Culture has made a
deep impression throughout the year
Mireya Castañeda
ONE year is an apparently short space of time in
life. When it concerns appreciating what has
occurred over that period in the field of culture
alone, it so happens that it has made a deep
impression on the memories of many people.
It is precisely those "many" that marks the
difference in Cuba. Throughout the past twelve
months it is the public, spectators, readers, film
enthusiasts, music lovers, dancers, who have become
the subject of every artistic manifestation that you
could care to mention.
Fairs, festivals, concerts, awards, albums,
visiting artists, confirm their significance thanks
to the response that they have received, and there
are millions on this island.
This year 2009, however, was magnified by the
50th anniversaries of two institutions: the Casa de
las Américas and the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC).
FILM
On March 24, Alfredo Guevara was awarded the
Order of José Martí, the highest distinction
presented by the Cuban state, thus acknowledging the
trajectory of Cuban revolutionary cinema in the
defense of revolutionary work, the transformation of
the spiritual life of our people and the
conservation of the historic memory.
President Raúl Castro personally presented the
decoration to Guevara, one of the founding members
of ICAIC.
A survey conducted in 2009 on the Top 100 Ibero-American
films produced some interesting results. Tomás
Gutiérrez Alea, Titón (1928-1996) was awarded the
number one spot for his film Memories of
Underdevelopment (1968), as we celebrated its
40th anniversary.
During the year of ICAIC’s 50th anniversary,
celebrations reached their peak with the screening
of several feature films, each representing a
welcome diversity with respect to themes, genres,
and styles, coming from filmmakers of various
generations. La anunciación, by the maestro
and National Film Prize winner Enrique Pineda Barnet;
El cuerno de la abundancia, from Juan Carlos
Tabío, and two debut films, Los dioses rotos
by Ernesto Daranas, and Ciudad en rojo by
Rebeca Chávez.
Later on in the year, the 31st Havana Film
Festival awarded Coral prizes to El premio flaco
/Iraida Malberti, Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti,
and Lisanka /Daniel Díaz Torres.
The film festival deserves its own paragraph.
There were 10 intense days to see the best films
from the region, those in competition, and also
films from other countries. In the recently
concluded edition, the Official Selection alone
included 110 films, and more than 170 outside of
competition.
El secreto de sus ojos, the most recent film
from Argentine director Juan José Campanella,
starring well-known actors Ricardo Darín (winner of
the Coral for Best Actor); and Guillermo, Francella,
and Soledad Villamil, was chosen to inaugurate the
festival and was awarded the Jury’s Special Prize at
the end of the event.
We have already published the results of the
awards but just to recap: La teta asustada by
Peruvian director Claudia Llosa won the Best Feature
Film Coral and Catalina Saavedra took home the Best
Actress Coral for her performance in La Nana
(Chile).
Cuba had to console itself with the majority of
the 11 prizes awarded by Cuban institutions and
organizations linked to the world of culture,
specialized journalists and critics: four of them
went to Juan Carlos Cremata for El premio flaco.
Three U.S. celebrities were also present during
the festival, namely director Curtis Hanson (L.A
Confidential); Robert Kraft, president of the
Fox Music Inc., who gave a master lecture on music
and cinema; and guitarist and composer Gary Lucas
who, in a world premiere, played live his score for
the Latino Drácula.
During 2009, four Oscar winners also visited
Havana: James Caan, Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, and
Benicio del Toro, the Puerto Rican actor who
received the Tomás Gutiérrez Alea International
Prize awarded for the very first time by the Union
of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC).
Two other Hollywood stars who traveled to the
island to inaugurate the Casa del Cine del Caribe
were Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte.
MUSIC
One great protagonist over the past twelve months
has been music. A tremendous event without doubt was
the Peace without Borders concert. The idea of
Colombian singer Juanes turned out to be a
controversial one. And yet…international stars of
ballads, rock, fusion, pop, merengue, and salsa sang
in the Plaza de la Revolución before 1.15 million
people.
The names? The charismatic Puerto Rican diva Olga
Tañón; Spaniard Miguel Bosé; Carlos Varela; Juanes
himself; Silvio Rodríguez; Spaniards Luis Eduardo
Aute and Víctor Manuel; Puerto Rican Danny Rivera;
hip-hop group Orishas; Cucu Diamantes and Yerba
Buena; Italian performers Jovanotti; X Alfonso;
Ecuadorian Juan Fernando Velazco; Amaury Pérez and
Los Van Van.
A surprise ending saw Van Van joined on stage by
all the artists for a reprisal of a song by the
unforgettable Compay Segundo, his "Chan Chan", very
Cuban and also universal.
Two albums of tremendous artistic value were
Gracias and Juntos para siempre, by Omara
Portuondo and Bebo and Chucho Valdés, respectively,
which both won Latin Grammy awards, presented to
them in the United States, thus overcoming the
political and commercial barriers that have pushed
musical quality into the background for decades.
The Latin Grammy for Best Contemporary Tropical
Album went to Omara for Gracias and the
second, in the category of Best Latin Album, went to
Juntos para siempre, recorded by Chucho
Valdés and his father Bebo.
With her album Gracias, Omara also won the
CUBADISCO Grand Prize, together with Juan Formell
and Van Van for Aquí el que baila gana, the
album that opens with "Chapeando" and
continues with some of the group’s greatest hits,
"El baile del buey cansa’o," "Anda ven y muévete,"
"El negro está cocinando," "Marilú," … tracks that
have got people dancing for 40 years.
Another musical event during 2009 was the 25th
International Jazz Plaza Festival which, according
to its president Chucho Valdés, shows the world that
Cuba is still the queen of Latin jazz.
