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CINECITY
THE BRIGHTON FILM FESTIVAL
17 NOVEMBER - 4 DECEMBER 2005

CINECITY: HAVANA
A SEASON OF FILMS EXPLORING THE CUBAN CAPITAL

Fifteen years ago, following the dissolution of communism in Eastern Europe, Cuba was cast adrift and overtaken by economic crisis. Like every other sector, Cuban cinema was drastically affected. Production was severely cut back, and might not have continued at all without resorting to co-production, mainly with Spain. One of the effects was to bring the city of Havana into focus on the screen, as limited petrol supplies restricted shooting in provincial locations, and the deterioration of the city became a visual symbol for the struggle for survival of the Revolution itself.

Havana is one of Latin America’s most distinctive cities, a seaport metropolis which preserves the gamut of architectures from the Spanish Conquest to post-WWII modernism. It has been a central figure in Cuban cinema ever since the creation of the film institute, ICAIC, in the Revolution’s first cultural decree in 1959, and never more so than in T.G.Alea’s famous MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT of 1968, which portrays the city in the moment of revolutionary transformation in the days leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Then came films like ONE WAY OF ANOTHER by Sara Gomez and Pastor Vega’s PORTRAIT OF TERESA where the city becomes, in all its social and architectural diversity, the visual inscription of the Revolution, which as Habaneros like to say, is ‘like a mirror in which you see your own reflection’.

In several films of the 90s the city’s appearance has become instantly haunting. In THE WAVE (La Ola) by Enrique Alvarez, photographed by Santiago Yanez, and above all two films by Fernando Pérez both photographed by Raúl Pérez Ureta, MADAGASCAR and SUITE HABANA, Havana becomes a landscape of existential crisis, disappointment, and internal spiritual exile, and its limpid cinematography emerges as the most sentient aspect of Cuban cinema in the 90s.

Michael Chanan

CUBA LIBRE!
Buy a ticket for 3 different
films in CINECITY: Havana at
the Duke of York’s and get a
ticket for a 4th film free.
cuban film poster exhibition
The Open House daily between 5 and 7 pm
Sat 19 Nov - Fri 2 December
A rare opportunity to see a selection of special silk screen film posters direct from the Cuban Film Institute in Havana. Cuban cinema and its film poster art - full of artistic integrity rather than propaganda - was an integral part of the revolution. This exhibition traces the history of Cuban cinema through its film posters highlighting the art in the advertising.
SAT 19 NOV 8PM KOMEDIA
Celebrate the opening weekend of CINECITY: Havana with a Cuban-flavoured celebration of the life of Buena Vista Social Club singer, Ibrahim Ferrer. A packed evening including a son (the original salsa) dance class, a Rumba Bata show (Afro Cuban drums), son dance display, DJ, then classic Cuban dance music with 10 piece outfit BACALAO. Komedia Upstairs open 7pm for food and drink. Standing with dining area. £8. Box Office 01273 647100 www.komedia.co.uk
introduction to cuban cinema
Wed 23 Nov 6pm
SALLIS BENNEY THEATRE
Michael Chanan and Rafael Hernández present an illustrated overview of the development of Cuban cinema since the founding of the country’s film institute in 1959 with particular emphasis on images of Havana. Michael Chanan is a film-maker, writer and Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He has made films in Cuba and written a history of Cuban cinema. His latest film DETROIT: RUIN OF A CITY screens on Thursday 24 Nov. Rafael Hernández is editor of Temas and Senior Research Fellow at the Juan Marinello Center for Research on Cuban Culture, Havana, and author of a forthcoming book on Havana.

VAMPIRES IN HAVANA! adv 15
(Vampiros En La Habana!)
Fri 18 Nov 11PM
DUKE OF YORK’S

‘Not since FRITZ THE CAT has there been such a freewheeling sexy cartoon romp!’

