Havana Film Festival

Every December, cinephiles descend on Havana for the annual festival of Latin American cinema. The capital swells with fans, film directors and movie stars who come to celebrate the best of avant-garde Latin American cinema in a busy and exciting swirl of screenings, talks, Q&As, exhibitions, and, of course, competitions. Celluloid tales in fiction, documentary, and animation, are among the festival entries.

The iconic Hotel Nacional in Vedado is transformed into the centre of operations, and is the fount of all information related to the festival where movies are screened across the city’s most well-known picture houses (including the Yara, La Rampa, Payret, and Charles Chaplin), exhibitions are held at Vedado’s Pabellón and Casa del Festival, and talks are held at various venues across the city. Last year also saw the reopening of the Sala-Teatro Círculo de Artesanos, at Cuba’s seat of film, the EICTV (Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión) in San Antonio de los Baños.

Since the festival’s foundations in 1979, Cuba has collected the top prize, the Coral, some five times — the last in 2003 with Fernando Peréz’s Suite Habana.

Last year’s festival feature highlights included the overall Coral winner La vida útil (2010) by Federico Veiroj, a Uruguayan-Spanish co-production about the life and unemployment of a cinema worker; José Martí: El ojo del canario (2010), a Cuban-Spanish collaboration by Fernando Pérez about the life of Cuba’s national hero that won, among other awards, the Director’s Coral Prize; and the screening of the sensual, seductive and magical animation Chico y Rita (2010), a British-Spanish co-production directed by Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal and Antonio Errando.

While visiting the festival, film fans will want to get on location with movies filmed in Havana. Dine at Paladar La Guarida, used as a set in 1993’s festival winner Fresa y Chocolate, and buy ice cream at La Coppelia where protagonists Diego (Jorge Perugorría) and David (Vladimir Cruz) meet.

The next Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano (www.habanafilmfestival.com) will be held from December 1st-11th 2011. The festival used to be notorious for the difficulty in keeping tabs on all the screenings and events. Festival goers can now keep on top of the game using a daily service provided by www.entumovil.cu/

Itinerary

• Day 1 Stay at the Hotel Nacional. Eat strawberry and chocolate ice cream as in the movie of the same name at nearby Coppelia ice cream parlour.
• Day 2 Stay at the Hotel Nacional. Dine at Paladar La Guarida also used in the seminal movie Fresa y Chocolate.
• Day 3 Stay at the Hotel Nacional. Meet Cuba’s most famous actress, Mirta Ibarra, at her favourite Havana restaurant.
• Day 4 Stay at the Hotel Nacional. Visit the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in San Antonio de los Baños.
• Day 5 Stay at the Hotel Nacional. Visit the site of Sloppy Joe’s (undergoing renovation) which appeared in the movie of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana.
• Day 6 Stay at the Hotel Nacional. Visit ICAIC HQ in Vedado and admire all the vibrant cinema photos before buying a selection plus DVDs of Cuban movies in the Cafe Fresa y Chocolate bar opposite.
• Day 7 Stay at the Hotel Nacional

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