Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: The Hour of the Furnace by Fernando Solanas.Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Solanas, best known for his 1968 documentary The Hour of the Furnace and his manifesto "Toward a Third Cinema", has died. Celine Sciamma has started filming her follow-up to Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The film, entitled Petite Maman, will be filmed by regular collaborator Claire Mathon and will focus on the childhood of two eight-year old kids. Although her adaptation of Denis Johnson's Stars at Noon has been delayed, Claire Denis will be reteaming with Juliette Binoche and Bastards star Vincent Lindon for a still-untitled film. Sean Baker has also confirmed that his "secret movie" called Red Rocket, starring Simon Rex (of the Scary Movie franchise), will complete shooting this month. Recommended VIEWINGStarting on November 16, Jr and Alice Rohrwacher's...
- 11/11/2020
- MUBI
I have been visiting Cuba since 2000 when I went there to perfect my Spanish. My Spanish is still far from perfect but I have grown to love Cuba. Since I went there to learn and happened upon the Havana Film Festival which is held this year December 3rd to 13th, I have returned to the Festival every year and have found a world of great talent which increasingly is raring to get out into the world.
Ivan Giroud is a part of that Festival world and actually is now its most important part (aside from the films and filmmakers that is). Starting from zero, he is now considered one of the most qualified specialists in Latin American Cinema.
Read on to see who he is and how he sees Cuban and Latin American Cinema.
How did you get into film?
I was born in Havana in 1957.
I have loved cinema since I was very young. However I did not study film as there was no cinema school in Cuba until 1986.
I had a general education and graduated in Civil
Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Havana in 1981.
I am self-taught in film – what’s that called?
You are an autodidact.
Yes, an autodidact.
In the 70s, Cuba had the best cinema in the world and the best posters as well. These posters remained the finest posters in the world throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Yes, they are silk-screened and on display and for sale. I myself treasure the poster of one o my favorite fims, “Suite Habana” by Fernando Pérez .
In my last year working as a civil engineer I contacted Icaic seeking employment. In 1981 friends in film, like Daisy Granados, the star of “Cecilia” gave me work on her film. I met her husband, Pastor Vega, a filmmaker who was also the first Director of the Festival from 1979 to 1990, a post he took after finishing “Portrait of Teresa” Pastor said ‘Come work with me’ and so in 1988 I entered the industry at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic), as a senior specialist and organizer of Cuban and Latin American cinema destined for Europe and North America. The job was like a programming job.
The International Festival of the New Latin American Film in Havana (aka Havana Film Festival) had sections for auteurs, socialist countries, American films and docs. It had the best films, was the preeminent film festival for Latin American cinema and was the only market where all of Latin America gathered to consider the films. It still remains a gathering place for the cineastes throughout Latin America and includes a well-respected coterie of the pioneers of Latin American cinema who created the films that best defined Latin America Cinema in the 60s and then were silenced by the dictatorships which prevailed until the 90s….like Raúl Ruiz, Aldo Francia, Patricio Guzmán and Miguel Littin from Chile, Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos from Brazil Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino from Argentina.
At the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991 (known in Cuba as “The Special Period”), I entered the Directorate of the Festival and Vega left and returned to filmmaking. There were other Directors, and in 1994 I became the Director. Alfredo Guevera, the public face of the festival for many years came back to Cuba and became President; we worked together from 1994 to 2010, my first term as the Festival Director.
The Special Period was very, very difficult, the worst of times for everyone and for all Latin American cinema. Brazilian cinema nearly disappeared. The state film organization Embrafilme had been producing 800 films a year and that disappeared for a long time.
Argentina declined in the 90s. Mexico remained active but also declined in the quality of its films. When I began as Director, Cuba was very poor, both economically and creatively. But there was also a generational change and I learned that every decline gives birth to a new generation and new creativity, and so it was.
Schools of films began training new talent. Eictv, the International Film School, funded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Nobel Prize money opened its doors in 1987. New schools opened in Argentina and Brazil as well. The Havana Film Festival stood as a testimony to this growing generation as it showed the first works and shorts of the likes of Trapero and others in whom you could see new Latam talent developing.
