Cuban Cinema Development Fund: Encounters, disagreements and some stories - Ips Cuba

2019: Nuevos desafíos para los creadores y las instituciones culturales. Un cambio radical en el escenario cinematográfico cubano: se reconocen legalmente a los creadores audiovisuales y cinematográficos independientes y las productoras. La pieza clave en este conjunto de acciones es el Fondo de Fomento del Cine Cubano. En su primera convocatoria se inscriben 128 proyectos; llegan a concurso 120.

There is a previous story, little known, about the stubborn insistence of an increasingly numerous group of filmmakers for taking part in the definitions about the future cultural policy in the field of cinema.I remember the endless meetings, the months of discussions and learning.

How to do the analysis in the new realities and socio-economic restructuring that already started in Cuba?Review a brief chronology:

In the discussions of 1991 around the film Alicia in the town of Wonder, the filmmakers nucleated around the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematographic Industry (ICAIC) believed that the discussion on the issues of ideology should be faced in those moments when socialism fellfrom Eastern Europe and wanted to express their disagreement with conceptions born at an earlier time and that had eternalized and turned into a permanent norm.

That was the royal transcript under the controversy over the film by Daniel Díaz Torres, which generated an explosion of unsuspected levels without the growing dialogue deficit being resolved.

Propuesta para la renovación

In 2007, a “proposal for the renewal of Cuban cinema”, conceived as a possible work agenda, was presented at the Union of writers and artists.However, it did not happen from there.The postpositions and postponements of the debate on the role of ICAIC maintained the issue on the table and framed the possible exchanges.

In 2010, Alfredo Guevara declared: “I had to design the ICAIC in 1959 (...) now there is an independent cinema.It is a phenomenon to learn to assimilate (...) I think that gives me a moral authority to say that fifty and long years later the ICAIC is obsolete and that the structure, of which I am largely responsible, representing the revolutionOf course, it is obsolete.ICAIC is over as an omnimous power that I founded. ”

In 2011, Fernando Pérez, Daniel Díaz Torres, Rebeca Chávez, Manuel Pérez Paredes write to the president of ICAIC:

“The way chosen to elaborate and present the proposal for a new structure of the ICAIC has been designed from above, without participation, at the time of study, design and proposals, creators and those who accumulate a whole life of experience doingCuban cinema

“The meeting of Monday, January 10, worked more as a formal survey or process than as the true, indispensable, and irreplaceable participation of the creators in the matters that concern their work and future, to their life.The opportunity to comment and evaluate did not entail a true participation because it is, to be effective, it must occur, as we all know, at the time of thought, the study of reality and the elaboration of the proposals.

"Creators and managers are responsible for conceiving and applying with a combined, narrow and harmonious action to a structure proposal for the ICAIC."

And they conclude his letter: “It is still possible to find, or resume, the path that recovers confidence in the procedures that are applied and in the results, of which we can all feel responsible and actors… it is not one more opportunity but the last one toContinue to be an organism with which the filmmakers commit themselves. ”Dialogue was never easy.

G20 y la reorganización del ecosistema cinematográfico

2013: The emotional impact of the death of Alfredo Guevara in April precipitates events.An immense challenge in organizational, ideological and cultural terms to "try to do something in favor of Cuban cinema."For that, the filmmakers are convened in May and on the 4th the first open assembly.

There is a very intense atmosphere, impressing seriousness and knowledge, sometimes exaltation, in the exchange of ideas, encounters and disagreements in which, without denying the institution, it is not renouncing to express other points of view, to evaluate and criticize.Everything is torn.Immobility, participation and transparency are the most repeated words of the assemblies.There is no board of directors and if a group chosen among all: the G20 that will organize each meeting.We are not an observatory of Cuban cultural management, we focus each and every one of the debates in the cinema and how to do to open new formulas to do.

The definition that Cuban cinema should include equal to ICAIC (representation of the State) and independent filmmakers and non -state producers appears.A propositional space was built in each meeting and agreeing among all a common agenda for Cuban cinema.The central idea was accurate: renewing and reorganizing the entire cinema ecosystem, assuming and legitimizing the off -ICAIC film production that existed and grew in its influence.

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Digital technology appeared as another important trigger.It was not only the aesthetic convergence zone and looks from other filmmakers, young men and women, disconnected from ICAIC and with new ways of acting and producing.In their hands were the new cameras, teams of lights, facilities to edit and all shared the idea of being, from their specialty, of the system that was tried to restructure.

Cine independiente: reticencias y diálogos

There is talk again and again of "alternative cinema" and "independent cinema" and the alarms immediately shoot.The new ways of producing that were proposed and were in the process of discussion referred, essentially, to a different and effective management, a new economic formula.They had to be received as a natural process;However, reluctance persisted in institutions and political instances.

