EFE, Laura Bécquer (via 14ymedio), Havana, 12 December 2024 — /Spanish filmmaker Benito Zambrano defended in an interview with EFE the new generation of young independent filmmakers that has emerged in Cuba, a collective favored, in his opinion, by the arrival of new technologies.
“There is a whole group of filmmakers very well-trained and capable of creating and making cinema without the need for Cuban television or the Icaic (Cuban State Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry),” said the Sevillian director, after giving a talk in the context of the New Latin American Film Festival of Havana.
The winner of several Goya awards for the films Solas and Intemperie pointed out that “the Cuba of Habana Blues (his second film project and a great success on the Island and in Spain) of the years 2003-2004 is not the same, cinematographically speaking.”
“The technology has allowed many more people to make movies and to be creatively more daring,” said Zambrano, who came to Cuba this time invited by the Transculture Program of UNESCO and the European Union to participate in meetings at the International School of Film and Television (Eictv), the Higher Institute of Art and the Havana Film Festival.
The Spanish filmmaker, who premiered his latest film El Salto in April of this year, also acknowledged that “it is not easy to raise a (cinematographic) project from here (in Cuba),” especially because “the Cuban film industry is very small and dependent on money and external financing”
The director of other films such as La voz dormida, Padre coraje and Pan de limón con semillas de poppy, also confessed his close relationship with the Island, where he grew up as a filmmaker. “Cuba is always part of me,” he confessed.
Zambrano was trained at Eictv, a multinational project created in 1986 and supported by figures such as the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. The Island has been a constant in his artistic creation, as he has stated on several occasions.
The 45th edition of the New Latin American Cinema Festival of Havana, which began on December 5 and lasts until this Sunday, has 110 films in competition – 89 fewer than last year – from 42 countries, among which Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Spain stand out.
Titles such as Ella se queda (Mexico), Fenómenos naturales (Cuba, Argentina and France) and Los capítulos perdidos (Venezuela) are part of the selection within fiction feature films.
However, media attention has focused this year on the international premiere of the first two chapters of the new Netflix series, based on the famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian Nobel Gabriel García Márquez.
The names of the winners of the Coral awards are scheduled to be announced this Friday.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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