The Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers rejected the appointment of the cultural commissioner Alexis Triana as the new president of the Cuban Institute of Film Arts and Industry (ICAIC).
In a letter signed by more than a hundred Cuban filmmakers and shared on the assembly’s Facebook page, the signatories consider that Triana’s appointment is part of “the authoritarian and vertical thinking” that prevails in Cuban institutions and “a completely wrong interpretation of the function of art and its way of interacting with the context in the contemporary world.”
Likewise, they believe that the problem of the ICAIC lies not in the official who runs it, but in its submission to the exclusionary policies of the Cuban regime.
“The problem of the ICAIC is not its presidency, but the subordination of all its structures to a cultural bureaucracy that paralyzes and cancels it,” the letter says.
The letter addresses some of the censorship events of the last decades of Cuban cinema and defends the artists’ right to autonomy, criticism and freedom of expression.
“It is not possible that the solution to the crisis of Cuban cinema falls into the same hands that gave birth to it. Under this premise, the presidency of the ICAIC will be just a circumstance,” complain the signatories, including important figures of Cuban cinema such as the actor Luis Alberto García or the directors Ernesto Daranas or Fernando Pérez.
Last week, the Cuban Ministry of Culture (MINCULT) announced the appointment of pro-government journalist Alexis Triana as the new president of the ICAIC, four months after the dismissal of his previous boss.
Triana assumed his new role amid a crisis in the institution, after the controversy surrounding the censorship of director Juan Pin Vilar, which led to a loud protest from filmmakers and figures in the cultural sector, which eventually led to the creation of the Assembly of Filmmakers.
Triana is a cultural official at the service of the regime with extensive experience, starting with assuming the presidency of the Hermanos Saíz association in Holguín.
In the official statement published by the Cuba Cine portal, it was recalled that in this province he headed the Provincial Council of Performing Arts and Culture for 13 years and was responsible for the May Pilgrimage and the Gibara International Poor Film Festival.
After returning to Havana, he served as vice president of the National Council of Performing Arts, national coordinator of the Cultural Mission Corazón Adentro in Venezuela, and communications director and founder of the Multimedial Studio and the digital channel CrearTV.
He became known in the capital for his Internet attacks on voices critical of the regime.
In 2020 he attacked the Singer-songwriter Descemer Bueno called him “drunk,” “high,” “cynical” and “out of tune.” A year later, he responded to a post from a state security account accused Yotuel Romero of being a “jockey.” because he was married to the Spanish Beatriz Luengo.
Below we reproduce the statement of the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers:
Statement from the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers
The ICAIC has a new president. Then it is necessary to come back to certain things.
One day, five months ago, seven hundred intellectuals expressed their rejection of an outdated model of articulating culture, based on exclusion, manipulation, censorship and violence, and systematically exercised against artists and their works. A process that has not only shaped the life and work of a considerable group of filmmakers, many of whom are now in exile, but has also undermined the meaning and existence of institutions and projects related to Cuban cinema and culture.
This practice found a new episode in the violations of the documentary film La Habana de Fito by Juan Pin Vilar, an event that motivated the revival of the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers, a representative and heterogeneous space of a community that has worked intensively in the search for Solutions to our problems and has submitted several documents and proposals to the government, even without answers.
Amid this lack of communication, the appointment of Alexis Triana as the new President of the ICAIC was made public last Thursday. Although this appointment is a prerogative of the government, as citizens and artists we also exercise our right to express our criteria. The first thing that could be said is that this is an official from the Ministry of Culture itself, who was an active and conscious part of the trend that we filmmakers have been questioning. But much more than his person, it is a method.
All the structures that make up the cinema system in Cuba are broken and weakened. The ICAIC, as the center of this system controlled by the Ministry of Culture for decades, was effectively destroyed to a large extent by the same leaders who install and remove presidents without assuming that they are not the real problem. So it’s not about who you put in the foreground, but about what they represent and project. It is an entire industrial, financial and artistic model that has collapsed, largely due to the authoritarian and vertical thinking that has been enthroned. A misinterpretation of the function of art and its way of interacting with context in the contemporary world.
The problem of the ICAIC is not its presidency, but the subordination of all its structures to a cultural bureaucracy that paralyzes and cancels it. With no autonomy, with hardly any filmmakers on the payroll, no cinemas, no resources, no real international presence, there is little that can be done to protect filmmakers from this systematic intimidation and control that is embedded in the DNA of politics. Cuban culture and civil society.
One must not lose sight of the fact that the Cuban cinema concept goes beyond the boundaries set by an official institution. There is no cinema of “ours” as opposed to the cinema of “others”. For the gathering, our cinema includes all the diverse and pluralistic work that we do with or without ICAIC, inside or outside Cuba, faithful to the diversity of views that its creators can offer and how heterogeneous the nation in which we live, each is more temporal and fragmented, the harsh reality of which emerges in different ways in our films.
This right of our artists to interpret and question their environment has always been problematic. There are the cases of PM, of Nicolás Guillén Landrián, of the struggles that teachers like Humberto and Titón had to wage within the ICAIC, of the events of Alice in the City of Miracles, of what happened with Return to Ithaca Santa and Andrés, with Corazón Azul and with the work of many other authors who have been subjected to this devastating abuse of power for decades in all parts of the country. Perhaps the paradigm of this practice is the conclusion of the Young Show, a crucial event in the development of Cuban cinema, which left us “Palabras al Cardumen”, an exemplary manifesto about censorship and exclusion, but also about the dreams and hopes of a generation.
When we declare: “Our cinema will be free or not,” we are expressing a collective will. It is the spirit that we find in the decisions, words and works of a growing number of filmmakers (and artists of all stripes) who have chosen to distance themselves from this vicious circle of eternal distrust that oppresses our civic lives and our spaces defiles creation. and the work.
Likewise, our assembly will be free or not. Our right to exist and work on what we believe in is unquestionable, and by exercising this right we express our rejection of a method of work that perpetuates the same problems we face. It is not possible that the solution to the crisis of Cuban cinema falls into the same hands that gave birth to it. Under this premise, the chairmanship of the ICAIC will be merely a circumstance.
Institutions were created to organize the experiences of the citizens they represent, to serve them, and to respond to their demands, not to act against them. If this pattern of order and command does not change, if respectful relationships, the desire for understanding and horizontal dialogue are not established, our differences as filmmakers and as Cubans will continue to deepen.
From day one, our congregation has shown its willingness to work. Today it is up to us to make it clear that our existence does not depend on those who refuse to face our real problems. We will continue to work for the complex, diverse, inclusive, controversial and plural cinema we believe in. This is the country in which we live and we are aware that before becoming filmmakers, we are an active part of the civic life of the Cuban people.
1. Fernando Pérez (director and screenwriter)
2. Gustavo Arcos (professor and film critic)
3. Luis Alberto García (actor and producer)
4. Ernesto Daranas (director and screenwriter)
5. Rosa María Rodríguez Pupo (director and producer)
6. Deymi D Atri (Director and Photographer)
7 Enrique -Kiki- Álvarez (director and screenwriter)
8. Carla Valdés (director and screenwriter)
9. Manuel Rodríguez Yong (Producer and Director)
10. Katherine T. Gavilán (director and actress)
11. Juan Antonio García Borrero (researcher and film critic)
12. Juan Carlos Sáenz de Calahorra (director)
13. Esther Suárez Durán (researcher, theater critic, playwright, screenwriter for radio and television)
14. Frank Ernesto Fernández Carvajal (producer and director)
15. Carolina de la Torre Molina (psychologist and researcher)
16. Mayra Álvarez (director and screenwriter)
17. Juan Pin Vilar. (Director)
18. Alex Fleites. (poet and journalist)
19. Ulises Toirac (comedian, screenwriter, television director, actor)
19. Pedro Luis García Macias (Press Assistant)
20. Demian Rabilero del Castillo (poet and director of the Museum of Image and Sound)
21.Walter Cordero (actor, producer and editor)
22. Belkis Vega Belmonte (director, screenwriter, consultant and film teacher)
23. Carlos Urdanivia (art director)
24. Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada (lawyer and professor)