To mention just a few of the visiting artists who
have performed here this year…U.S. group Kool and
the Gang; acclaimed Mexican rock group Café Tacuba
and the French singer-songwriter of universal fame,
Manu Chao.
On the international scene, the world was shaken
by the deaths of the King of Pop Michael Jackson,
whose album Thriller sold more than 41 million
copies and also, of Mercedes Sosa, the legendary
voice of Latin American song who made famous tracks
such as "Gracias a la vida" and "Cuando tenga la
tierra".
LITERATURE
It was wonderful to start the year with the 120th
anniversary of The Golden Age, a 32-page
monthly publication exclusively written by José
Martí, the national hero of Cuban independence.
Another essential anniversary to be recalled: the
80th anniversary of Doña Bárbara by Rómulo
Gallegos, Venezuela’s most famous novel.
Now let’s talk about Casa de las Américas, whose
foundation in April 1959 is owed, over and above
anything, to the integrationist and Latin American
vision of Haydeé Santamaría, heroine of the assault
on the Moncada Garrison in 1953, of the underground
struggle in the cities and the guerrilla war in the
Sierra Maestra.
Casa has spent the past five decades linking
Cuba, despite the blockade, with the countries of
Latin America and the Caribbean; of spreading the
best of the culture of Our America and promoting its
creative talents.
As early as 1959 itself, a literary contest was
convened that later became known as the Casa de las
Américas Literary Prize, now indelibly linked to the
history of Latin American and Caribbean literature.
Eminent names have been linked to the work of
Casa including Alejo Carpentier, Ezequiel Martínez
Estrada, Manuel Galich, Harold Gramatges George
Lamming, Juan José Arreola, Julio Cortázar and Mario
Benedetti, whose death this year left the Latin
American literary world in mourning.
Another farewell, this time to Cintio Vitier, was
equally painful, but he has left behind a body of
work that includes poetry, essays and research
papers into José Martí that will last forever.
We began with the public and now it is time for
readers. The Cuban International Book Fair – this
year in its 18th edition and with Chile as the Guest
of Honor – was inaugurated by the Chilean President
Michelle Bachelet and Cuban President Raúl Castro in
a ceremony at the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress.
At the event, Cuba’s well-known "avid" readers
had the difficult task of choosing between more than
1,000 new titles with a print run of six million.
The Book Fair has become one of the island’s most
significant cultural events. A veritable fiesta for
the family, visited by more than four million people
in 40 venues in 16 different cities.
BALLET
For anyone who follows Cuban culture, there is
nothing new about saying ballet is not just for the
elite on the island. So when the Royal Ballet of
London came to Havana and pandemonium broke out
inside and outside theaters, it was "normal," just
like during a year when the International Festival
of Ballet takes place.
For its debut, the Royal Ballet decided on
Chroma, by Wayne McGregor; A Month in the
Country, by the great Frederick Ashton, and as a
tribute to ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso,
Theme and Variations, which George Balanchine
created for her and Igor Youskevitch in 1947. The
closing gala, a spectacular version of Manon
with choreography by Kenneth MacMillan, which became
a classic of the 20th century, featured Spanish
ballerina Tamara Rojo and Cuban Carlos Acosta.
The Sasha Waltz and Guests Company, considered an
ambassador of German contemporary dance, also
performed in Havana as part of festivities for the
50th anniversary of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba.
That company performed for the first time in 1960
two choreographies by Ramiro Guerra with suggestive
titles, Mulato and Mambí, and Study of
waters, staged by Lorna Burdsall of the United
States.
Dancer and professor Miguel Iglesias has been
guiding the steps of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba for
the last 21 years, and has encouraged collaboration
with Dutchman Jan Likens, author of Folía and
Compás; with Algerian Samir Akika, in
Nayara, Look but Don’t Touch; with Catalonian
Rafael Bonachela, choreographer of Demon- Crazy,
and most recently with the Swedish Mats Ek, who
staged Casi-casa.
The dance world went into morning after the death
of the prestigious German choreographer Pina Bausch,
founder of the Tanztheater de Wuppertal company.
THE VISUAL ARTS
The world of the visual arts was enthused by the
10th Havana Biennale, an event of considerable
international participation and well-established
prestige, organized by the Wilfredo Lam Center.
The Biennale turned the city into one giant art
gallery – more than 100 spaces if you include those
of the venue proper, where 300 artists from 54
countries took part, along with those dedicated to
Cuban art.
Casa de las Américas, for its part, dubbed the
year 2009 as "Kinetic Year," describing a tendency
that illustrates the feeling of movement and
transformation.
The first exhibition was From abstraction…to
kinetic art, with artists from Argentina, Brazil,
Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Hungary, Mexico, Romania/Cuba
and Venezuela, and then, until January, the one-person
exhibitions of Chilean Matilde Pérez; Argentines
León Ferrari and Rogelio Polesello, Venezuelan
Carlos Cruz-Diez, Argentine/French Luis Tomasello
and maestro Julio Le Parc, still open.
Art from the future had to be part of the year’s
events, with the 10th Digital Art Salon and Contest,
under the aegis of the Pablo de la Torriente Brau
Cultural Center.
THEATER
The performing arts were definitely sealed by the
13th International Festival of Theater in Havana,
where more than 60 groups, national and
international, demonstrated their diverse esthetic
offerings.
Altogether, a total of 71 Cuban and international
productions were enjoyed in more than 30 spaces,
insufficient to meet the demand of the 75,000 people
who flocked to see them.
To be sure, there were many shows, awards,
concerts, fairs and festivals in 2009, and most
satisfying of all, all of very high quality. •
