PEARL FILMS - NYFilmFest

Distributed by CubaNet Org. - Sept. 29, 1996.

CUBAN FILMMAKERS ACCUSE THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL OF INTOLERANCE.

CONTACTO - Magazine, a monthly publication addressed to the Cuban American community.

BURBANK, CA.- Several Cuban filmmakers accused the organizers of the New York Film Festival of "maintaining a pattern of intolerance" towards films made by Cuban exiles, in which denunciations against the regime of Fidel Castro are made. This censure was issued on September 28, 1996.

The filmmakers who made the accusation were interviewed by a national news program in Spanish, UNIVISION.

In this case we're talking about the film "Bitter Sugar", by filmmaker Leon Ichazo, (director of Sugar Hill, etc.) and the documentary 'This is Cuba' filmed by a young American, Chris Hume, neither production was allowed to participate the festival.

"This is a pattern through which they determine which films can or cannot participate", said the director of Cuban film Jorge Ulla, creator of the documentary "Nobody Listened", in which the theme of the violations of human rights in Cuba is explored.

"There's a pattern of intolerance (at the New York Film Festival) since 1988, when Ulla and the late Nextor Almendros were not allowed to present "Nobody Listened" stated Ichazo to UNIVISION.

"This also happened with the documentary '8-A', about the firing squad murder of General Arnaldo Ochoa, produced by exiled Cuban filmmaker Orlando Jimenez Leal", added Ulla.

Richard Pena, director of the festival, denied these accusations and said that four people would make the selection of the films to be presented at the festival "without taking into account their content", but only their artistic quality". He gave the example of the film "Strawberry and Chocolate", a production of the Cuban Institute of Arts and Film Industry (ICAIC), under the government's control, which had taken part in the festival some time ago.

There was an attempt to give an image that "Strawberry and Chocolate" was a film critical of the Cuban regime, but exile Cuban filmmakers disagreed.

"This is a movie of veiled criticism and censored by ICAIC..... the package that the Cuban government wants to portray abroad", underscored Ichazo.

"Strawberry and Chocolate", by the late Tomas Gutierrez Alea, was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Foreign Film of the Year last year. It deals with the theme of intolerance towards homosexuals in Cuba, but it presents it as an isolated phenomenon among certain revolutionary leaders.

During the early 1980's, "Improper Conduct" became the first open denunciation against intolerance towards homosexuals and dissidents at the hands of the Cuban government. This documentary dealt with the infamous concentration camps of UMAP, in which many young Cuban homosexuals, members of religious groups and dissidents, were jailed during the 1980's.

Several of those interviewed in that documentary were important figures such as Cuban writers Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Heberto Padilla and Carlos Franqui, as well as world renown Susan Sontag and Spaniard Juan Goytisolo.

Approximately five million French watched the debut of "Improper Conduct" documentary on T.V.

Cuban filmmakers presented a document, written by Pena during the debut of "Improper Conduct', in New York, in the 1985, in which the current president of the NY Film Festival characterized the film as "an attack on the stability of the Cuban Revolution".

The majority of Cuban filmmakers affected, have international recognition in their field. One of those mentioned, the late Nestor Almendros, who created the documentaries 'Improper Conduct', along with Jimenez Leal, and 'Nobody Listened', with Mr. Ulla, had a long career in Europe and Hollywood, (cinematography: The Last Metro, Days of Heaven, Kramer v. Kramer , Places in the Heart, New York Stories, etc.) where he even earned an Oscar: Best Cinematography, in the 1978 for Days of Heaven (R. Gere, B. Adams, S. Shepard, d. by T. Malick.)

Cuban activists will be handing out leaflets at the entrance to the Festival, issuing a statement of denunciation of the "intolerance" towards such Cuban films. "A New Story of Intolerance", says a headline of the leaflets.

From Los Angeles, Cuban painter Gilterto Romero said to CONTACTO that he had felt "a similar scheme of discrimination" towards his person and his artistic works, at the hands of sectors of American culture with 'leftist' leanings, ever since he decided to stay in the United States, in 1994, and specially after having openly criticized Castro's regime.

Romero has had more than 200 art exhibitions in Cuba, Europe, Latin America, Japan, and the United States.

Dr. Ana L. Rodriguez, who spent more than 19 years in Cuban political prisons and who wrote, while in exile, the book Diary of a Survivor (Diario de una Sobreviviente), assured us of having felt the same discrimination upon her graduation as a doctor from the Dominican Republic. Mysteriously, her student records were lost in that country.

One of her professors told her: "You have made the mistake of confronting the greatest man in America in this century", - meaning Fidel Castro.

During a presentation made by CONTACTO of Dr. Rodriguez in Union City, New Jersey, last September 10, Cuban writer Vicente Echerri, talking about the theme of how Cuban's denunciations are ignored said: "We Cubans are bearers of bad news. We are travelers who are returning from a golden future, a utopia, the socialist paradise, saying that it is not a paradise at all, but a horrible human hell".

Translated for CubaNet by Luordes Arriete