25. Laura C. Carricarte (sound engineer and director)
26. Esteban Insausti (director and screenwriter)
27. Lorenzo Casadio (Italian cinematographer)
28. Alina Bárbara López Hernández (Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Essayist and Editor)
29. Jorge G. de Mello (art curator)
30. Reynaldo Lastre (film critic)
31. Héctor García Rodríguez (cameraman)
32. Dean Luis Reyes (film critic and professor)
33. Vladimir García Herrera (animation director and producer)
34. Danny García Soto (Producer)
35.Antonio Enrique González Rojas (journalist and film critic)
36. Danilo Lejardi (director and screenwriter)
37. Rolando Leyva Caballero (film critic and art historian)
38. Leyssy O’Farrill Nicholas (visual artist/audiovisual director/musician/model/actress)
39. Margarita Mateo Palmer (teacher and author)
40. Alberto Ramos (film critic and programmer
41. Héctor Noas (actor)
42. Yaite Luque Pérez (Producer)
43. Ricardo Acosta (Editor)
44. Alejandro Ramírez Anderson (director)
45. Vladimir Cuenca (costume designer)
46. Lily Suárez Rodés (cinematographer and colorist)
47. María Elena Diardes (actress and director)
48. Annia Quesada Milord (director and screenwriter)
49. Carlos Barosela. (Fine arts)
50. Alejandro Torres Ramos (Licensing Law)
51. Aída Herrerias (producer)
52.Jose Angel Perez. (Director and visual artist)
53. Ricardo Figueredo Oliva (producer, director and screenwriter)
54. Javier Otero (documentary producer)
55. Hamlet Paredes Grau (actor and director)
56. Hamlet Fernández (researcher and film critic)
57. Hermes Entenza (visual artist and writer)
58. Lilmara Cruz Pavón (Editor)
59. Jorge L Fernandez (musician and composer)
60. Rafael Grillo (film critic)
61. Raúl García Riverón (screenwriter and director)
62. Omaida Rodríguez Baserio (assistant director, screenwriter and audiovisual consultant)
63. Amilcar Salatti González (screenwriter for film and television)
64. Yaremis Pérez Rodríguez (actress and casting director)
65. Gilberto Ramos Souza (actor)
66. Randys Alfonso Diaz (Visual Artist and Producer)
67. María José Figueroa (cultural journalist)
68. Omar Camilo Ramos (Puerto Rican director, editor and producer)
69. Isaul Ortega (director and producer)
70. Pablo Javier Lopez (director and editor)
71. Susana Rios Moore (assistant film director and television producer)
72. Rosa Marquetti (researcher and music supervisor)
73. Nancy Angulo Valdés (colorist)
74.Noel Alvarez Martín (Production Manager)
75. Othon Bada Fuentes (sound engineer)
76. Alexei Padilla Herrera (communications specialist, professor and translator)
Gloria María Cossio (Casting)
78. Armando Capó Ramos (filmmaker)
79. Angelica Salvador (Editor)
80. Sheyla Pool (filmmaker)
81. Jaime Masó Torres (journalist)
82. Jenny Pantoja Torres (historian and actress)
83. Heriberto Verdecia Galán (Bookseller)
84. Yamil Santana Cossio. (Camera operator)
85. Arlene Comas (screenwriter and PR representative)
86. Dr. René Fidel Gonzalez Garcia. (law professor)
87. Jose Antonio Valdés Chicoy (image maker)
88. Jorge Manuel Almagro Calderón (art director and visual artist)
89. Paz Alicia Garciadiego (Mexican screenwriter)
90. Luisa Marisy (director, curator and art critic)
91. Antonio Molina Burnes (director and screenwriter)
92. Liana Domínguez (Editor)
93. Cesáreo Navas Morlanes (Producer)
94. Ernesto Granado Rigueiro (photographer)
95. Alina Dueñas Hernández (screenwriter and television director)
96. Emmanuel Peña Anasco (teacher and editor)
97. Maysel Bello Cruz. (Director)
98. Franks Daniel Linares Garcia (actor and editor)
99. Juan Carlos Gómez Millo (Editor)
100. Ángel Pérez (film critic and programmer)
101. Manuel Iglesias (Director and Editor)
102. Laura Conyedo Barral (screenwriter)
103. Joel del Río Fuentes (Doctor of Arts, critic, journalist and researcher)
104. Mónica Pita Santos (producer)
105. Tania Ceballos. (assistant director)
106. Ariel Novo (sound engineer)
107. Leila Montero. (Manufacturer)
108. Mayra Lilia Rodríguez Pastrana (ICRT Cinematography Consultant)
109. Daniela Capelato, screenwriter and producer (Brazil)
110. Ernesto Bautista (Salvadoran director and screenwriter)
111. Yuniel cepena (sound)
112. Daiyan Noa Brandford (sound engineer, screenwriter and director)
113. Fausto Canel (director)
114. Rafael Rey Rodriguez (film producer)
115. Alina Arcos Fernández-Britto (Cuban citizen, doctor by profession)