication Media. In 1996, the Isa established the National Award of Artistic Teaching, conceived for recognizing a lifework devoted to arts teaching.
Eictv
Eictv, the International School of Cinema and Television was founded December 15, 1986 at the Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana with the support of then-President Fidel Castro on the initiative of Latin American cultural figures such as Argentine director, “Father of the New Latin American Cinema”, Fernando Birri, Julio and Gabo and Colombian Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez who donated his prize money to establish the school.. It is located in San Antonio de los Baños near Havana, on land donated by the Cuban government.
Hundreds of young students from all over Latin America have studied direction, script, photography and edition. Since its founding , 810 students have graduated and it has become one of the region’s most important and well-grounded cultural projects.
Students pay 15,000 euros (about $19,700) to attend for the full three-year program. The fee includes food, lodging and equipment. Tuition income accounts for just 15 percent of the school's budget. Funding comes from international agencies such as Ibermedia; countries including Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Panama; and regional organizations like the Alba alliance of leftist Latin American nations.
For the past eight years, Nuevas Miradas, organized by the Eictv Production Department has held its presentations at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema for bringing new projects to the attention of international professionals.
Also in the late 1980s, Cuba created the Third World Film School to train students from various third world countries in the art of filmmaking.
Film Funding
Icaic has been the only body to fund films. How the selection of what films would receive funding has never been a public matter.
There are no instruments for private companies or individuals to contribute to film production in Cuba yet. There are however, international funds that may help finance films, such as Hubert Bals Fund from The Netherlands, World Cinema Fund from Germany, Fonds Sud from France, the Norwegian Fund, Sor Fond, Acp, etc. The best actively kept lists are found in Ocal[viii] and Online Film Financing [ix].
Coproduction with Cuba
As early as 1948 coproductions were common between Cuba and México. During the 70s and 80s Russian coproductions included Mikhail Kalatozov’s classic 1964 film “I Am Cuba” (“Soy Cuba”). Spain has played a role in coproducing Latin American and Cuban films since the 30s but in the 1990s it began to invest more heavily. In 1997 Ibermedia was created for the purpose of promoting coproduction between Spain and Latin American countries. Cuba is one of the fourteen countries involved in this organization.
In addition, Cuba has bilateral coproduction treaties with Italy, Canada, Venezuela, Spain and Chile. So far nothing has resulted from the Chile accord.
Two examples of Cuban coproduced films are Humberto Solás’ 1982 film “Cecilia” (Cuba - Spain) and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s 1992 Academy Award-nominated “Strawberry and Chocolate” (“Fresa y chocolate”) (Cuba – México – Spain - U.S.).
In September 2013 at San Sebastian International Film Festival’s 2nd Europe-Latin America Coproduction Forum, “The Companion”/ "El Acompañante" won the Best Project Award sponsored by Spain’s Audiovisual Producers’ Rights Management Association Egeda and carrying a 10,000 Euros (Us$13,000) cash award.
This is the third feature of Giroud after “The Silly Age” and “Omerta”. It is a coproduction of Cuba, Venezuela’s NativaPro Cinematográfica and France’s Tu Vas Voir owned by Edgard Tenembaum who produced Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries”. The film also obtained the collaboration of Programa Ibermedia and was selected for Cinemas du Monde.
Pavel Giroud is one of the most promising of young Cuban filmmakers today. “The Companion”/ "El Acompañante" is set in 1988 Havana and tells the story of the friendship which develops between Horacio Romero, a Cuban boxer who fails a drug test and a defiant patient at an AIDS center under military rule for whom Romero must serve as a warden or, in Cuban government parlance, a “companion”. Playing the role of Horacio is Yotuel Romero (Latin Grammy Award-winning and founding member of Cuban rap group Orishas). Orishas is one of the world’s most critically hailed Latin-urban artists. The co-protagonist is Cuban actor Armando Miguel Gómez who has received international recognition for his role in the recent films "Behavior”/ “Conducta" and “Melaza”. International sales are handled by the Brazil-based international sales agency, Habanero, which, coincidently is owned by Cuban Alfredo Calvino and Brazilian Patricial Martin who handle such outstanding films as “Juan on the Dead”, Carlos Lechuga’s “Melaza”, Sebastian Cordero’s “Pescador” and Francisco Franco’s “Last Call”. Habanero also sponsors distribution awards at Ficg and Ventana Sur’s Primer Corte, a showcase for pictures in post-production. All the updated information about these films, including festivals and awards is available at: www.habanerofilmsales.com.
