KINOCUBAN The Significance of Soviet and East European Cinemas for The Cuban Moving Image Author: Vladimir Alexander Smith Mesa Degree Doctor of Philosophy University College London November 2011 1 I, Vladimir Alexander Smith Mesa, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract KinoCuban: The Significance of Soviet and East European Cinemas for the Cuban Moving Image examines a piece of evidence that has been misunderstood in the existing body of Cuban film studies. The first revolutionary legislation concerning the arts was the creation of the ICAIC in 1959, a fact that demonstrates the importance of cinema for the new cultural project. This thesis argues that the moving image was radically affected by the proclamation of the socialist character of the Revolution on 16 April 1961. What was it that the distant audiovisual culture, film theories and practices of the Soviet-bloc offered Cubans? Is it not the case that Soviet-bloc cinemas had an influence upon the shaping of the Cuban moving image, if one takes into consideration the very few films co-produced in 30 years? It should be stressed that during this period, the moving image was the direct or indirect effect of the different waves that arrived in Cuba from ‘the other’ Europe, which were born at the same time as the first films that were co-produced in the 1960s, particularly from the unique experience of Mikhail Kalatozov’s masterpiece Soy Cuba. The present study reveals that the most important outcome from that influence was the conceptualisation of the cinematic discourse of the Revolution, so well represented in ICAIC and its socialist films of commitment. The experience included the introduction of new practices in television in order ‘to de-colonize’ the moving image. KinoCuban analyses the impact on four main subjects: film theory and criticism; film administration; the filmmakers’ works (films, videos, and television practices) and the spectator. KinoCuban works within the area of postcolonial studies and takes Ortiz’s transculturation as its starting point. KinoCuban argues that the experience was a process of give and take, thus ‘lo exacto es hablar de continuidad’. 3 Acknowledgements This research is a reality thanks to many people and organisations within and outside University College London. My PhD thesis would not have been possible without the emphatic support and sincere friendship of Lic. Deborah Gil, a specialist at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, Havana, Cuba. I would also like to express my profound thankfulness to Enrique Pineda Barnet, Julio García Espinosa, Kurt Maetzig, Manuel Herrera, Aaron Yelín, Jana Bokova, Fernando Birri, Monika Krause, Lizette Vila, Tomás Piard, Arturo Sotto, Fernando Pérez, Želimir Žilnik, Loipa Araujo (Octavio Cortázar’s widow), Laura Estrems (Mario Rodríguez Alemán’s widow), Vicente Revueltas, Julio Matas, Miriam Gómez (Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s widow), Belkis Cuza Malè (Heberto Padilla’s widow), Mirta Ibarra (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s widow), Edmundo Desnoes, Vicente Ferraz, Sergio Giral, Alfredo Guevara, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Eusebio Leal, Prof. Enrico Mario Santí, Prof. Dina Iordanova, Dr. Jacqueline Loss, Dr. Jennifer Ruth Hosek, Dr. Theo Van Alst, Dr Jeremy Hicks, Dr. Jonathan Curry-Machado, Pauline Jones, Dr. Michael Jones, Lise Jones, Dr. Liz Mandeville, Maria Fernanda Ortiz (Fernando Ortiz’s daughter), Juan Carlos Betancourt, Pablo Conde, Patricia Bossio, Agustina Castro Ruz, Carlo Nero, Vanessa Redgrave and Dolores Calviño. My eternal gratitude goes out to the late: Titón, Humberto Solás, Pastor Vega, Octavio Cortázar, Adolfo Llauradó, Sergio Corrieri, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Raquel Revuelta, José Antonio Portuondo, Julio Le Riverand, Vicente González Castro and to Alejo Carpentier, who taught me my first words in Russian when we were living in Paris. I will never forget his kindness to me. 4 I also wish to express my gratitude to my former colleagues at the Oficina del Historiador de la Habana, in particular to Lic.Raida Mara Suárez, Lic.Magaly Torres, Lic.Natacha Moreira and Lic.Ana Lourdes Insúa. A special thank-you goes to the ICAIC, Fundación del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, the International Film and TV School in San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV), the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, the BFI Library, the LSE Library, the British Library, the Library of the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA), Canning House Library, Senate House Library-University of London, Fundación Fernando Ortiz and the ICRT staff and specialists, Irma Campoamor, Iratxe Gardoqui, Nigel Arthur, Christine Anderson, Maria Eulalia Douglas (Mayuya), Zoia Barash, Ambrosio Fornet and Sara Vega. I also feel indebted to Prof. Michael Chanan and Prof. Julian Graffy, who provided materials as well as encouragement, particularly concerning my first video work filmed in London, Una confusión cotidiana (2007). I would like to acknowledge the financial support of University College London. Different