International Festival of New Latin American Cinema opens in Havana

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec. 5 (ACN) Tania Delgado Fernandez, director of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, opened the 46th edition of the event on Thursday.

This year's festival is dedicated to honoring the memory of its founder, the renowned Cuban filmmaker Alfredo Guevara, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

At this opening ceremony, whose date coincides exactly with the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Foundation of New Latin American Cinema (FNCL), Delgado Fernandez praised the resilience and reinvention of cinema as virtues that have allowed this year's festival to thrive, despite adversity.

She added that this Latin American cinema—honest, open, sometimes stark, always poetic, dreamy, and magical—is what allows people to return to this event in this beautiful city each year.

She also noted that through film, it is possible to recognize the diverse realities of each society.

For his part, Alexis Triana Hernandez, president of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC by its Spanish acronym), gave a passionate speech recalling Guevara's ideals, which remain at the heart of the festival, in the effort to bring it to all of Cuba to heal the people facing adversity, because, he affirmed, art also heals.
There were also reminiscences of the day the FNCL (National Film Festival of Cuba) was founded, when artists from across the continent gathered at the former Santa Barbara estate, led by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz and the Colombian writer and Nobel Laureate in Literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with the unwavering purpose of continuing to work for a cinema committed to the realities of the people of our continent.

The first night of Cuba's most cinematic festival unfolded thus, amidst reminiscences and celebrations; also amidst the music of the group Espirales, a presentation by Jose Maria Vitier, and the presentation of the Coral Award of Honor to the octogenarian Churubusco Studios of Mexico. and —as a finale— the presentation of the Argentine feature film "Belen", by filmmaker Dolores Fonzi.