6. To Cuba and Back: Four Short Films from EICTV
Cuba’s International Film and TV School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV). With Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez (d. 2014) as one of its principal founders, and Argentinean filmmaker Fernando Birri as its first director, the school has produced a steady stream of artists, encouraging collaboration across borders and serving as a microcosm of Latin American cinema. It continues to admit students from around the world to study film in an intimate setting. This program introduces four ambitious works by these young film students.
Open String
Cuerda al aire- CUBA / 2011 / Spanish / Color / Blu-ray / 33 min
Director: Marcel Beltrán
Photography: Román Lechapelier
Editing: Sergio Caraballo
Sound: Raphäel Barani
Producer: Victoria Paz Álvarez
The life of viola player Anolan, who lives in Havana with her mother, interects with that of Gerardo, a farmer from Sierra Maestra. Revealing a startling sense of instinct and intimacy, the film portrays two people who appear to be total opposites and yet harbor similar anxieties about their work and about the future.
The Big House
La Casona- CUBA / 2013 / Spanish / Color / Blu-ray / 24 min
Director: Juliette Touin
Photography: Quetzalli Malagon
Editing: Alonso Renato Viquez
Sound, Music: Denis Colina
This film is set in a home for pregnant women who face lives of hardship. In the home, which has existed since the Cuban Revolution, the old and young talk of the drama of the past and of the future to come. Fifteen-year-old Yudi is one of them. Anxious about her relationship with an irresponsible man, she waits to give birth to a new life.
ABC’s
ABECÉ- CUBA / 2013 / Spanish / Color / Blu-ray / 15 min
Director, Photography, Editing, Producer: Diana Montero
Script: Diana Montero, Alán González
Sound: Jayisha Patel
Sound Design: Gastón Saenz
Production Assistant: Pablo García
Cast: Leoneidi Acosta, Leonardo Acosta, Maykel Rosales, Jesús Maykel Rosales
Leoneidi, a twelve-year-old girl from Sierra Maestra, spends her days performing the work of wife and mother in a playful state of mind, nevertheless careful to gauge her husband’s disposition at all times. Her candid childlike words and the film’s tranquil images provide incisive commentary on the social problems that lurk beneath the surface.
The Tree
Derakht- CUBA, IRAN / 2014 / Persian / Color / Blu-ray / 14 min
Director, Script: Roya Eshraghi
Photography: Freidell Urbina
Editing: Ahmed Abdallahi
Sound: Victor Quintanilha
Producer: Diana Reyes
The director, an Iranian living in Cuba, dedicates this film to her father, who lives in another country. He reads a poem—composed of words of fear despairing the increase in mass exile and rootless people worldwide—told of a tree growing in an abandoned ruin.