Brian de Palma shares experiences at Havana Film Festival

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 13 (acn) Surrounded by Cuban filmmakers and students, the American director Brian de Palma spoke about the challenges of making films, his stories and the elements that, in his opinion, directly influence on the psychology of characters and interpreters.

Special guest of the 38th edition of the Havana Film Festival, the creator of films like Casualties of War (1989), Dressed to Kill (1980) and The Untouchables (1987), among others, talked for nearly two hours about his conceptions as an artist, in an atmosphere of continuous exchange of ideas.

Young people have no excuses today to stop making art, the digital age encourages us to less worry for production costs, you only need a camera and a laptop to start creating, said the director of Redacted, film highly acclaimed during this same period in 2007.

Although it is good to tell our own stories, we must try to direct the materials of others, to get in touch with their way of creating, thinking, to structure the characters, said this eternal admirer of the work of Alfred Hitchcock, well-known master of suspense.

On the violence in his films and the treatment of women, de Palma confessed smilingly that "the history of cinema is the history of man photographing women"; which is why he does not hesitate to include women in his films, even if containing an exaggerated nuance of action.

He also commented on the need to pay attention to elements such as sound and music during the processes of conception of a work, since these intervene as an actor more within the plot and psychology of the film.

Finally, when asked about his expectations with the Havana Film Festival, he exclaimed: ¡Viva Cuba! Aware that for more than two decades the locals have been anxiously awaiting his visit.

Brian de Palma is passionate about the seventh art, focusing mainly on the work of Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski and Jean-Luc Godard.

The thriller was his standard for several years, although two works belonging to the fantastic genre: Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and above all, the enormous success of the first adaptation of a novel by Stephen King: Carrie (1976), were the ones that placed him as one of the most interesting authors of the new Hollywood cinema, which emerged in the 1970s.