By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Apr 15 2003 (IPS)

Cuba is preparing to receive a selection of films from outside the major international movie industry, the aim being to give the best of the bunch prizes that are much more useful than the traditional statues or plaques.

The awards for the Non-Budget Film Festival of Gibara, the first edition of which will take place Apr 21-25 in the eastern Cuban city, will serve to finance "the beginning or the continuation of a professional career" of the most outstanding filmmakers participating in the event.

That is how the festival’s chairman, Humberto Solás, described it at a recent press conference. Solás himself has a distinguished career, directing several classics of Cuban film, such as "Lucía" (1968) and who inspired the creation of the festival with the first digital format work of the Cuban film industry, "Miel para Ochún" (Honey for Ochún).

In that film, Solás included scenes in Gibara, with the participation of local residents. After working there, the director decided that the city, 775 km from Havana, would be an ideal location for a festival aimed at promoting the making of alternative films.

Solás also emphasises the importance that the event places on the prize for best screenplay, with 31 texts in the running, by authors from around the world, but most coming from the United States, Argentina and Cuba itself.

Among the entry requirements for the screenplay competition is that the project budget cannot exceed 200,000 dollars and that the final product, the film, must not last more than 105 minutes.

In addition to these facilities for the winning screenplay, the categories of best fictional film and best documentary each promise a purse of 3,000 dollars to be used "for the next project" of the chosen filmmakers.

The festival’s general director, Sergio Benvenuto, told IPS that among the prizes to be presented is one for "best video artist", granted by the U.S.-based San Francisco Art Institute.

The incentive is a two-week seminar taught by that institution, including the creation of a film and 1,000 dollars for travel expenses.

The organisers expect a large contingent of U.S. artists to take part in the festival despite Washington’s decision in March to sharply limit legal travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba for cultural exchanges.

For its part, the International Film School of San Antonio de los Baños, in the outskirts of Havana, will grant a film directing scholarship to the best self-taught filmmaker for two years of study at the school.

More than 100 films will be shown during the five-day festival, according to festival sources. The categories drawing most entries are fictional films, with at least 31, and documentaries, with more than 20.

These are "humble works, but many of them could be categorised as masterworks," commented Solás.

The Cuban director says the democratic and emancipatory nature of the Non-Budget Film Festival of Gibara originates in the spirit in which the event was conceived, which is to promote artistic values achieved through modest means, through the use of new digital technologies.

Digital technology will "democratise the profession," clearing the name of film as "an elitist art by nature" and "de-alienate" filmmakers, freeing them from the shackles of the major film industry, he said.

"The reduction of costs," by using video, "gives the director greater creative freedom," said Solás. Low-budget filmmaking is an art form "that makes sense even in the world’s great cultural centres, because filmmakers there also want to affirm their artistic freedom."

Solás also commented on the need to promote this approach among artists and directors throughout the developing world.

"Sometimes we come off as a pathetic Hollywood," he said in reference to efforts by directors from poor countries to pursue big budgets and technological "paraphernalia" like that of the major film industry of the United States.

"It’s ridiculous," he commented, explaining that even in the United States there are independent filmmakers who are able to make great movies with little financing.

"Low-budget film is to acknowledge our material poverty but exalt our cultural greatness, as it should be," asserts Solás.

The Non-Budget Film Festival of Gibara is the first one that is truly global to be hosted by Cuba. The New Latin American Film Festival of Havana, which has been held annually for more than 20 years, is regional in scope.

Omar González, president of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industries, points out that the new festival is not intended to compete with the Havana event, but rather aims to "become an alternative space to confront the standardisation and homogenisation that is taking place in the world today."

The Gibara festival also represents "a search, rebellious film takes risks and in which quality will never be secondary," adds González.

The festival programme includes tributes to major personalities of international film such as Italy’s Cesare Zavattini, the late Cuban actor Adolfo Llauradó and Cuban-U.S. artist Tony Labat, known for his video art.

Solás explained that the homage for Labat is based on his international prestige and, although it was not an initial objective of the festival, it is also "a contribution to distension and dialogue" between Cuban culture as it exists inside and outside the country.

Asked whether the festival is politicised, he responded without hesitation that because of its approach, "we are giving it an absolutely political character."

But Solás also stressed that this does not make non-budget film into "a new fundamentalism or dogma." On the contrary, "it is a very flexible environment in which we will gather the works of filmmakers who refuse to be subjected to the manipulation of capital and who are iconoclasts."

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