The Havana Film Festival catalogs are a history of cinema as it was the biggest programmer of films. It still gives the best view of Latam cinema today. It is still important as it gives a full picture of Latam cinema and the people in Latam cinema. Eictv is producing the most interesting film makers in the world. For 37 years the Festival was the best, though today there are not many Latam fests. This one was different. You could get to know the whole cineaste community. It never lost a generation; the older members still make movies and the festival helps them to be seen and known.
In 2010 I went to Madrid where I spent five years. In 2002 I began working on a Dictionary of Iberoamerican Cinema. This 1,000 page book was finished in 2008. From 2008 to 2010 I was the director of the festival from Spain. I also ran an arthouse theater in Madrid, the Sala Berlanga, named after a very important Spanish director a little younger than Bunuel.
In 2012 I wanted to return to Cuba where I worked on the Cuban Dictionary of Film. In April Guevera died and Icaic pulled me back to be President and Director.
Since May 2013 I have been Director of the Casa del Festival and President of the International Festival of New Cinema in Havana.
What about the filmmaker Pavel Giroud? Is he your brother?
No, he’s my nephew. He came into the business a different way, through design. He began producing music clips and then went to Eictv. From a painter he evolved into a moviemaker. He has made three films. His newest, “El Acompañante” (“The Companion”) won the best project award at San Sebastian’s 2nd Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum in 2013.
This is Giroud’s third solo film after “The Silly Age” and “Omerta”. The producers: Luis Pacheco’s Jaguar Films is Panama’s best-known production/services company. The Cuban producer is Lia Rodriguez who also runs the industry section of the Havana Film Festival. It is also produced by the Cuba/ Panama-based Arete Audiovisual, Panama’s Jaguar Films, Venezuela’s Trampolin Impulso Creativo and France’s Tu Vas Voir (Edgard Tenembaum) who produced Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries”.
Set in 1988 Cuba, “The Companion” is about a friendship between a disgraced boxer forced to serve as a warden – in Cuban government jingo-speak, a “companion” – for an HIV victim.
What is different about the current state of your festival?
Now there are many Latin American Film Festivals, but ours was and still is different because it allows you to know the whole cineaste community. We never lost a generation. The older generation still is making movies and the younger generation is very present. The Festival helps make them known.
What about the new developments between USA and Cuba?
That is the most asked question today.
We have always had U.S. films and U.S. citizens have always visited in cultural exchanges. We’ve had Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon in the earliest years. We’ve invited Arthur Penn, Sean Penn, John Sayles, the Coen Brothers. Danny Glover and Benecio del Toro are frequent visitors. Annette Benning and Koch Hawk of the Academy were guests. We were always well connected to the U.S. independents so that is nothing new.
The change is that It will be easier for Americans to visit and to learn.
When I went to Cuba the first time, I was actually surprised to see so many Afro-Cubans. For some reason I assumed USA was the only nation with former slaves. I should have realized the Spanish also traded in slaves but only when I was in Cuba did I “get” it. Now I see the world so differently.
In Cuba black and white races mixed and the mixture (the mulatto) is what is a Cuban today. U.S. has segregation by and large. Latinos live together, Asian, African-Americans are all separated and that creates a totally different mentality.
I am very interested in African Diaspora films and Cuba has a lot. I have always enjoyed the documentaries. You can’t see them anywhere else.
This year there is a great documentary, “They are We" (“Ellos son nosotros”). It is anthropological about the Cuban town Matanza. Matanza has some of the best music in Cuba. It investigates their African roots in Sierra Leone and identifies ancestors and where they were from. Determined to find the exact origin of songs coming from there, the Australian filmmaker - researcher spent two years showing images throughout the region in Sierra Leonie until he confirmed that the Cubans were singing songs similar to the language of an ethnic group made extinct because of the slave trade.
I’ll send you the BBC article. (Read it here)
Thank you Ivan for this hour of your time. I am so happy to have finally connected with you after seeing you for so many years in Havana and in Toronto (where you stay with Helga Stephenson, the subject of an earlier post: Read it here )
More on Ivan:
Ivan has provided advice to other Latin American film festivals and has collaborated on research projects and screenplays, as well as in the production of theater and classical music. In 2008 he was invited to speak at the seminar Contributions of Latin American cinema to world cinema in the first American Film Congress held in Mexico City in the Congress book stories presented in common 40 years / 50 movies of Latin American cinema, of which he is one of its editors.
