CUBAN CINEMA INVADES THE KENNEDY CENTER TOO

As an indissoluble part of the island's cultural heritage, films could not be excluded from the "Arts in Cuba: from the Island to the World" festival, which will shake the John F. Kennedy's facilities for two weeks starting May 8. With the curatorship of Iván Giroud, the director of the International Festival of the Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano (New Latin American Cinema,) among the fifty events scheduled, "Havana Film Festival 40-Year Retrospective" covers a total of six titles. The opening will be on Saturday 12 with the screening of restored copies of two classics of Iberian-american cinema: “Memorias del subdesarrollo” (Recollections from Underdevelopment) (1968), by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and Lucía (1968), by Humberto Solás, which celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. After half a century of their existence, the release of both restored copies was possible thanks to the initiative of The World Film Foundation, in the laboratory L'immagine Ritrovata of the Cineteca in Bologna to then start their new life in international competitions in the section «Cannes Classics.»

A set of four well-known films exhibited in the forty-year history of the Havana Festival also make up the retrospective. First, a new copy of Retrato de Teresa (1979), by Pastor Vega, as a preamble to the programming of a distinguished trilogy with the highest award of the contest: Fresa y chocolate (1993), made by Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, Suite Habana (2003), by Fernando Pérez and Conducta (2014), by Ernesto Daranas.