Case Study of the Producer, Inti Hererra
Cuba’s first English language film, “Eating the Sun”, a coproduction with Canada, is being produced by Inti Herrera who also is heading the new night spot of avant garde popular entertainment, La Fabrica de Arte Cubano.
Inti Herrera, formerly of 5ta Avenida Productions and I first met in 2003 through the international sales agent Alfredo Calvino whose then-company Latinofusion was selling Inti’s first fiction feature, “Viva Cuba”, a road movie of two kids traveling across Cuba in search of one’s father.
Inti graduated Eictv and worked for a long time as an independent producer of documentaries.
In 2009, when Camilo Vives, Icaic’s head of production created the Industry Sector of the Havana Film Festival Inti became its director and managed it until 2010. In 2010 when he was still running the industry space he invited me to speak about New Media, and I spoke of Peter Broderick who was then invited to do a workshop at Eictv.
As an executive producer, Inti must raise financing from the development through the completion of film projects. Each project is of course different from the last. He and Alejandro Brugués were originally discussing working on a different sort of film, “Melaza”, but put it on hold and in 2010 and 2011 he worked instead on the commercial film, “Juan of the Dead”, which is the most exhibited film of Cuba.
“Juan of the Dead”, Cuba’s first truly independent movie, a zombie horror comedy was coproduced in 2011 by Spain's La Zanfoña Producciones, where it was post-produced, and Cuba's first independent production company Producciones de la 5ta Avenida which also produced “Personal Belongings” in 2006 and “Melaza” in 2012. The film was written and directed by Alejandro Brugués (“Personal Belongings”). It was executive produced by Inti Herrera, Claudia Calviño and Gervasio Iglesias.
The film was represented for international sales by Latinofusion, a Guadalajara based company sponsored by Universidad de Guadalajara and managed by Alfredo Calvino. It was shown in more than 50 festivals worldwide, winning 10 audience awards and the Spanish Film Academy’s Goya Award of the for best Iberoamerican film. It sold to 42 territories.
“Juan of the Dead” distributors:
Argentina (Condor/ Mirada), Bolivia (Londra Films P&D), Brazil (Imovision), Canada (A-z Films), Chile (Arcadia Films), Germany (Pandastorm Pictures), Hong Kong and Macau (Sundream Motion Pictures), Hungary (Ads Service), Italy ( Moviemax Media Group Spa), Japan (Fine Films), Latin American Pay TV (HBO Latin America), México and Central America (Canana), Netherlands (Filmfreak), Norway (Tromso International Film Festival), Puerto Rico (Wiesner), Russia and Cis territories (Cinema Prestige), Spain (Avalon), Switzerland (Ascot Elite), U.K and Ireland (Metrodome), U.S.(Theatrical Distributor Outsider Pictures, all other rights Focus World)
Today Inti is working with a new director, Alfredo Ureta on the Canadian coproduction and the first Cuban film in English. “Eating the Sun” is about a Canadian-Cuban couple who decides to live in Cuba. Before settling in they make a tour of the country and become involved in a psychological thriller. The Canadian producer is Gordon Weiske of Canwood Entertainment. They are discussing the male lead role with Kris Holden-Ried. The goal is to find new markets for this film, markets which Cuba has not targeted before.
Top 10 Films of Cuba is a selection of my own:
1. “Memorias del subdesarrollo” (“Memories of Underdevelopment”) (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)
2. “Lucia” (Humberto Solás, 1969)
3. “Vampiros en La Habana” (“Vampires in Havana”) (Juan Padrón, 1983)
4. “Soy Cuba” (“I am Cuba”) ( Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)
5. “La bella del Alhambra” (“The beauty of the Alhambra”) (Enrique Pineda Barnet, 1989)
6. “Fresa y Chocolate” (“Strawberry and Chocolate”) (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, 1993)
7. “Lista de Espera” (“The waiting list”) (Juan Carlos Tabío, 2000)
8. “Havana Suite” (“Suite Havana”) (Fernando Pérez, 2003)
9. “Juan of the Dead” (Alejandro Brugués, 2011)
10. “Melaza” (Carlos Lechuga, 2013)
[1] http://www.oncubamagazine.com/magazine/for-independent-and-industrial-cuban-cinema/
Cubacine. El Portal del Cine Cubano. http://www.cubacine.cu/index.html.
