A Week in Havana, Sweet Havana
By Roxanne Messina Captor

Early December found a delegation from the San Francisco Film Festival boarding planes for a day-long journey to Havana, Cuba, the only American festival invited to participate in Havana’s International Festival of New Latin American Cinema this year. At a time when our government was tightening its restrictions on travel to Cuba, we at the Festival continued to cross borders in the pursuit of cultural exchange.

This process started last April when the director of the Havana festival, Ivan Giroud, and I discussed bringing the award-winning films from the 46th San Francisco International Film Festival to Cuba. These film were The Weather Underground by directors Sam Green and Bill Siegel, Heart of the Sea by directors Lisa Denker and Charlotte Lagarde, The Lost Boys of Sudan by Megan Mylan and John Shenk, Jose Henrique Fonseca’s Man of the Year and Niki Caro’s Whale Rider. Thanks to the generosity of a longtime Film Society supporter, we were able to realize this dream, forming a delegation made up of myself, our director of programming, Linda Blackaby, our creative director, Miguel Pendás, and the filmmakers.

Havana is a city of dichotomy. Baroque architecture, without restoration. The arts permeate every crevice of the city, but as a socialist society, the film industry is controlled by a government agency called ICAIC. Although some of the younger filmmakers, with the flexibility brought by the digital revolution, are walking as true independents and shooting movies outside the system.

Many movie theaters in Havana are huge, seating thousands. Cubans are passionate about film and wait for hours to get in. Our selection was well attended and very popular. Much of the audience stayed well after the screenings to have frank and open discussions with our filmmakers. Questions of politics, social and cultural conventions and economics led to enlightening dialogue.

We were honored to meet many special guests at the festival, including renowned Cuban director Fernando Peréz (whose Suite Habana swept the top awards and will be in our Festival this year), former prima ballerina and still head of the National Ballet de Cuba, Alicia Alonso, and famed author Gabriel García Márquez who was the cofounder of the Latin American Film School near Havana and is still a staunch supporter. I also participated in a panel discussing Latin American relations with the U.S. and how Latin America is portrayed in American film and television. Our discussions focused on the assimilation of immigrant cultures in the U.S., the dynamics of identity and the role our film festivals play in breaking down ideas of national divides.

It was a powerful experience for all the members of the delegation. My staff and I were excited to have had the opportunity to see so much new Latin American film that we would most certainly have missed had we not come to Havana. We saw a number of movies that sought to dispel divisive cultural myths, and found some Cuban films that we hope to bring to San Francisco audiences. We look forward to continuing this exchange in the future.