Havana fun time at Cuban pic fest

But the actor-restaurateur "has been coming for years," said Cuban helmer Fernando Perez ("Life Is to Whistle"), who has an autographed picture of Grandpa Munster in his apartment.

And, indeed, the Havana Film Festival, which unspooled its 22nd edition Dec. 5-15, isn't typical.

For one, Fidel Castro attended both the inauguration and the closing-night awards ceremony, even sticking around for the screening of the winner of the best pic prize, Andrucha Waddington's "Eu Tu Eles" (Me You Them), Brazil's candidate for a foreign-language film Oscar nom.

With the head of state inside, security personnel were jittery about those souvenir snapshots taken from the street outside the Teatro Karl Marx.

Public appeal

The fest is designed first and foremost for the public, who have few opportunities to see pics, particularly American ones, during the year. Yet for the man on the street and fest attendee alike, finding out what was being screened proved a challenge. A daily fest paper published listings for that day and the next, though event vets warned that the latter were only moderately reliable.

The absence of a complete program stems in part from the difficulties of getting films through Cuban customs in advance; many directors and producers opt to carry their pics in, delaying scheduling until event organizers have them in hand.

But such uncertainties did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of Havana's filmgoers, who packed the city's cavernous movie palaces (22 theaters in all) from morning until late into the night throughout the entire fest. For weekend and evening screenings, they waited for hours to get in.

According to a fellow attendee, a revolt took place at a showing of Mexican helmer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Amores Perros" (tapped by the jury for best debut feature) over the priority entry given to fest registrants, who had paid $40 for the privilege.

Tickets sold ultimately topped 500,000 during the 10-day fest (Havana's population is about 2 million).

Local helmer Daniel Diaz won for the audience prize for his comedy "Hacerse el Sueco," the only Cuban feature to bow at the fest. Pic concerns a family trying to get by via various means; title is an expression that means to see, yet ignore, something that isn't on the up and up.

While fest featured showcases of Italian and French pics, it included U.S. fare like Karyn Kusama's "Girlfight," Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" and Robert Altman's "Cookie's Fortune." Glenn Close was skedded to attend, and her letter of regret was translated in daily newspaper Granma -- and was consequently the talk of the town that day.

Some pics were unexpectedly popular with auds, such as Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark," said fest director Ivan Giroud, given that "(lead actress) Bjork is not known in Cuba."

But the fest is ultimately about new Latin American cinema. The program included samples from the recent crop of productions from Mexico and Argentina; the biggest presence of Brazilian pics in recent years; and works from established helmers like Francisco Lombardi of Peru and Fernando Trueba of Spain.

Creatives come together

Filmmakers from around the region and from Spain emphasized the fest's importance as a meeting of minds, often over mojitos.

"There's a big shift in Latin American cinema right now, from the political to the popular," observed jury member Sergio Cabrera, Colombia's leading director, who is living and working in Spain.

Even so, he noted that the jury --headed by Chilean scribe Ariel Dorfman -- recognized a wide variety of subjects and filmmaking styles.

Waddington's winning pic, set in Brazil's countryside, concerns a woman living with three men. Second and third best film prizes, respectively, went to Alberto Lecchi's urban love story "Nueces para el Amor" and fellow Argentinean Daniel Burman's pensive "Esperando a Mesias."

Barbet Schroeder received the prize for best pic about Latin America by a non-Latin for "The Virgin of the Assassins."