THIS 2010 has been a good year for Cuban film. If you like precise information, four feature films, 18 documentaries, eight shorts and 10 animated films have premiered.
 
For the 32nd edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, six full length fiction feature films have been selected, four in the Official Section, of which only one, José Martí: El ojo del canario, by Fernando Pérez, has been screened. The other three are Larga distancia, by Esteban Insausti; Casa Vieja, by Léster Hamlet; and Boleto al Paraíso, by Gerardo Chijona.
 
The other two Cuban films competing for the Coral Prize in the fiction feature film category, but in the First Work section are Afinidades, co-directed by Jorge Perugorría and Vladimir Cruz, and Molina’s Ferozz, by Jorge Molina.
 
Fernando Pérez’ film, José Martí: El ojo del canario, premiered, commented on, applauded, offers a dramatic, tender, contemporary view of the childhood and adolescence of then man who became Cuba’s national hero and an immense poet.
 
Without betraying history or disrespecting the biographical content, Fernando Pérez, recipient of the 2007 National Film Prize, has mixed reality and fiction in an attempt "to recreate daily life in the 19th century, because he wanted a living family, not a sacrosanct image nor one distant in time, with a contemporary reading, not a statuary Martí, but one with whom young people of today can identify via his problems."
 
To achieve those propositions, Fernando Pérez engaged an all star cast, and it is no accident that the actors are all prizewinners. "For Martí, I knew that I had to find someone with a certain regard," the producer confided at the time, and he found it in Damián Rodríguez (Martí, the child) and Daniel Romero (third year student at the National School of Arts), while two seasoned actors took on Leonor Pérez, his mother, and Mariano Martí, his father: Broselianda Hernández and Rolando Brito, who interpret the roles with the profound humanity of the real figures.
 
The other dedicated director competing for the Coral Prize is Gerardo Chijona, with a film premiering at the Festival, Boleto al paraíso. More known as a comedy director, his movies include Adorables mentiras, Un paraíso bajo las estrellas and Perfecto amor equivocado, he is now presenting himself in another genre.
 
The film has a script signed by Chijona himself, Francisco García and Maykel Rodríguez, inspired by testimonies in the book Confesiones a un médico, by Jorge Pérez Avila. The issue? HIV-AIDS.
 
The cast is broad and, as in almost all contemporary Cuban films, combines young actors and veterans, here for example Miriel Cejas and Héctor Medina, with Jorge Perugorría, Blanca Rosa Blanco, Alberto Pujol and Paula Alí.
 
Debuting alone behind the cameras with their fiction feature films are Esteban Insausti and Léster Hamlet, who also debuted together in the film Tres veces dos.
 
Léster Hamlet decided on a well known work, the stage play La casa vieja, by Abelardo Estorino, National Theater and Literature Prize winner.
 
For his Casa Vieja, the very well known producer of video clips, had the support of actors Yadier Fernández, Daisy Quintana, Alberto Pujol, Adria Santana, Susana Tejera, Isabel Santos and Manuel Porto, who gave sound performances.
 
This year, the film won the Grand Prize; Best Set Design for a fiction feature film in the Humberto Solás International Festival of Low-Budget Film.
 
The fourth film in competition in the Official Section is Larga distancia, taken from a script by the same director, Esteban Insausti. Also unscreened to date, the film, like Casa Vieja, deals with the issue of emigration and how it affects family and friends.
 
Described as contemporary drama, Larga distancia is brought to life by actors Alexis Díaz de Villegas, Tomás Alejandro Cao, Zulema Clares, Mailyn Gómez, Miriam Socarrás, Ania Bu, and those two great artists Coralia Veloz and Verónica Lynn.
 
Afinidades, co-directed by Jorge Perugorría and Vladimir Cruz, the famous actors of the extremely famous Fresa y chocolate is included in the First Works Section
 
When they began to film, their own affinities spoke: they learnt to direct in a co-production; acted in their last film together, El cuerno de la abundancia; have directed shorts; and both of them were born in 1965.
 
The title of their first feature film seemed obvious: Afinidades, based on Vladimir Cruz’ script about the novel Música de cámara, by Cuban writer Reinaldo Montero.
 
For that debut behind the cameras they played safe with the technical team: Derubín Jácome as art director (responsible in this capacity for La bella del Alhambra, by Enrique Pineda Barnet, Un hombre de éxito, by Humberto Solás or Clandestinos, by Fernando Pérez); the younger director of photography, Luis Najmias, with the experiences of La edad de la peseta and Omertá, both by Pavel Giroud; and the sound track, created by Silvio Rodríguez.
 
According to Cruz, the film is a psychological drama with humor, focused on four characters, the men portrayed by the directors themselves and the women by Spaniard Cuca Escribano and the Cuban Gabriella Griffith.
 
A young, less well known director, Jorge Molina, is the second Cuban competing for the for the First Work Coral with Molina's Ferozz, a film which received some funding from the Cinergia Audiovisual Promotion of Central America and the Caribbean Foundation.
 
This unscreened feature film is, without any doubt, innovative: a horror film (for which reason it appears in the Fantasy and Horror Cinema in Latin America Section).
 
Molina has commented that his film was inspired by Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, and the children’s story Little Red Riding Hood, by Charles Perrault, so that "in addition to horror, it is charged with eroticism."
 
Meanwhile, in the important Latin American First Copy Section, where producers look for funding to complete their films, Juan Carlos Cremata is present with his fourth feature film, Chamaco, based on the play of the same name by Abel González Melo, whose stage premiere was a great success in Havana.
 
The film had "a dress rehearsal" this year at the inauguration of the 9th Young Producers Festival but, according to its director, it still needs final editing for its transfer to 35mm for commercial screening.
 
In the medium and short fiction films slot Cuba has only entered one movie, Los bañistas, by Carlos Lechuga, but four are there in the Documentaries Section: A dónde vamos, by Ariadna Fajardo; ALABBA, by Eliezar Pérez; En el cuerpo equivocado, by Marilyn Solaya, the first documentary to approach the issue of transexuality in Cuba; and Revolution, by Mayckell Pedrero, about the hip-hop group, Los aldeanos.
 
Three Cuban animated films are competing for a Coral Prize, El dictado, by William Arguelles; Nikita Chama Boom, by the maestro Juan Padrón; and La tia Chela, from the Puberty Series, directed by Ernesto Piña.
 
Cuban filmmakers are everywhere in the Festival; for example, participating in the competitions for screenplays and posters; in the Latin American Panorama (Memorias del desarrollo, Miguel Coyula Aquino); naturally in Made in Cuba; and even in the new Vanguard Section (Nos quedamos, by Armando Capó).
 
The Festival is also paying tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Audiovisual Media Faculty of the Institute of Arts (ISA), and responding to what its president, Alfredo Guevara, described as "giving greater visibility to our new filmmakers."
 
To be recompensed and win a Coral is a great experience for filmmakers, but without any doubt, so is being seen and appreciated by their own public. The International Festival of New Latin American Cinema offers that possibility to the region’s producers, including, Cuban directors, who are out in force this time, with 78 films in all genres and in all sections.