[ii] http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=99785#sthash.yCWbyCcU.dpuf
[iii] http://oncubamagazine.com/magazine-articles/for-independent-and-industrial-cuban-cinema/ Cubacine. El Portal del Cine Cubano. http://www.cubacine.cu/index.html.
[iv] http://www.cubarte.cult.cu/periodico/opinion/cineastas-cubanos-por-el-cine-cubano/24423.html
[v] http://www.cinelatinoamericano.org/ocal/direct.aspx?cod=1234
[vi] www.festivalcinepobre.org , www.cubacine.cu/cinepobre
[vii] www.cubacine.cu/festivalsantiagoalvarez/index.html
[viii] http://www.cinelatinoamericano.org/ocal/directorios.aspx?cod=8&par=2
[ix] www.olffi.com/...
- 11/19/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
The trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) has unveiled its first selections for this year’s edition of the Festival with the announcement that ten classic Caribbean films will form part of the 2015 lineup.
These ten films will screen in a special sidebar to the main program in honor of the ttff’s tenth anniversary. The Festival takes place from September 15–29.
“Many people are unaware that there has been a Caribbean film industry for quite some time, or that almost every country in the region has produced feature films,” said Bruce Paddington, ttff Founder and Festival Director. “We are therefore very proud to present ten of the very best classic films from the Caribbean that will help one to appreciate and enjoy the rich diversity of the region.”
Comprising films from nine different countries, the sidebar ranges across the English, Spanish, French and Dutch-speaking sections of the region.
The lineup includes the Jamaican classic, "The Harder They Come," and "Bim," from T&T.
"Memories of Underdevelopment," the oldest film in the lineup, is from 1968, while the most recent, "Strawberry and Chocolate," was released in 1993. Both of those films hail from Cuba.
The full slate of films is as follows:
-"Memories of Underdevelopment" (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, 1968)
-"The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell," Jamaica, 1972)
-"Bim" (Hugh A. Robertson, Trinidad and Tobago, 1974)
-"One People" (Pim de la Parra, Suriname, 1976)
-"Man By the Shore" (Raoul Peck, Haiti, 1983)
-"Sugar Cane Alley" (Euzhan Palcy, Martinique, 1983)
-"One Way Ticket" (Agliberto Menéndez, Dominican Republic, 1988)
-"What Happened to Santiago" (Jacobo Morales, Puerto Rico, 1989)
-"Ava and Gabriel: A Love Story" (Felix de Rooy, Curaçao, 1990)
-"Strawberry and Chocolate" (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, Cuba, 1993)
In addition to screening in honor of the Festival’s tenth anniversary, the classics also screen in recognition of the launch of the Caribbean Film Database, an online resource which, in the first instance, will present information on over 600 independent feature-length films made in and about the Caribbean. The database is co-financed by the Acp Cultures+ Program, funded by the European Union and implemented by the Acp Group of States.
The rest of the lineup for the ttff/15 will be unveiled over the upcoming months. For more information about the Festival, visit http://ttfilmfestival.com.
These ten films will screen in a special sidebar to the main program in honor of the ttff’s tenth anniversary. The Festival takes place from September 15–29.
“Many people are unaware that there has been a Caribbean film industry for quite some time, or that almost every country in the region has produced feature films,” said Bruce Paddington, ttff Founder and Festival Director. “We are therefore very proud to present ten of the very best classic films from the Caribbean that will help one to appreciate and enjoy the rich diversity of the region.”
Comprising films from nine different countries, the sidebar ranges across the English, Spanish, French and Dutch-speaking sections of the region.
The lineup includes the Jamaican classic, "The Harder They Come," and "Bim," from T&T.