He was a visiting professor of the Master in Management of the Film Industry Carlos III University courses in 2010, 2011 and 2012. He is one of four directors of the Dictionary of Latin American Cinema; with Carlos F. Heredero, Eduardo Rodríguez Merchán, Benard da Costa and João project Sgae of Spain, consisting of 10 volumes and 16 thousand entries. Between 2008 and 2012 he was Director of audiovisual programming and Berlanga Room Buñuel Institute Foundation Author of Spain, a period in which he was international adviser Icaic.
Ivan Giroud is a part of that Festival world and actually is now its most important part (aside from the films and filmmakers that is). Starting from zero, he is now considered one of the most qualified specialists in Latin American Cinema.
Read on to see who he is and how he sees Cuban and Latin American Cinema.
How did you get into film?
I was born in Havana in 1957.
I have loved cinema since I was very young. However I did not study film as there was no cinema school in Cuba until 1986.
I had a general education and graduated in Civil
Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Havana in 1981.
I am self-taught in film – what’s that called?
You are an autodidact.
Yes, an autodidact.
In the 70s, Cuba had the best cinema in the world and the best posters as well. These posters remained the finest posters in the world throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Yes, they are silk-screened and on display and for sale. I myself treasure the poster of one o my favorite fims, “Suite Habana” by Fernando Pérez .
In my last year working as a civil engineer I contacted Icaic seeking employment. In 1981 friends in film, like Daisy Granados, the star of “Cecilia” gave me work on her film. I met her husband, Pastor Vega, a filmmaker who was also the first Director of the Festival from 1979 to 1990, a post he took after finishing “Portrait of Teresa” Pastor said ‘Come work with me’ and so in 1988 I entered the industry at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic), as a senior specialist and organizer of Cuban and Latin American cinema destined for Europe and North America. The job was like a programming job.
The International Festival of the New Latin American Film in Havana (aka Havana Film Festival) had sections for auteurs, socialist countries, American films and docs. It had the best films, was the preeminent film festival for Latin American cinema and was the only market where all of Latin America gathered to consider the films. It still remains a gathering place for the cineastes throughout Latin America and includes a well-respected coterie of the pioneers of Latin American cinema who created the films that best defined Latin America Cinema in the 60s and then were silenced by the dictatorships which prevailed until the 90s….like Raúl Ruiz, Aldo Francia, Patricio Guzmán and Miguel Littin from Chile, Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos from Brazil Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino from Argentina.
At the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991 (known in Cuba as “The Special Period”), I entered the Directorate of the Festival and Vega left and returned to filmmaking. There were other Directors, and in 1994 I became the Director. Alfredo Guevera, the public face of the festival for many years came back to Cuba and became President; we worked together from 1994 to 2010, my first term as the Festival Director.
The Special Period was very, very difficult, the worst of times for everyone and for all Latin American cinema. Brazilian cinema nearly disappeared. The state film organization Embrafilme had been producing 800 films a year and that disappeared for a long time.
Argentina declined in the 90s. Mexico remained active but also declined in the quality of its films. When I began as Director, Cuba was very poor, both economically and creatively. But there was also a generational change and I learned that every decline gives birth to a new generation and new creativity, and so it was.
Schools of films began training new talent. Eictv, the International Film School, funded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Nobel Prize money opened its doors in 1987. New schools opened in Argentina and Brazil as well. The Havana Film Festival stood as a testimony to this growing generation as it showed the first works and shorts of the likes of Trapero and others in whom you could see new Latam talent developing.
The Havana Film Festival catalogs are a history of cinema as it was the biggest programmer of films. It still gives the best view of Latam cinema today. It is still important as it gives a full picture of Latam cinema and the people in Latam cinema. Eictv is producing the most interesting film makers in the world. For 37 years the Festival was the best, though today there are not many Latam fests. This one was different. You could get to know the whole cineaste community. It never lost a generation; the older members still make movies and the festival helps them to be seen and known.
In 2010 I went to Madrid where I spent five years. In 2002 I began working on a Dictionary of Iberoamerican Cinema. This 1,000 page book was finished in 2008. From 2008 to 2010 I was the director of the festival from Spain. I also ran an arthouse theater in Madrid, the Sala Berlanga, named after a very important Spanish director a little younger than Bunuel.
In 2012 I wanted to return to Cuba where I worked on the Cuban Dictionary of Film. In April Guevera died and Icaic pulled me back to be President and Director.
Since May 2013 I have been Director of the Casa del Festival and President of the International Festival of New Cinema in Havana.
What about the filmmaker Pavel Giroud? Is he your brother?
No, he’s my nephew. He came into the business a different way, through design. He began producing music clips and then went to Eictv. From a painter he evolved into a moviemaker. He has made three films. His newest, “El Acompañante” (“The Companion”) won the best project award at San Sebastian’s 2nd Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum in 2013.
This is Giroud’s third solo film after “The Silly Age” and “Omerta”. The producers: Luis Pacheco’s Jaguar Films is Panama’s best-known production/services company. The Cuban producer is Lia Rodriguez who also runs the industry section of the Havana Film Festival. It is also produced by the Cuba/ Panama-based Arete Audiovisual, Panama’s Jaguar Films, Venezuela’s Trampolin Impulso Creativo and France’s Tu Vas Voir (Edgard Tenembaum) who produced Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries”.
Set in 1988 Cuba, “The Companion” is about a friendship between a disgraced boxer forced to serve as a warden – in Cuban government jingo-speak, a “companion” – for an HIV victim.
What is different about the current state of your festival?
Now there are many Latin American Film Festivals, but ours was and still is different because it allows you to know the whole cineaste community. We never lost a generation. The older generation still is making movies and the younger generation is very present. The Festival helps make them known.
What about the new developments between USA and Cuba?
That is the most asked question today.
We have always had U.S. films and U.S. citizens have always visited in cultural exchanges. We’ve had Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon in the earliest years. We’ve invited Arthur Penn, Sean Penn, John Sayles, the Coen Brothers. Danny Glover and Benecio del Toro are frequent visitors. Annette Benning and Koch Hawk of the Academy were guests. We were always well connected to the U.S. independents so that is nothing new.
The change is that It will be easier for Americans to visit and to learn.
When I went to Cuba the first time, I was actually surprised to see so many Afro-Cubans. For some reason I assumed USA was the only nation with former slaves. I should have realized the Spanish also traded in slaves but only when I was in Cuba did I “get” it. Now I see the world so differently.
In Cuba black and white races mixed and the mixture (the mulatto) is what is a Cuban today. U.S. has segregation by and large. Latinos live together, Asian, African-Americans are all separated and that creates a totally different mentality.
I am very interested in African Diaspora films and Cuba has a lot. I have always enjoyed the documentaries. You can’t see them anywhere else.
This year there is a great documentary, “They are We" (“Ellos son nosotros”). It is anthropological about the Cuban town Matanza. Matanza has some of the best music in Cuba. It investigates their African roots in Sierra Leone and identifies ancestors and where they were from. Determined to find the exact origin of songs coming from there, the Australian filmmaker - researcher spent two years showing images throughout the region in Sierra Leonie until he confirmed that the Cubans were singing songs similar to the language of an ethnic group made extinct because of the slave trade.
I’ll send you the BBC article. (Read it here)
Thank you Ivan for this hour of your time. I am so happy to have finally connected with you after seeing you for so many years in Havana and in Toronto (where you stay with Helga Stephenson, the subject of an earlier post: Read it here )
More on Ivan:
Ivan has provided advice to other Latin American film festivals and has collaborated on research projects and screenplays, as well as in the production of theater and classical music. In 2008 he was invited to speak at the seminar Contributions of Latin American cinema to world cinema in the first American Film Congress held in Mexico City in the Congress book stories presented in common 40 years / 50 movies of Latin American cinema, of which he is one of its editors.
He was a visiting professor of the Master in Management of the Film Industry Carlos III University courses in 2010, 2011 and 2012. He is one of four directors of the Dictionary of Latin American Cinema; with Carlos F. Heredero, Eduardo Rodríguez Merchán, Benard da Costa and João project Sgae of Spain, consisting of 10 volumes and 16 thousand entries. Between 2008 and 2012 he was Director of audiovisual programming and Berlanga Room Buñuel Institute Foundation Author of Spain, a period in which he was international adviser Icaic.
- 11/19/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
I haven’t traveled all I have to Buenos Aires and back to tell you about how this festival, alongside Mar del Plata and Valdivia (this last one in Chile), form the triad of the most important festivals of Latin America, because if you know about it, you know about it. People that have travelled to Argentina for the past 17 years in April have felt the presence of cinema in the streets—and Buenos Aires is a big city. The importance of a festival that brings over 300 titles, some of them for the first time crossing an ocean, is fundamental for the Latino viewer, as well for those who want to make the effort and come to see the movies that play here. On a closer look, what plays here may seem to be eclectic at times, it is purely due to what seems to be the motto of the festival: discovery.
- 6/8/2015
- by Jaime Grijalba Gómez
- MUBI
Via The Seventh Art
"Made in Argentina in 1968, The Hour of the Furnaces (La hora de los hornos) is the film that established the paradigm of revolutionary activist cinema," argues Nicole Brenez in Sight & Sound. "'For the first time,' said one of its writers, Octavio Getino, 'we demonstrated that it was possible to produce and distribute a film in a non-liberated country with the specific aim of contributing to the political process of liberation.' The film is not just an act of courage, it's also a formal synthesis, a theoretical essay and the origin of several contemporary image practices." The New Inquiry points us to the film on YouTube as well as Getino and Fernando Solanas's essay, "Towards a Third Cinema."
In other news. "The BFI has scored a considerable coup, revealing that it has uncovered a copy of what is not only the earliest surviving film...
"Made in Argentina in 1968, The Hour of the Furnaces (La hora de los hornos) is the film that established the paradigm of revolutionary activist cinema," argues Nicole Brenez in Sight & Sound. "'For the first time,' said one of its writers, Octavio Getino, 'we demonstrated that it was possible to produce and distribute a film in a non-liberated country with the specific aim of contributing to the political process of liberation.' The film is not just an act of courage, it's also a formal synthesis, a theoretical essay and the origin of several contemporary image practices." The New Inquiry points us to the film on YouTube as well as Getino and Fernando Solanas's essay, "Towards a Third Cinema."
In other news. "The BFI has scored a considerable coup, revealing that it has uncovered a copy of what is not only the earliest surviving film...
- 3/10/2012
- MUBI
Still from The Artist
The 2011 edition of Mumbai Film Festival can boast of a strong French connection. Not only does it include a strong line-up of French films in a special section, but it will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cannes Critics Week by presenting a retrospective of 25 films.
The special section called ‘Rendez-vous with French Cinema’ will be co-organized with the French Embassy in India and Unifrance. For those who remember, this is the fourth edition of the event in Mumbai which has been merged with the Mumbai Film Festival this year. The past three editions were held separately as film festivals. This section will bring to Mumbai some of the critically acclaimed contemporary French films which include The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius, The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Robert Guédiguian and Declaration of War by ValérieDonzelli.
The Artist which will open the section competed at the Cannes Film...
The 2011 edition of Mumbai Film Festival can boast of a strong French connection. Not only does it include a strong line-up of French films in a special section, but it will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cannes Critics Week by presenting a retrospective of 25 films.
The special section called ‘Rendez-vous with French Cinema’ will be co-organized with the French Embassy in India and Unifrance. For those who remember, this is the fourth edition of the event in Mumbai which has been merged with the Mumbai Film Festival this year. The past three editions were held separately as film festivals. This section will bring to Mumbai some of the critically acclaimed contemporary French films which include The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius, The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Robert Guédiguian and Declaration of War by ValérieDonzelli.
The Artist which will open the section competed at the Cannes Film...
- 10/10/2011
- by Nandita Dutta
- DearCinema.com
"Released in that mythical year of 1968, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment is, like its main character, both part of and apart from its time," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in the La Weekly. "While Argentine revolutionaries Fernando Ezequiel Solanas and Octavio Getino were penning guerrilla filmmaking manifesto 'Towards a Third Cinema' and Jean-Luc Godard was jettisoning mainstream production for an uncompromising foray into radical Marxism, Underdevelopment spoke the international language of political modernism (montage, found footage, self-reflexivity) in order to look back on an actually successful revolution in dejection and frustration. Redcat's pairing of this landmark of Latin American cinema with Miguel Coyula's unofficial sequel, Memories of Overdevelopment, highlights the enduring importance of the former and the avant-garde heritage sought and earned by the latter." Between Displacement and Nostalgia: Conflicted Memories of Cuba begins this evening at 6:30.
- 10/23/2010
- MUBI
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.