Film Considered Disrespectful of Jose Marti Rejected By Cuban Film Institute

Cuban filmmaker Yimit Ramírez partially financed his film “I Want to Make a Movie” through crowdfunding. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 14 March 2018 — The film “I Want to Make a Movie,”  by filmmaker Yimit Ramírez, was excluded from the Special Presentation section of the Young Filmmaker’s Exhibition by officials of the Cuban Institute of Art and Film Industry (ICAIC), who said that the dialog during a scene of his trial was not very respectful of José Martí, who “is sacred.”

The scene that has generated discomfort among the censors has been published by Marta María Ramírez. In it, one of the characters declares himself to not be a follower of Martí and describes the Cuban hero as a “mojón” and “maricón” (turd and faggot).

The film was to be screened at the 23rd and 12th Cinema in Havana on 3 April, in the Special Presentation Section, followed by a discussion between the artists and the public.

However, the initial program, designed by the exhibition team, was not approved by the ICAIC authorities, which excluded the film from the section and moved its projection to the small Terence Piard Room, recently inaugurated in ICAIC’s headquarters in 23rd Street, in Vedado.

The idea of projecting the film came from the Exhibition itself, but two weeks after the invitation, its developers knew that the ICAIC officials had to “give the go-ahead” to the film before projecting it in one of the rooms.

“It fell to me to talk to Octavio Fraga Guerra, an official I have known for a long time and who, armed with flash memory, demanded that I copy the film so that he could watch it with the president of ICAIC,” Ramírez explains in a post he shared on his Facebook account.

The post also states that his lack of trust in giving ICAIC a copy of the film on a flash memory came mostly from fear that the film would be “leaked as has happened with other works of Cuban filmmakers” that have been entrusted to that institution. Despite his resistance, the official warned him: “If you don’t give me a copy, if won’t be shown.”

After repeatedly telling him that he would take responsibility if the copy was leaked Ramirez agreed. Three hours later his response was that the film would not be screened in the planned section because the official “had not liked a phrase from the film,” while Fraga Guerra clarified that the ICAIC director had not yet seen it.

“I Want to Make a Movie” is the first feature film by Ramírez, who finished it with an 8,000 euros budget obtained through a crowdfunding campaign. The journalist Marta María Ramírez, who designed the communication strategy for the campaign on the Internet, explained to this newspaper that the new screening room “has only 24 seats” and is “small” for the planned showing.

Ramírez explains that the filmmakers “have made tremendous noise with that film and created many expectations” and that it makes no sense to hold a screening where there is only enough space for the team that made the film to attend. “The interesting thing would have been to open a debate with the public,” he says.

“We were asking that it not be a premier because it is a first cut and not the finished film, we wanted to connect with people and talk about other forms of financing, such as crowdfunding, which we don’t know a lot about because we don’t have the internet connection we need,” he says.

The organizers of the show insisted the institution include the film in the planned section with a showing in the 23rd and 12th Cinema, but Roberto Smith de Castro, director of ICAIC, responded categorically that “Martí is sacred” and that the alternative if they wanted to show the film was the Terence Piard Room.

The team putting on the exhibition disagreed in a note posted on their Facebook account, where they said that the decision was made under criteria that they do not share and described as “totally inappropriate” the option to exhibit it in another room.

The outstanding filmmaker Fernando Perez resigned his position as director of the Exhibition in 2010 after a similar maneuver by the ICAIC, when they excluded the documentary made by the filmmaker Ricardo Figueredo about rapper Raudel Collazo, from Escuadrón Patriota. “Not being able to demonstrate in practice the inclusive coherence that I have planned for the Exhibition, I have made the personal decision not to continue at the front of it,” said the director.

Yimit Ramírez, director of the film, is not surprised about what happened and says he expected it. “We did not count on them to make the movie, and we did it, completely independently. It would be nice to see it in the cinemas, but the truth… The truth is that they control only the movie theaters here, there are many other formats in which people can see it.”

In addition, the director has praised the figure of a José Martí that he considers more real than the one promoted by the institutions. “The Martí I love is more human, some like it and others do not, it’s that simple, like the verses,” he said, referring to José Martí’s poetry collection titled “Simple Verses.”

The film team told 14ymedio that the production company will present the film to all competitions in Cuba wherever they are, including the Havana Film Festival, the Nuevitas Hieroscopia Festival and the Almacén de la Imagen  in Camagüey. “Otherwise we will give it away and project it where we can. It’s the price of independence.”

Film critic Dean Luis Reyes expressed his solidarity with the film’s team: “Martí will be a God for some people, but art has to do with doubt, religion is about something else.”

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