"Memories of Underdevelopment," the oldest film in the lineup, is from 1968, while the most recent, "Strawberry and Chocolate," was released in 1993. Both of those films hail from Cuba.
The full slate of films is as follows:
-"Memories of Underdevelopment" (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, 1968)
-"The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell," Jamaica, 1972)
-"Bim" (Hugh A. Robertson, Trinidad and Tobago, 1974)
-"One People" (Pim de la Parra, Suriname, 1976)
-"Man By the Shore" (Raoul Peck, Haiti, 1983)
-"Sugar Cane Alley" (Euzhan Palcy, Martinique, 1983)
-"One Way Ticket" (Agliberto Menéndez, Dominican Republic, 1988)
-"What Happened to Santiago" (Jacobo Morales, Puerto Rico, 1989)
-"Ava and Gabriel: A Love Story" (Felix de Rooy, Curaçao, 1990)
-"Strawberry and Chocolate" (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, Cuba, 1993)
In addition to screening in honor of the Festival’s tenth anniversary, the classics also screen in recognition of the launch of the Caribbean Film Database, an online resource which, in the first instance, will present information on over 600 independent feature-length films made in and about the Caribbean. The database is co-financed by the Acp Cultures+ Program, funded by the European Union and implemented by the Acp Group of States.
The rest of the lineup for the ttff/15 will be unveiled over the upcoming months. For more information about the Festival, visit http://ttfilmfestival.com.
- 7/11/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Top brass at the 2015 trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) said on Monday they have selected ten classic Caribbean films in the first programming wave of this year’s edition.
The films will screen in a sidebar at the ttff’s tenth anniversary outing, set to run from September 15–29.
“Many people are unaware that there has been a Caribbean film industry for quite some time, or that almost every country in the region has produced feature films,” said ttff founder and festival director Bruce Paddington.
“We are therefore very proud to present ten of the very best classic films from the Caribbean that will help one to appreciate and enjoy the rich diversity of the region.”
The sidebar covers multiple languages spoken across the region and features:
Memories Of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, 1968);
The Harder They Come (pictured, Perry Henzell, Jamaica, 1972);
Bim (Hugh A Robertson, Trinidad and Tobago, 1974);
One People (Pim de la Parra, Suriname, 1976);
Man...
The films will screen in a sidebar at the ttff’s tenth anniversary outing, set to run from September 15–29.
“Many people are unaware that there has been a Caribbean film industry for quite some time, or that almost every country in the region has produced feature films,” said ttff founder and festival director Bruce Paddington.
“We are therefore very proud to present ten of the very best classic films from the Caribbean that will help one to appreciate and enjoy the rich diversity of the region.”
The sidebar covers multiple languages spoken across the region and features:
Memories Of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, 1968);
The Harder They Come (pictured, Perry Henzell, Jamaica, 1972);
Bim (Hugh A Robertson, Trinidad and Tobago, 1974);
One People (Pim de la Parra, Suriname, 1976);
Man...
- 7/6/2015
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Le Chat Dans Le Sac
Written and Directed by Gilles Grouix
Canada, 1964
A movie that is difficult to find but well worth the effort, Le Chat Dans Le Sac captivates moviegoers through its hand held camera usage, John Coltrane soundtrack, twenty-something characters struggling with the world around them. You don’t have to be familiar with Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, a political movement sparked by the election of Jean Lesage in 1960, in order to understand the film. But there’s a good chance the movie will inspire you to follow up with some research to fully grasp the world these characters are living in. It was the Quiet Revolution that helped Quebec become the secularized Province we know it to be today, shifting the power from the Catholic Church to the provincial government. Le Chat Dans Le Sac tells the story of the Quiet Revolution through the romantic relationship of a moody,...
Written and Directed by Gilles Grouix
Canada, 1964
A movie that is difficult to find but well worth the effort, Le Chat Dans Le Sac captivates moviegoers through its hand held camera usage, John Coltrane soundtrack, twenty-something characters struggling with the world around them. You don’t have to be familiar with Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, a political movement sparked by the election of Jean Lesage in 1960, in order to understand the film. But there’s a good chance the movie will inspire you to follow up with some research to fully grasp the world these characters are living in. It was the Quiet Revolution that helped Quebec become the secularized Province we know it to be today, shifting the power from the Catholic Church to the provincial government. Le Chat Dans Le Sac tells the story of the Quiet Revolution through the romantic relationship of a moody,...
