Forty-five years have passed, but the objective remains intact since 1979: to serve as a meeting point, and also as a bridge to other parts of the world, to the cinema, culture and intellectuality of our continent. The International Festival of New Latin American Cinema is a place of resistance against invisibilization.
Such essences will be present in this year's edition, which from December 5 to 15 will once again turn Havana into the region's film capital. The numbers show the esteem and interest aroused by the event: as reported at a press conference held the day before at the Taganana Room of the Hotel Nacional, 2,017 works were received and 256, from 42 countries around the world, were selected; 110 will be competing.
Although the usual diversity of themes is maintained, the organizers explained that films related to childhood, adolescence and old age predominate, as well as those that seek to delve into historical memory to read the present. The exhibition will be shown at the main venues, which will be La Rampa, Yara, Riviera, Charles Chaplin, 23 and 12, and Acapulco; and at sub-sites such as the Multicine Infanta, the Glauber Rocha theater and the Alfredo Guevara theater of the Colegio de San Gerónimo.
The Festival will also be extended to the whole country, because although technology does not allow the exhibition of premieres, films that have made history throughout its existence will be shown. Television will also offer a similar selection, with a fiction feature film on the Multivisión channel and a documentary on the Caribe channel, daily, during the days of the event.
Tania Delgado Fernández, director of the Festival, announced that on the 6th, at 8 p.m., at the Yara cinema, Netflix will present, before its world premiere, the first two chapters of the series One Hundred Years of Solitude, a screen adaptation of the work of Gabriel García Márquez, a figure indissolubly linked to the founding and development of the event.
It is a production “unprecedented in Latin America for its scale and ambition, which was filmed in various departments of Colombia, by predominantly Colombian talent, both in front of and behind the cameras”.
Delgado Fernández also highlighted, within a very broad program, the exhibition of Palestinian cinema; the space dedicated to Argentine cinema; the tribute to the centennial of Alfredo Guevara; the panel on the first two directors to win the Coral Fiction Award, Sergio Giralt, from Cuba, and Geraldo Sarno, from Brazil; and the 2nd Juan Padrón Animation Forum in memoriam.
He also thanked the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry and the Cuban State and Government for their efforts and support in making possible such an important event for the culture of Cuba, Latin America and the world.
The sale of passports (six tickets for 60 pesos) will begin on Tuesday next week at movie theaters' box offices, at the Festival House and online through La Papeleta.
