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NEWS
Festival warms to 'Havana' amid chill of U.S.-Cuba relations
Wed Dec 17, 7:32 AM ET
By Harlan Jacobson, USA TODAY
Suite Havana, an essentially silent cascade of images about the hopes
and dreams of ordinary Cubans, won five awards at the 25th Havana
International Film Festival last weekend.
By acclaimed 55-year-old Cuban director Fernando Perez (Life Is to
Whistle), Suite Havana is the official Cuban nomination to the Oscars
and will be shown in the Palm Springs Film Festival's foreign Oscar
nominees section in January. A screening at the Miami Film Festival in
February is pending.
Despite a warm reception for the film, the return chill in U.S.-Cuban
relations was felt throughout the festival. On Dec. 31, all cultural
exchange and other interest-group travel to Cuba will be prohibited,
except by immediate family members of Cuban citizens and humanitarian
missions. It's part of the Bush administration's plan to reduce the flow
of dollars to Cuba.
Cuba fell out of fashion in Hollywood this year, as prominent U.S.
filmmakers and critics imposed a de facto embargo by staying away.
Angered by the regime's imprisonment of Cuban journalists and the
execution of boat hijackers last spring, major European and American
film names were noticeable by their absence - including Oliver Stone
(news), whose Comandante, a 90-minute celebrity-style interview with
Fidel Castro, played to two packed screenings at the festival.
That Cuba has a nominee to the Academy Awards at all is due to the late
Gregory Peck (news), a former president of the academy, who persuaded
the Oscar's board to end the ban on Cuban submissions.
Benicio del Toro and director Terence Malick were in Havana but
unaccompanied by any films, and Constantin Costa-Gavras (Z, Stateof
Siege) came for a retrospective of his work.
"Many Americans are scared to come here this year," acknowledged Ivan
Giroud, who is in his 10th year as head of the festival. "All the legal
ways for cultural travel to come to Cuba have been made more
complicated."
But perhaps the film speaks to Cuba's political struggles as well.
"Suite Havana speaks about the human capacity to survive, to struggle
for a better life, and do it in an honest and clean way," Giroud
reflected. "It says that we Cubans can live in the most difficult
conditions but have such a strong spirit we still have a purpose for
life."
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