- 4/14/2015
- by Samantha Ladwig
- SoundOnSight
0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false
Balikbayan #1 Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III
Dear Danny,
How silly is it that, as cinephiles, our happiness is so bound up with the films we watch? My mood fluctuates at festivals, often based on what film I watched last. One recent morning exemplified this. You and I went to see the press screening of Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s new film, The Club. I was keen on this one as his last film, No (2012), was superb (I recall the mysterious Celluloid Liberation Front wrote on it for us from Cannes). Unfortunately, this film was entirely different, not just in style, but in its relationship to its subject matter, its characters, the world. Where No was invested in people, The Club takes on a very heavy topic with a level of disdain that left me feeling cold. The film is about a group of priests,...
Balikbayan #1 Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III
Dear Danny,
How silly is it that, as cinephiles, our happiness is so bound up with the films we watch? My mood fluctuates at festivals, often based on what film I watched last. One recent morning exemplified this. You and I went to see the press screening of Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s new film, The Club. I was keen on this one as his last film, No (2012), was superb (I recall the mysterious Celluloid Liberation Front wrote on it for us from Cannes). Unfortunately, this film was entirely different, not just in style, but in its relationship to its subject matter, its characters, the world. Where No was invested in people, The Club takes on a very heavy topic with a level of disdain that left me feeling cold. The film is about a group of priests,...
- 2/11/2015
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
Memories of Underdevelopment
Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Written by Edmundo Desnoes
1968, Cuba
A film directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea in 1968, Memories of Underdevelopment looks at imperial influence in Cuba during the Cold War. Imperial influences referring to the United States and Russia as both countries believed that Cuba was vulnerable due to its status as a developing nation. Because of the United States’ close proximity, Alea emphasized their capitalistic impact through the character, Sergio, an upper class writer who never quite lived out his passion, as he struggles to define who he is, what he loves, and where he is placed within his own country amidst its Revolution. Because Alea filmed this during a time of political turmoil, he mixed low budget, documentary footage of the revolution with a fictional narrative in order to distract those who had the power to ban it. Which is typical for Cuban cinema during the 1960s.
Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Written by Edmundo Desnoes
1968, Cuba
A film directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea in 1968, Memories of Underdevelopment looks at imperial influence in Cuba during the Cold War. Imperial influences referring to the United States and Russia as both countries believed that Cuba was vulnerable due to its status as a developing nation. Because of the United States’ close proximity, Alea emphasized their capitalistic impact through the character, Sergio, an upper class writer who never quite lived out his passion, as he struggles to define who he is, what he loves, and where he is placed within his own country amidst its Revolution. Because Alea filmed this during a time of political turmoil, he mixed low budget, documentary footage of the revolution with a fictional narrative in order to distract those who had the power to ban it. Which is typical for Cuban cinema during the 1960s.
- 7/10/2014
- by Samantha Ladwig
- SoundOnSight
All great debut features come from a place of true inspiration. For Diego Quemada-Diez, those places are dotted all over; with his knockout first film, The Golden Dream, which follows the lives of a group of teenagers as they embark on a mission from Guatemala to the U.S., the elements of his work can be traced back to the director’s influences (of which there are many) while also standing entirely on their own.
He sat down with HeyUGuys for a lengthy chat about the movie, and the political, social and deeply personal aspects that came to shape not only The Golden Dream, but his life.
Warning: this interview contains spoilers.
I found the film to be very powerful, but very sad as well. Did you have any inspirations? Were you thinking of other films while you were making this one?
I’ve been a cinephile all my life,...
He sat down with HeyUGuys for a lengthy chat about the movie, and the political, social and deeply personal aspects that came to shape not only The Golden Dream, but his life.
Warning: this interview contains spoilers.
I found the film to be very powerful, but very sad as well. Did you have any inspirations? Were you thinking of other films while you were making this one?
I’ve been a cinephile all my life,...
- 6/27/2014
- by Gary Green
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
After much media hoopla about "Vertigo" toppling "Citizen Kane" in its poll, Sight and Sound magazine have now released the full version of its once a decade 'Top 250 greatest films of all time' poll results via its website. The site also includes full on links showcasing Top Tens of the hundreds of film industry professionals who participated in the project.
For those who don't want to bother with the individual lists and to save you a bunch of clicking, below is a copy of the full 250 films that made the lists and how many votes they got to be considered for their positions:
1 - Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) [191 votes]
2 - Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) [157 votes]
3 - Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) [107 votes]
4 - La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939) [100 votes]
5 - Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) [93 votes]
6 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) [90 votes]
7 - The Searchers (Ford, 1956) [78 votes]
8 - Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) [68 votes]
9 - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer,...
For those who don't want to bother with the individual lists and to save you a bunch of clicking, below is a copy of the full 250 films that made the lists and how many votes they got to be considered for their positions:
1 - Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) [191 votes]
2 - Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) [157 votes]
3 - Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) [107 votes]
4 - La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939) [100 votes]
5 - Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) [93 votes]
6 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) [90 votes]
7 - The Searchers (Ford, 1956) [78 votes]
8 - Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) [68 votes]
9 - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer,...
- 8/18/2012
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
A must-see and recommended watch, I’ve embedded the film in full (with subtitles) below. The film is also available on Netflix, although not streaming. The 1976 Cuban film The Last Supper (La Ultima Cena), directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea from a screenplay penned by Alea and Maria Eugenia Haya, is based on a real life incident, which occurred in Cuba during the 1780’s. Alea, whose directorial efforts include the acclaimed films Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) and Death of a Bureaucrat (1966), was inspired by a footnote in Manuel Moreno Fraginals’ post-revolutionary historiography The Sugarmill, in which a plantation owner - on a Maundy Thursday (before Good...
- 7/31/2012
- by Vanessa Martinez
- ShadowAndAct
It seems like only yesterday that the American Film Institute released their 100 Years...100 Movies [1] list. Actually though, it was over 10 years ago when we first got our look at that "definitive" list of the 100 best American movies. They then did a ten year anniversary of it in 2007 with only minor adjustments and both years Citizen Kane held the number one place as the best American movie. Of course, the problem with those lists is that they only list American films. While Hollywood might be considered the epicenter of film, the art form itself spans the globe, way beyond American borders. That's why the Toronto International Film Festival came up with their Essential 100 movies. Created by merging lists made by Toronto Film Festival supporters along with another made by their programmers, these are supposed to be the 100 essential movies every cinephile must see. And it starts off with a bang as Citizen Kane has been toppled.
- 12/22/2010
- by Germain Lussier
- Slash Film
"Released in that mythical year of 1968, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment is, like its main character, both part of and apart from its time," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in the La Weekly. "While Argentine revolutionaries Fernando Ezequiel Solanas and Octavio Getino were penning guerrilla filmmaking manifesto 'Towards a Third Cinema' and Jean-Luc Godard was jettisoning mainstream production for an uncompromising foray into radical Marxism, Underdevelopment spoke the international language of political modernism (montage, found footage, self-reflexivity) in order to look back on an actually successful revolution in dejection and frustration. Redcat's pairing of this landmark of Latin American cinema with Miguel Coyula's unofficial sequel, Memories of Overdevelopment, highlights the enduring importance of the former and the avant-garde heritage sought and earned by the latter." Between Displacement and Nostalgia: Conflicted Memories of Cuba begins this evening at 6:30.
- 10/23/2010
- MUBI
This blog, Latin America in Sundance, will continue to be updated at least up to the day of the World Cinema round tables January 28 which Caroline Libresco inaugurated several years ago. The focus of this blog obviously will be the selection of Latin American films from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru. We shall see if any creates enough of a stir - or what I consider a stir - within my purview of buying and selling (the agents surely will discover the directors and other talent without my prompting) - for a longer span of my attention. The politics of the films also interest me as Latin America is such an integral part of the USA today.
Nalip has this to say about the current state of Latino programming: "... in Nalip's 11th year, this seems worse than slow: it appears that diversity is really on a backburner.
Nalip has this to say about the current state of Latino programming: "... in Nalip's 11th year, this seems worse than slow: it appears that diversity is really on a backburner.
- 1/26/2010
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
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