The festival will have the collaboration of the Bach Media film producer, also based in the Big Apple. Jes\u00fas Hern\u00e1ndez, its founder, will give a lecture on the independent film production process in Cuba through his experience as producer of La pared de las palabras<\/em>, the first completely independent film made by renowned filmmaker Fernando P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n For Gisele Blain, coordinator of the Festival, \u201cthe social commitment present in Cuban cinema is a window to get to know the island\u2019s different realities.\u201d Born in Costa Rica but of Cuban parents, Gisele, who spoke with OnCuba<\/strong> about the Festival, also belongs to the Department of Hispanic-American Literature of this university.<\/p>\n The Festival\u2019s slogan is suggestive (\u201cfrom utopia to dystopia\u201d). Why was it chosen?<\/strong><\/p>\n When the word utopia is adapted to the Cuban context it acquires a particular connotation. It describes the history of the island in different ways. \u201cFrom Utopia to Dystopia\u201d demarcates a transition that many of us are able to see in political or economic terms. I perceive it the same in social terms.<\/p>\n Nowadays this utopic discourse exists in society as part of the past. In other words: I believe that the future of Cuba is in the now and in the one that searches and needs to immediately see the fruit. The absence of future in the collective imagination places in the arts the responsibility and the task of proposing futures, as aid and orientation to help to come out of the uncomfortable transition.<\/p>\n How did the Festival emerge?<\/strong><\/p>\n The Hispanic Film Festival in Stony Brook University emerged for the first time in the spring of 2010. It was the joint initiative of Ph.D. Dean Albritton and Gabriela \u00c1lvarez with other student graduates from the Department of Hispanic-American Literature and Languages. Motivated by their study interests in the Hispanic-American visual arts they organized to establish this successful annual tradition. This year the Festival will be 8 years old winning over audiences of professors and students.<\/p>\n Why Stony Brook University\u2019s interest in organizing a Festival whose center is Cuban cinema?<\/strong><\/p>\n The interest was motivated by several factors. It fundamentally came up after all the recent events that have fixed the attention of many on Cuba and, specifically, in our case, that of the U.S. people.<\/p>\n Last semester I attended two small talks sponsored in the university, one was about the future of Cuba and the other about Cuban art. The tone and the type of questions asked by those present after the talk caught my attention rather a lot. They were questions marked by curiosity as well as by the lack of knowledge about the subject. Added to these experiences, my research studies are interested in Cuban visual arts. Coinciding with my recent visit last January to the Cuban Institute of Cinema Arts, I brought in my luggage the inspiration for the festival and a long list of Cuban film titles.<\/p>\n Why do you believe there is a growing interest in the United States in cinema currently being made in Cuba?<\/strong><\/p>\n Cuban cinema is able to project in a natural way stories that create windows to different realities in Cuba. Different factors have an incidence in the interest in the United States in Cuban cinema. What\u2019s most attractive is to have access to the Cuban imagination through an art recognized for its elaborate simplicity, which promotes the narrative creativity, establishing a complexity dependent on the story, the actors, the photography and not in high-budget productions.<\/p>\n The Cuban films El acompa\u00f1ante<\/em>, La pared de las palabras<\/em>, Conducta<\/em> and Esteban<\/em> will be presented in the Festival. Why were those chosen specifically?<\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to considering that each one of these films are excellent films in terms of Cuban artistic talent and that their productions are recent, I was looking for films that would help me cover social themes.<\/p>\n
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