A satire – in cartoon form – set in the atmosphere of revolutionary Havana. Full of black humour, it follows the story of Count Joseph von Dracula who emigrates from Europe to the sunshine of Cuba where he plans to carry out his experiments. He is accompanied by his nephew Pepito, who is quickly seduced by Havana, thrilled by the sun, music and love. All this is threatened by the arrival of the dreaded Mafia vampires from Chicago…

HAVANA SUITE adv 15
(Suite Habana)
Sun 20 Nov 12 NOON
DUKE OF YORK’S

A big hit with audiences and critics alike, HAVANA SUITE describes with tenderness and poetry a day in the life of ten ordinary citizens of Havana, including a worker who lays railroad tracks during the day and plays the saxophone in a club at night, an elderly peanut seller who no longer has any illusions about life and a male nurse with a vocation as a drag queen.

Director Fernando Perez describes the film as showing the “majority, those least represented through the media both foreign and Cuban, as they express themselves through images not words”. The result is a true city film that echoes the city symphonies of the 1920s, a visual tapestry without dialogue, but here with an extraordinary soundtrack of music, urban sounds and a few incidental fragments of speech.

VIVA CUBAadv 12
Sat 26 Nov 4.30PM
DUKE OF YORK’S

The first ever Cuban film to win at Cannes ­ awarded best children’s picture this year, VIVA CUBA is a quirky coming-of-age road movie that appeals to children and adults alike. Malu is a bit of a tomboy and Jorgito can be a bit quick-tempered but they are great friends. However their parents do not approve of their friendship and come from very different backgrounds. Things get worse for the young friends when Malu’s grandmother dies and her family plan to leave Cuba for the United States. Leaving their homes in Havana the two children set off to plead with Malu’s father in the east of the island, not to give his permission for her to leave the country.

We hope to welcome director Juan Carlos Cremata to take part in a Q&A after the screening. His first feature NOTHING MORE (NADA) screens on Tues 29 Nov.
FILM ON THE BIG SCREEN IN HOVE
Earlier this year cinema made a welcome reappearance in Hove with regular monthly screenings at the Hove Centre in the Town Hall. Film at the Hove Centre utilises 35mm cinema projection on a large screen and the auditorium comfortably seats up to 350. THE WAVE and NOTHING MORE screen in Hove as part of CINECITY: Havana.

THE WAVE adv 15 adv 15
(La Ola)
Mon 28 Nov 7.30PM
HOVE centre

A pair of young lovers in the long hot summer of 1994 search out isolated corners of Havana in order to be together. Part of a generation which has discarded ideological convictions, the major difference between the lovers is that she wishes to leave Cuba and he would prefer to stay. The cinematography of Santiago Yanez presents a vision of Havana far from the typical colourful crowded city of popular imagination, but full of longing and apprehension for an uncertain future. If she leaves, they will be separated forever.

NOTHING MORE adv 15
(Nada)
Tues 29 Nov 7.30PM
HOVE centre

The first feature from Juan Carlos Cremata, director of VIVA CUBA (screening Sat 26 Nov). Disconnected from her daily work at a post office in Havana, Carla dedicates her time to helping others. Something of a Cuban AMELIE, she intercepts letters and sets out to solve the problems of their writers. This is the story of her inner conflict as she waits to hear if she will win the “migration lottery”, a ticket to Florida to join her parents.

While lampooning the layers of bureaucracy and exploring the ever-present dilemma of Cuban migration, Cremata has created a quirky vision of contemporary Havana complete with surreal moments of animation.

I AM CUBA PG (Soy Cuba)
Wed 30 Nov 6PM
DUKE OF YORK’S

Made just 2 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, this is a dazzling portrait of Cuba pre-Castro and the first and only Cuban/Soviet film collaboration. Like BATTLE OF ALGIERS, made the previous year, it is a politically inflected reconstruction of events surrounding a revolution but more lyrical and poetic than Pontecorvo’s realist work. Made by an international team led by Kalatozov (winner of 1958’s Palme D’Or with THE CRANES ARE FLYING) who came to Havana to do for the 1959 revolution what Eisenstein had done for 1917’s: Yankee fatcats romance bargirls in an exotic nightclub; a farmer torches his cane crop against an all-encompassing sky; student revolutionaries lead massive crowds against police firehoses; and, as bombs fall, a poor guajiro abandons his family to join a defiant revolution... all amid a riot of innovative photography, screen-filling close-ups and rapid-fire editing.

The astonishing end result displeased both the stylistically-uptight Soviet authorities and the Cuban cinema-going public and the film fell into obscurity, until rescued three decades on by Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Now for the first time this landmark film is available in a brand new print.

