The Cuban fiction cinema transits right now on the right track. I venture to say it particularly when looking a few years back. Our cinema has opened its spectrum on trends and forms. There are many proposals coming from new artists, although those already enshrined surprise us with their current projects.
The latest work of Alejandro Gil, who stated that La emboscada, is not at all a war movie despite its title, will be soon premiered. The war theme works as a pretext for dealing with human relationships and generational conflicts, among other contradictions of the characters.
Leontina is the title of the movie that Rudy Mora will give us soon. Pretty close to his debut film, it tells the story of a group of children participating in a painting competition who need the blue color, but they can only find it in the Palma Blanca town, a place where laughter disappeared and its inhabitants walk slowly, except in El legionario store. It is a diverse film, no doubt, but very interesting.
Another full-length film starred by children will come to us in the first quarter of this year thanks to filmmaker Ernesto Daranas: A work also featuring Alina Rodriguez. According to its director, it tells the story of Chala, an eleven years old boy having a very difficult life. Carmela, his teacher, is his only guide and the film’s plot begins to unfold when she gets sick and has stop working, when she returns she will see that everything has changed, including the child’s behavior .
Juan Carlos Cremata is putting the finishing touches to Contigo pan y cebolla, a film that will be released on March 24, to honor a new anniversary of ICAIC (Spanish acronym of Cuban Film Institute). This story is well known, is one of the most widespread plays of Cuban theater and this film version is a tribute to its author, Hector Quintero, as the filmmaker said.
Fátima, the latest film by actor Jorge Perugorría as director, is already in the final stage of post -production. Starring Carlos Enrique Almirante, it is based on the story El parque de la fraternidad, by Miguel Barnet, and tells the story of an original transvestite, self-proclaimed queen of Havana nights.
Fernando Perez, one of our most prominent filmmakers, is still working with Edesio Alejandro on the soundtrack of La pared de las palabras, the most recent project of them that we can enjoy this year.
Omega 3, the first Cuban science fiction film, is also in post-production. Directed by Eduardo del Llano, this post apocalyptic movie starring Carlos Gonzalvo and Daylenis Fuentes and tolerance, key element in the relationships between the characters, works as fundamental thesis of the story.
Pavel Giroud will begin filming El Acompañante in mid-2014, one of the most acclaimed in development stage Cuban film. It s story takes place in 1988 and in the words of its director it tells the story of a great boxer who is caught using doping in the Olympics, and so he is sanctioned. Part of the punishment is to make a kind of social service at Los Cocos sanatorium accompanying the most contentious patient. Both characters have clashing interests, so they have to agree. One wants to return to the ring, to which he must train clandestinely and the other wants to escape from the sanatorium. A very intense relationship is derived from that pact.
The latest film by Kiki Álvarez, Venecia, talks about the challenge of being a woman in today’s Cuba, femininity and hopes. The film follows the adventures of three young hairdressers who in collecting day decide to accompany one of them to buy a dress. That is the starting point for a series of adventures that make up their exotic itinerary, which will last until the next day going through a night that will leave them penniless. At dawn, with no money but with a lot of hope in their pockets, they dream of opening a beauty private salon that they will name as the seductive city of the gondolas.
Supported by the formidable performances of Laura de la Uz, Luis Alberto García, Jorge Perugorría and Isabel Santos, Marilyn Solaya offers us Vestido de Novia. The film addresses the conflict of Rosa Elena and Ernesto, who live in Havana, in 1994. She is a nursing assistant and he is t he head of a construction crew. They fall in love, get married and try to be happy until a secret of her life threatens that harmony and becomes them victims of violence, prejudices and stereotypes in a society that is still governed by patriarchal and sexist attitudes.
Gerardo Chijona´s next film will be a comedy inspired on Bullets over Broadway, by Woody Allen, but dealt with a Cuban humor, yet refined. It is titled La cosa humana , and it is a look into the Cuban crime world but satirical and ironic, because criminals are learned people, they quote Joyce and philosophize all the time. Chijona will take risk with experienced actors but with very little experience in comedy as Laura de la Uz and Carlos Enrique Almirante.
And as culmination of this sort of roll call, we “announce” Vuelos prohibidos, title of Rigoberto Lopez’s last movie, which is currently in filming process.
Photo from the film La emboscada, by Alejandro Gil
