The President of the Executive Board of the San Diego Latino Film Festival, Gonzalo Lopez is in Havana these days. His presence on the island not only reaffirms the ties of friendship between the festivals of Havana and California; but it is an opportunity to assess the current state of the Latin American cinema.
Questioned by OnCuba about the latter, Lopez stated that, in his opinion "Cuban and Latin American Cinema are at a healthy moment."
With a history of 20 years, the San Diego Festival has succeeded in uniting the efforts of different film makers, institutions and persons associated to the movie industry with two main goals: to serve as bridge to the diverse aesthetics of our varied continent and to spread the cinema realized by Latin people.
Based on that, during the alst ten years, the executive board includes a sample of Cuban cinema, in which movies like as “ Habanastation “, “ Ticket to the paradise ” and “ Juan of the dead persons ” have been exhibited.
On the other hand, according to Lopez “the most important role has been played by two institutions of prestige and vitality in the Cuban cinematographic area: The International School of Cinema and Television of San Antonio de los Baños and ICAIC.”
On the current state of the Cuban cinema he affirmed that a process of thematic approach with Latin America is happening. “In Cuba they are working more and more topics related to the family, the aging, the violence and the migration. The economic shortages also occupy an important place due to the impact of the crisis. In this sense the most representative things come from Argentina and Chile”
Precisely the above mentioned thematic approach is what allows Havana to be one of the most important moments previous to the sample that, year after year, takes place in March in the Californian city. This way Cuban and Latin American topics become, “more and more personal and psychological without putting aside the big topics of the past.” Everything relates to a conjunction between tradition and modernity, or better, between the most recent creation and its immediate past.
Author
Jorge G. Arocha 
