Havana, City of Movies
The tickets for the event are sold in every cinema of all municipalities at a price of ten Cuban pesos
By: Maggie Marín Ayarde, mmm@enet.cu
During the 39th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, from December 8th to 17th, held in Havana, ten halls will host more than 400 feature films.
Cinemas such as La Rampa, Yara, Riviera, Charles Chaplin and 23 and 12 are part of the 23rd street circuit, as well as the Acapulco in Nuevo Vedado. These cinemas have the DCP system, highest technology to store and transmit audio, image and digital data flows. The Multicine Infanta has the trendy optical media format blue-ray disc in its four rooms, main venues of the event.
The Brazilian film O filme da minha vida (The film of my life), by Selton Mello was chosen for the opening ceremony of Havana Film Festival at Karl Marx theater where the Coral Prize of Honour will be awarded to one of the important personalities of Brazil’s Cinema Novo Carlos Diegues, who is one of the producers of the opening film.
As part of the opening, the habitual concert will be staged by Camerata Romeu and the pianist Alejandro Falcón at the Karl Marx theater on December 8 in the evening.
Out of 404 films in list of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, 308 are from Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Chile and Colombia while the rest belong to other countries such as the United States, Spain, France, Germany and Great Britain.
There are 19 fiction feature films -2 of them are from Cuba-, 18 debut features, 23 documentary films, 18 short and medium-length films, 16 cartoon films, 20 unpublished screenplays and 24 posters competing for the Coral Prize of the 39th Edition of the Film Festival in Havana.
Another important data to be highlighted is that 34 % of the films in competition are directed by women and feature in the list of important producers such as Lucrecia Martel, Carolina Jabor, Daniela Thomas, Marcela Said, Lucía Murat, María Novarro and Jimena Montemayor .
The Festival will also celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Universidad del Cine, an academy in Argentina that has trained genuine specialists in the seventh art. There will be an special tribute to the centenary of the October Revolution and to the US Filmmaker James Ivory, one of the personalities that will be in Havana.
The silent film October dating back to 1927 by Sergei Eisenstein will be screened recalling the historic event, that shocked the world for 100 days. This classic film is an almost two hours long version and includes the soundtrack by the Austrian composer and orchestra conductor Edmund Meisel and performed by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.
The special tribute to James Ivory at the Havana film festival consists in the presentation of eight of his fiction feature films, two of them are important since they have scripts by the Nobel Prize for Literature 2017 Japanese novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. Films played between the mid 1980s and 2005, where the multi-award winning films Regreso a Howards End and Lo que queda del día are included in the tribute to the 89-year-old US citizen filmmaker.
The International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana also bolsters up the Restored Classic section so those who are interested can appreciate the works. This time a Cuban film Lucía by Humberto Solás, Sur by the Argentine Fernando Ezequiel, Tres tristes tigres by the Chilean Raúl Ruiz and Tiempo de morir by the Mexican Arturo Ripstein will be exhibited. The big challenge in this category, according to the organizers of the meeting, is that the film copyrights is off the directors’ hands.
The most important film event in the region also awards a Coral Prize in the post-production section and has eight films competing for the first time.
The German and Spanish Film exhibition, the international documentary and contemporary scene, special presentation and galas make up the vast and attractive program of the 39th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, that in the coming days will open ten halls of the Wonder City and will impose another rhythm and glamour to Havana, a city of movies.
Translated by ESTI