This Friday, the gathering of Cuban filmmakers rejected censorship at the Havana Film Festival after two documentaries were excluded from the event’s billboard.
In an open letter published on Facebook, the artists reiterated their “rejection of any policy that involves acts of censorship and exclusion of works and authors,” which they consider “a perverse model that violates the fundamental right of every citizen to enjoy and to interpret, destroys “works” itself”.
In the letter, they reiterate that the Havana Film Festival – which runs from December 8th to 17th – is once again the site of the “ongoing exercise of institutional violence” against filmmakers.
“Two Cuban Films (“Calls from Moscow”leaded by Luis Alejandro Yero And “Fito’s Havana”from Juan Pin Vilar) were again removed from the competition and other sections without explanation. “We have learned that the festival’s selection committee, composed of renowned specialists who have dedicated their lives to solidifying the reputation of this festival, has once again been pressured to exclude these works from its curatorship of the event,” they argue.
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The Assembly denounces that this is a “harmful modus operandi” and reiterates that it does not accept “that our society continues to be fragmented because of its inability to accept dissent, because of its fear of expressing ideas to discuss, and because there is a lack of will to commit to finding points of consensus, coexistence and respect for others.”
The filmmakers affirm: “You cannot be anti-colonial by banning films and artistic works by our creators. One cannot speak in the name of the people if one is unable to listen to and respond to that people’s cry. “One cannot warn of the danger of a single reading of history that proposes as the only narrative that which was written from power.”
It is also considered “Culture War Exercise” the regime’s excuses for banning the above-mentioned documentaries.
In this context, he says that the excuse of the culture war “attempts to evade the filmmakers’ demand for a horizontal discussion on censorship and exclusion in Cuban cinema”, which was raised a few weeks ago after the ban in a room of the Cuban Capital to exhibit the documentary “La Habana de Fito”.
“We have denounced that for a long time several high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Culture have been controlling, censoring and, in many cases, threatening artists who decide to express themselves critically on the problems we face. This is the main reason of our Union’s brutal exodus, in addition to the onslaught in which the nation is bleeding,” they emphasize.
“It is neither the artists nor the filmmakers who are responsible for the harsh reality in which we live. It is not their works that impose a single thought. Cinema does not impose, what imposes is power,” they recalled.
The assembly also rejected the criminalization of filmmakers, declaring that “Cuban films produced inside and outside Cuba do not belong to any institution or group of officials.”
The publication was signed by representatives of the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers, including: Fernando Perez (director and screenwriter), Deymi D’Atri (director and photographer), Juan Antonio Garcia Borrero (film researcher and critic), Ernesto Daranas (director and screenwriter), Rosa Maria Rodriguez (director and producer), Luis Alberto Garcia (actor and producer), Kiki Alvarez (director and screenwriter), Katherine T. Gavilan (director and actress), Gustavo Arcos (professor and film critic), Carla Valdes (director and screenwriter) and Manuel A. Rodriguez Yong (Producer and Director).
The day before, Yero denounced that many employees of the Cuban Institute of Film Arts and Industry (ICAIC) were threatened in the style of a “vile mafia” in order to silence them about the pressure exerted to exclude the two works from the festival.
“It is immoral to attend a festival that hides these abuses and welcomes filmmakers from all over the continent as if Havana – a city sunk in sadness – were a Caribbean resort where they drink mojitos and pat each other on the back can,” he reflected on the director.