“AMAZING... ASTONISHING!
One deliriously inventive shot after another... They’re going to be carrying ravished film students out of the theaters on stretchers”.
Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker

We hope to welcome co-writer of I AM CUBA, Enrique Pineda Barnet for a Q&A after the screening.

DOUBLE BILL

MADAGASCAR ADv 15
FEMALE IS MY SOUL adv 15
Thurs 1 Dec 6pm
SALLIS BENNEY THEATRE

MADAGASCAR
Evoking one of the finest of all Cuban films, LUCIA (1968) in which Humberto Solás told the stories of three women at three different historical moments, Pérez paints a wistful portrait of three generations of women living under the same roof in contemporary Cuba, overturning stereotypes whether those of a girl’s coming-of-age story or the allegory of the nation as woman. Havana here is a city of disillusion, disappointment, discouragement, bathed in a strange timeless beauty of meditation on the entanglement of the lost promises
of youth and revolutionary hopes. And why MADAGASCAR? Because it’s like a mirror image of Cuba, a poor island separated from a nearby continent.

FEMALE IS MY SOUL
Cuban film-maker Lizette Vila has over many years tackled a wide
range of controversial issues with sensitivity and skill. Here she encourages a group of Cuban transexuals to describe their individual search for sexual identity and the struggle for acceptance in their community. They describe the benefits of their association with the ‘National Centre of Sexual Education’ established in 1977 which was influential in the change of law in 1979, decriminalising homosexual acts between consenting adults.

HABANA BLUES adv 15
Sun 4 Dec 6.30pm
DUKE OF YORK’S

Evoking one of the finest of all Cuban films, LUCIA (1968) in which Humberto Solás told the stories of three women at three different historical moments, Pérez paints a wistful portrait of three generations of women living under the same roof in contemporary Cuba, overturning stereotypes whether those of a girl’s coming-of-age story or the allegory of the nation as woman. Havana here is a city of disillusion, disappointment, discouragement, bathed in a strange timeless beauty of meditation on the entanglement of the lost promises
of youth and revolutionary hopes. And why MADAGASCAR? Because it’s like a mirror image of Cuba, a poor island separated from a nearby continent.

Cuban film-maker Lizette Vila has over many years tackled a wide
range of controversial issues with sensitivity and skill. Here she encourages a group of Cuban transexuals to describe their individual search for sexual identity and the struggle for acceptance in their community. They describe the benefits of their association with the ‘National Centre of Sexual Education’ established in 1977 which was influential in the change of law in 1979, decriminalising homosexual acts between consenting adults.

PORTRAIT OF TERESA adv 15
(Retrato de Teresa)
Wed 7 Dec 6.30PM
DUKE OF YORK’S

BRIGHTON INTERNATIONAL FILM SOCIETY

A classic of Cuban cinema portraying the obstacles Cuban women face. Teresa, a factory worker, has three sons and a traditional husband. She accepts a position as her factory’s cultural secretary, despite misgivings that she won’t be able to handle the many demands on her time. The new responsibilities add to her husband’s jealousy and make her feel increasingly inadequate. Director Pastor Vega shows that political revolution does not automatically entail a change in social attitudes as Teresa’s husband still expects his dinner on the table and to be able to flirt with other women. Shot in vivid primary colours, this is a beguiling insight into day-to-day life in post-revolutionary Havana.

Introduced by Ann Cross, Co-ordinator ‘Promoting Cuban Film in UK’ who will also lead a post-film discussion at The Open House.

UTILITARIAN DREAMS
BRIGHTON FRINGE BASEMENT
Tues 22 Nov – Fri 25 Nov
12 – 7pm | Closed Sat 26 Nov
Sun 27 Nov – Sat 3 Dec
12 – 5pmbr> DUKE OF YORK’S

Lighthouse has commissioned a group of artists, from both Brighton and Havana, to produce an installation piece for CINECITY entitled UTILITARIAN DREAMS. The work
will take visitors on a virtual journey through open urban spaces in both Brighton and Havana. The group
includes architects from the University of Brighton, the English artist Tom Phillips, the Cuban curator
Yuneikys Villalonga Hernandez and a group of Cuban Digital artists.