TENERIFE.- October and the light for Cuba now is not a well-run marriage, however it is still a month to illuminate the work of young filmmakers from Camagüey, through El Almacén de la Imagen that this year arrives in Tenerife, Spain , at the invitation of the DocuRock festival.
Benjamín Reyes Báez, programmer and producer of the DocuRock International Music Documentary Film Festival, saw fit to include a sample in the session dedicated to Cuba and the Canary Islands, designed mainly to celebrate the 25 years of the film Mambí, by the Canarian filmmakers Teodoro and Santiago Ríos.
Before the screening of the feature film, nearly 200 spectators from the César Manrique educational center first watched the Cuban shorts.
The works were "Azul" (mini fiction short), by Lisa María Velázquez Serrano; "Rojo" (fiction short), by Juan Carlos Tavío Laurencio; "Piel de hinny" (documentary), by Juan C. Domínguez Diez; and "My race" (animated short), by Henry de Armas.
None have dialogue. They were chosen this way because Cubans have a bad reputation for talking too much; and because young people must take on the challenge of telling things differently.
As there was only half an hour available, four works of different genres or audiovisual categories remained. They all won awards in the corresponding edition of the festival. Some arrived as a project and for their financing the filmmakers applied to the animation pitching and the fiction pitching organized by El Almacén and supported by the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). One detail, Icaic co-produced Mambí.
The subsequent dialogue was broad, enjoyable and beneficial, due to the experiences, advice and charisma of the Ríos brothers; and also for the curiosity and admiration that young Cuban filmmakers always motivate.
I pause in the applause. The audience, mainly made up of students and teachers, praised the workmanship of each work, the difficulties faced, the imaginative and creative solutions to the problems of production and technological resources that young Canarians do not suffer in their context.
With the Ríos brothers and that morning at DocuRock we shared the enthusiasm for the idea, the will to tell stories and the decision to take the risk for cinema. At the end of the day, cinema is a search, a way to get closer to other people and also to rediscover ourselves.
DocuRock is the second Canarian festival that El Almacén de la Imagen comes to this year, an event organized by the Hermanos Saíz Association (AHS), a Camagüey branch, since 1991. Last June it found space at the Festivalito de La Palma, known as the beautiful island.
As part of this cycle that is expanding between the Canary Islands and Camagüey, El Almacén de la Imagen announces for October 26th, 10am, the exchange "DocuRock Educa", with Benjamín Reyes Báez, the founder of the most widespread film festival in Spain, well it lasts three months.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez