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2nd ANNUAL INSTAR FILM FESTIVAL
The 2nd Annual INSTAR Film Festival, held online in December 2021, had a special focus on independent audiovisual production carried out in Cuba from 2019 to date, a period marked by the pandemic, the absence of the Muestra Joven Festival, and an escalation of the climate of censorship and repression against alternative and anti-establishment art on the island. Through special presentations, thematic sections, and a retrospective of the experimental filmmaker Manuel Marzel, the eroded map of Cuban film produced outside the institution continued to be reconstructed. Work from Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic was also shown, and a theoretical program of talks and workshops on various topics (distribution of independent cinema, genre cinema in Latin America, queer cinema, women’s cinema, etc.). Among the international guests were artists Milo Rau, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Alejandro Brugués, Adrián García Bogliano and Alejandro Fadel, as well as Cubans Heidi Hassan, Miguel Coyula, Patricia Pérez, Jorge Molina, Ivonne Cotorruelo and Boris Prieto, among others. The curatorial criteria favored a hybrid and transversal view of cinematographic creation, discarding taxonomies or classifications in use: works of traditional cinema were integrated with video art, web series, performance and experimental cinema.
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PROGRAMMING
Curated by:
José Luis Aparicio Ferrera
THEORETICAL ACTIVITIES
Saturday, December 4
The document trail. Talk with the Swiss artist #MiloRau, moderated by Tania Bruguera.
Monday, December 6
Exiled dialogues. Emigrant voices talk about Cuban cinema and migration. With: Heidi Hassan, Partícula Pérez, Claudia Claremi, Ana Alpízar, otros realizadores. Moderador: Reynaldo Lastre
Tuesday, December 7
“I want to promote a film.” Distribution of independent cinema in Cuba Talk about distribution in Cuban cinema. With: Boris Prieto, Ivonne Cotorruelo, Daniela Muñoz Barroso, and Maria Nela Lebeque.
Wednesday, December 8
The unofficial story. Genre film in Latin America and the Caribbean. With: Alejandro Brugués, Adrián García Bogliano and Alejandro Fadel
Thursday, December 9
Blue highways: The spiritual road movies of Alonso Ruizpalacios. A talk with the Mexican filmmaker #AlonsoRuizpalacios
Friday, December 10
Pájares. A talk on film and dissident identities. With: Danae C Dieguez, Nonardo Perea y Lazaro J. González González
December 9 to 11
Workshop: Deconstructing the visual archive of a community (in collaboration with Haus der Kulturen der Welt)
Saturday, December 11
5 pm (de Cuba) Festival closes
SECTIONS
La isla en peso (The weight of the island)
Political violence, material precariousness, frustration and laziness. La isla en peso, a tribute to Virgilio Piñera’s great poem, presents filmic allegations – vivisections – of contemporary Cuba. The disease of the social body from the density of its fragments.
Mal de archivo (Archival illness)
“But who ultimately has authority over the institution of the archive?” asked Jacques Derrida at the end of the last millennium. The elements of this program, named in reference to its important study, review and reinterpret the selection, assembly and re-elaboration of the document, some of the deepest traumas of recent Cuba.
La otra Cuba (The other Cuba)
The history of Cuba as referred to by those in power is a compendium of censorship and omissions, a story of convenience. The films in this section, which appropriates the title of a beautiful documentary by Orlando Jiménez, propose an archaeology: to recover that Cuba that was taken from us in some of its most powerful visions.
Derivas queer (Queer drifts)
Exile and cleverness, but never silence, these filmmakers seem to say to Joyce. Sexual and political dissidents take a position in the drift of exile, that space suspended between two times.
Cine-performance (Performance film)
Neither cinema nor theater nor performance. Frontier audiovisuals. These hybrid, unclassifiable pieces could only be brought together under what Gilles Deleuze called “the time-image.”
Márgenes (Margins)
Social limits that expand other aesthetic limits. The films grouped here, although disparate, assume edgy poetics, the peripheries of the subject.
Así de simple (It’s that simple)
Crossed perspectives on the feminine: roles, desires, needs, deficiencies. This program, a tribute to the homonymous film by Carolina Nicola, one of the first autonomous feature films made in Cuba, explores the kitsch, the dystopian, the private and the self-referential.
FOCO: Latinoamérica (Focus on Latin America)
Multiple visions of our closest continent: surreal, historical, traumatic. An outward look that turns inward, because to gaze at the other is also to see oneself.
RETROSPECTIVE: Manuel Marzel
Manuel Marzel is Cuba’s great Dadaist filmmaker. Never mind that he’s probably the only one. His denial of the rational, his taste for the absurd and his decadent and ironic anarchism, shape a cinema whose only principle is to have no principles. In this retrospective we present remastered and gleaming copies of three of his most important films.
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
A media voz
Dir. Patricia Pérez & Heidi Hassan / Cuba, España, Francia, Suiza / 2019 / 80’
Quiero hacer una película
Dir. Yimit Ramírez / Cuba, Mexico, France / 2020 / 91’
Dancing in the street, 11 grados de separación
Dir. Germán Ayala, James Benning, Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Alessandro Focareta, Yuji Kodato, Melisa Liebenthal, Andrea Novoa, Fabiana Salgado, Letícia Simões, Francesca Svampa, Yamel Thompson, Jaime Guerra / Cuba / 2020 / 68’
Corazón azul
Dir. Miguel Coyula / Cuba / 2021 / 104’
LA ISLA EN PESO
NOW!
Dir. Eliecer Jiménez Almeida / Cuba / 2016-2021 / 5’ min
Un chino cayó en un pozo
Dir. Carlos Alejandro Rodríguez Halley / Cuba / 2019 / 20’
Rojo, Amarillo, Verde
Dir. Ricardo Figueredo / Cuba, Colombia / 2020 / 9’
El matadero
Dir. Fernando Fraguela / Cuba / 2021 / 54’
MAL DE ARCHIVO
Causa No.1, 1989. Nosotros los acusados aquí…
Dir. Hamlet Lavastida / Cuba / 2019 / 2’
Amnesia colonial (avenencia)
Dir. Claudia Claremi / Cuba, España / 2020 / 11’
35 permutaciones en tres actos y un epílogo
Dir. Josué García & Marcos A. Yglesias / Cuba / 2020 / 51’
DERIVAS QUEER
Pandemos
Dir. Lázaro González / USA / 2021 / 17’
Sexilio
Dir. Lázaro González / Cuba, USA / 2021 / 57’
Vulgarmente Clásica X
Dir. Nonardo Perea / Cuba, Spain / 2021 / 71’
Cuba también es queer
Dir. Nelson Julio Mairata / Cuba / 2021 / web-series
LA OTRA CUBA
Alberto
Dir. Raúl Prado / Cuba / 2019 / 23’
El gran impaciente
Dir. Carlos Arenal / Spain / 2020 / 55’
Sueños al pairo
Dir. José Luis Aparicio & Fernando Fraguela / Cuba, USA / 2021 / 33’
La lucha
Dir. Fernando Fraguela / Cuba / 2021 / 6’
CINE-PERFORMANCE
Dorcas Gustine
Dir. Adonis Milán / Cuba / 2019 / 8’
Eugene Carman
Dir. Adonis Milán / Cuba / 2019 / 8’
John Cabanis
Dir. Adonis Milán / Cuba / 2019 / 5’
Sala R
Dir. Lynn Cruz / Cuba / 2021 / 74’
Walker
Dir. Josué García / Cuba / 2021 / 20’
MUTE
Dir. Abel Rojo & Anyelo Troya / Cuba / 2020 / 4’
Revolución
Dir. Grisell Monzón & Abel Rojo / Cuba / 2021 / 3’
MÁRGENES
Yeyo en la loma
Dir. Josué García / Cuba / 2020 / 21’
Hora azul
Dir. Zoe García / Cuba / 2020 / 15’
Historias de ajedrez
Dir. Emmanuel Martín / Cuba / 2019 / 77’
Si te ríes pierdes
Dir. Edgar Pérez & Leonardo Vargas / Cuba / 2020 / 56’
ASÍ DE SIMPLE
Hapi Berdey Yusimi in Yur Dey
Dir. Ana Alpízar / U.S.A., Cuba / 2020 / 13’
New Eva
Dir. Natalí Cardet / Cuba / 2020 / 16’
Gesto para Elena
Dir. Elena Llovet / Cuba / 2021 / 4’
Umbra
Dir. Daniela Muñoz / Cuba / 2021 / 10’
FOCO-LATINOAMERICA
Seguimos aquí
Dir. Alex Ortega / Mexico / 2019 / 12’
Matiné
Dir. Alex Ortega / Mexico / 2019 / 17’
ECOS
Dir. René Villanueva, Pedro Pablo Hernández de Obeso & Joab Gabriel Molina / Mexico / 2020 / 16’
Oxígeno
Dir. Adrián Díaz / Dominican Republic / 2020 / 3’
El árbol de Matías
Dir. Pilar Perdomo Munévar / Colombia / 2020 / 70’
RETROSPECTIVA-MANUEL MARZEL
A Norman McLaren
Dir. Manuel Marzel / Cuba / 1990 / 10’
Evidentemente comieron chocolate suizo (último rollo)
Dir. Manuel Marzel / Cuba / 1991 / 13’
La ballena es buena
Dir. Manuel Marzel / Cuba / 1991 / 7’
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PRESS
Festival de Cine INSTAR, otra grieta en el muro de la censura
Diario de Cuba December 20, 2021
Obras del cubano Ricardo Figueredo son exhibidas en la muestra de Cine Independiente
Diario de Cuba December 20, 2021
Homenaje al realizador cubano Manuel Marzel en el Festival de INSTAR
Rialta
December 15, 2021
INSTAR premia películas “incómodas” para el Estado Cubano
Cuballama December 14, 2021
El futuro del cine cubano (Orlando Rojas sobre QHUP)
Diario de Cuba December 10, 2021
Proyectan películas censuradas en Cuba durante segundo Festival de Cine INSTAR
Ciber Cuba
December 8, 2021
Festival de Cine INSTAR: Augurios y presentes del audiovisual cubano
Hypermedia Magazine 7 de Diciembre 2021
‘El matadero’, documental del realizador cubano Fernando Fraguela, se estrena en el Festival de Cine INSTAR
Rialta
December 6, 2021
II Festival de Cine Instar
14ymedio December 4, 2021
Comienza ya la segunda edición del Festival de Cine INSTAR
Diario de Cuba December 3, 2021
Comienza la segunda edición del Festival de Cine INSTAR
The World News December 3, 2021
A las puertas del II Festival de Cine INSTAR
Rialta
December 2, 2021
La Habana tendrá otro festival de cine en diciembre
Cuballama December 1, 2021
II Festival de Cine INSTAR: “Por la salud del cine cubano”
Rialta
August 7, 202