By Jay M. Amberg. Bloomberg Lifestyles. Mon, 20 Mar 2000, 12:57pm EST
New York, March 17 -- The first Havana Film Festival, a celebration of 41 years of Cuban cinema, will open 7 p.m. tomorrow at Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave. at 2nd Street in the East Village, New York.
The festival will screen 13 programs comprising more than 40 films produced from 1959 to today.
Films in the festival include a selection of features, documentaries, shorts and animation. The films' diverse themes showcase the various cinematic styles of contemporary Cuban cinema.
Of special interest to cigar aficionados is a short film (7 minutes) called ``El Arte del Tabaco,'' to be screened at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
The film is a montage of colorful and historic Cuban cigar trimmings, intermixed with visuals that show the process of manufacturing cigars.
Trimmings, sometimes incorrectly called ``covers,'' are the colorful lithographs that Cuban brands use to distinguish themselves from one another.
For example, the red and gold crossed sword pattern of Havana's famous Montecristo brand of cigars is a trimming. When the artwork is featured on the top of the box it's called a ``vista.'' When used on the inside cover of the box it's referred to as a ``Cubierta.''
A modern box of Cuban cigars can have about seven different trimmings, but it's the vista that really catches the eye.
This documentary has no dialogue. Filmmaker Tomas Gutierrez Alea uses traditional Cuban music that accentuates the orchestrated movements of the hands of the torcedores (cigar roller).
Since Cuba's cigar industry is so dependent on the weather, a 25-minute film entitled ``Ciclon'' by Santiago Alvarez could be of significant interest to Cuban cigar collectors.
The film, to be shown at 8 p.m. Sunday, is a documentary about Hurricane Flora, a storm that ravaged the western Cuban provinces of Camaguey and Oriente for five days in October 1963.
Alvarez took a small film crew to western Cuba after the storm to document how the routine lives of ordinary Cubans were disrupted by this natural disaster.
While not related to cigars, other Cuban films worth seeing are ``Yo soy del Son a la Salsa,'' a documentary on the evolution of Cuban music from Son to Salsa and ``Vaqueros del Cauto,'' a classic Cuban documentary in black and white about the life of Cuban cowboys who work along the Cauto
River.
A delegation of members of the Havana film community will lead a series of discussions on issues relating to the film industry in Cuba today during the film festival.
For a complete listing of the Havana Film Festival see http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/filmschedule.html or call (212) 505-5181.
©2000 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. |