Knowing that reality, filmmakers continue to pronounce with the idea that in order to advance it is unavoidable, only that now should cover all the actors involved in this art-industry-public process.But that proposal did not always find receptive ears.

In this acute situation it was necessary to create "an adequate spiritual climate, an atmosphere of creation and respect, also of responsibility and commitment."After various work rounds and almost sixteen months, filmmakers manage to incorporate their views to the diagnosis of the government work group.The fundamental aspirations contained in the proposal are the appearance of a promotion fund and the decree law that recognizes the audiovisual and cinematographic creator.A sensitive focus, concerns, around independent producers persisted;Finally, its existence was recognized although with another name.

The idea of a film law in that work phase did not advance.The ICAIC remains the guiding state agency of the cinematographic cultural policy and for the development of new or different ways of relating to the Cuban audiovisual field.I return to Alfredo Guevara: "From the role that touches the State, directing the work is not to send, directing is to contribute to be realizable."

El compromiso de participar en el cambio

Even if the saying that seconds were never good ... lucky mistake: in the second stage?The more than one hundred fiction projects, documentaries and animated registered in the calls for the Development Fund are to be denied.46 already have the requested financing.Again the filmmakers are active and not simple recipients of a political decision, and we already know that it is not only possible, but to do so is necessary.

We have expressed and shown what entails, the commitment, to be and participate in the development of cinema, from the birth of ideas.In the permanent challenge of a revolution, it is crucial for creators to dialogue with it and from it.Make a time trip, since a past that has not passed, and continues to influence, towards a present.

The filmmakers are not arrested.Social portrait is not in Stop Motion: they explore the human condition, spirituality;They live the shock, the concern of how to make their cinema, how to testify experiences.

Among the projects benefited from the Fund there is a wide wealth to see/look/assume/the environment, the emergence of women and young people under 35 years of age with Consegrated attest.Two significant elements stood out: the presence of 39 percent of filmmakers under 35 years;and 53.8 percent of women as directors/ producers and 30.7 percent of directors.

The Cuban cinema of the twentieth century was critical, questioner and almost never pedagogical auxiliary or gross political propaganda.It has had to coexist or live with a schematic area,

Dogmatic, offended to films that approached certain heresies, issues or complexities promoting a space for confrontation and enrichment.The Cuban films that we will see in this 21st century will participate and share the concept that cinema, and art everything, feed on conflicts and not complacency.

Reaching the Development Fund was a long and painful process, but it is already a reality.Implying an important figure, this gesture cannot be overlooked now, in the midst of the acute economic crisis that the country is experiencing.Again, the State shows an artistic manifestation and aspiring to recover lost links and dialogues, outside an instrumental relationship, because doing so would imply setback;And what is about making art, politics, technical and economy, participate in a balanced and reciprocal link between all these links.

La apuesta del Fondo

An inclusive and search process to find - or not - answers, confront points of view, not to push ruptures but to assume influences, assimilate, take advantage of all the efforts on a scenario where dangerous prejudices lurk anyway.The integration in working groups of creators of all disciplines, the wealth of talents will allow and sustain development, or better: the takeoff of a new Cuban cinema.The question remains: what will it be like?

We live in the Internet era.But the virtual does not mean distance and either isolation.Infinite multiplication of images, new/old ideas populate our day to day.We already know that no form of expression replaces another.The cinema was born from the hand of the theater and did not end him;It still uses literature to be born from the text the visual image.So any forecast is possible.

Should we abandon traditional rooms?No, if you can live with the new ways of reception and consumption.Leave everything in the hands of the entertaining, so close to banal consumption and ramplón?No, if there is a vocation and stubborn insistence to make good cinema;And the most convincing argument is those 46 films benefited from the background, which aspire to be artistically ambitious, of confrontation, search and, above all, diverse.

Stimulating production to see good and best cinema is the commitment of the Cuban Cinema Development Fund, created on June 14, 2019, by Agreement No. 8613 of the Council of Ministers, to support the development of national cinematography, through theAssignment of financial resources to film projects.

By the way, he has helped to conjure suspicions, mitigate prejudices and "doubt the doubts" that aroused the announcement of this process.Having doubts is useful and healthy:

What is the ideal tone to tell each story?Is this a story of the past?If they are not known, what leads them to find themselves in this space of tombs and flowers?He leaves these ideas for imagination and illusion: cinema, in short, is chimera.With expectant curiosity I attend this moment of Cuban cinema in which he has to reinvent his place in the world, to speak of the human being in today's Cubdifficult circumstances.(2021)