grants for specific project or research-related activities have been made available by the Graduate School Research Projects Fund, the UCL Spanish and Latin American Department and the UK Association for the study of Latin America (SLAS, Society for Latin American Studies), for library/archive research and also conference organising and attendance such as SLAS annual conferences and the international event Cuba-USSR and the Post-Soviet Experience, which took place in February 2007 at the University of Connecticut), among many others. My eternal gratitude goes to UCL Futures and the Bloomsbury Theatre for helping me to materialise my project: the UCL Festival of the Moving Image, an annual international celebration of audiovisual culture that was born from my PhD research,(http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0811/08111704). 5 I am grateful for the generous support of UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), in particular to Ms Lesley Pitman, SSEES Librarian, and UCL Library Services management, which enabled me to work in UCL-SSEES in the first place. It is difficult to express the depth of my gratitude to Isabel de Madariaga, Professor Emeritus of Slavonic Studies at UCL-SSEES and my line-manager, Head of SSEES cataloguing team, Ms Philippa H. Robins. I would like to thank my colleagues in UCL Library Services, particularly in UCL-SSEES Library for their help and support. I especially want to thank Dr Ursula Phillips, Dr Wojciech Janik, Gillian Long, Ann Smith, Cameron Bain, Andrea Zsubori, Patrycja Barczyńska, Genny Grim, Eleanor Brennan, Jorge Gallardo, Steve Sawle, Suzana Tamamović, Erika Panagakis, Zuzana Pinčíková, Maria Cotera, Toby Reynolds, Darko Nožić, Lenka Peacock and Vlasta Gyenes. I am grateful to them all. My gratitude also to UCL Language Centre, in particular to Simon Williams, academic writing courses co-ordinator, who helped me in editing and polishing the text of the thesis in the final stages. My PhD supervisors: Professor Stephen Hart (UCL-Spanish and Latin America Department) and Dr Philip Cavendish (UCL-SSEES Russian Department) deserve my highest recognition for their encouraging spirit, for their guidance throughout the research and for their approach in academic matters. Supportive in the most diverse ways were my relatives and friends in Britain and in Cuba, who followed the progress of my work with both patience and encouragement. My greatest thanks go to my mother Carmen and to my late father Gilberto, to my sister Soraya, to my brothers Miguel, Jorge, Roberto and Raúl, to my daughters, Arielle and Fernanda, and my wife Melanie; they all have long awaited this achievement and to whom I dedicate my PhD thesis research. 6 To my daughters Arielle Alexandra and Fernanda Danielle To my wife Melanie Jones To my late parents Gilberto Smith Duquesne and Carmen Mesa de los Santos, with whom I am not able to share the completion of this immense effort. 7 Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction …………………………………………….. 9 Chapter I ……………………………………………. 49 Pre-Revolutionary Cinematic Discourse Chapter II: The 1960s ……………………………………………. 81 The Emergence of the Socialist Cinema of the Cuban Revolution (Committed Films: Socialist in Content and National in Form) Chapter III: The 1970s ……………………………………………. 144 The Socialist Institutionalisation of the Moving Image Chapter IV: The 1980s …………………………………………… 223 KinoGlasnost and the Return of the Cuban Vernacular Conclusion …………………………………………… 275 Bibliography ….………………………………………… 295 Filmography …………………………………… ……… 312 Notes on languages and transliteration Apart from English and Spanish, the text of this PhD thesis contains words from Slavonic languages, particularly Russian, which are set in italic type. I have used the Library of Congress transliteration system for Cyrillic script. 8 Introduction The Most Important Art… ‘Una película debe ser alguna cosa de importancia cuando ustedes están tan interesados a ella; tiene que ser alguna cosa muy bonita y de importancia’ The above suggestion comes from a peasant woman, one of the one hundred people in the village of Los Mulos who saw a movie for the first time in April 1967. Her testimony is recorded in Por primera vez (For the First Time, 1967), a ten-minute black-and-white documentary directed by Octavio Cortázar.1 The documentary recalls one of the finest moments of the Cuban Revolution, ‘la campaña de alfabetización’ (the literacy campaign), when film art reached people living in some of the poorest and most isolated rural areas, who had until that time had been completely forgotten. In one sequence of the film the same woman explains that many people in the village do not have the chance to go to cinemas; certainly, previous governments had not been interested in showing films to them, from which it can be deduced that for the cultural mentors of the Revolution, cinema was of great significance, a movie: ‘tiene que ser alguna cosa muy bonita y de importancia’, she remarked. Sadly, we do not know the names of those who were interviewed. Nor were the names of those who formed the ‘cine móvil’ (mobile cinema) crews recorded for the benefit of posterity.