Three films by Nicolás Guillén Landrián will be shown in Barcelona

MERIDA Mexico -. Three short films by important Cuban filmmaker Nicolás guillén Landrián can be seen this Sunday, May 26, at the Xcèntric festival, at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB).

The short films Those of the dance (1965), in an old neighborhood (1963) y Arabica Coffee (1968) will be screened in the “African Allegory” section of the event, along with films by Americans Zeinabu Irene Davis and Ben Caldwell, reported Cuban Diary.

According to what Dominican filmmaker Diego Cepeda, curator of the exhibition, told this independent media, his selection asks: “what would some works from this mythical African-American school of the LA Rebellion, such as those by Ben Caldwell and Zeinabu Irene, have to say to each other? Davis, and those of a counterhegemonic Afro-Cuban filmmaker like Nicolás Guillén Landrián?”

“To think about cinema from the present is to interact with the traces and wounds of the past, and in this sense, the cinema of Nicolás Guillén Landrián is a cinema that resists,” he added.

The exhibition of these films, restored thanks to the efforts of Ernesto Daranas, will take place at the CCCB in Barcelona on Sunday, May 26, at 6:30 pm

Landrián, from outlawed to rescued

Nicolás Guillén Landrián was one of the many artists repudiated by the Cuban regime in the 60s and 70s, despite being among the greatest documentary filmmakers that Cuba has ever produced.

Nephew of the poet Nicolás Guillén, Landrián was a director of short films at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), from where he was expelled in 1971 for his “anti-system” ideas.

Supervised by the official filmmaker Santiago Álvarez, Landrián carried out propaganda work on request; but the director printed his transgressive view on the technical aspect and showed the Cuba of those years, which he was not interested in showing to the Cuban authorities.

According to the director’s own statements, “he tried to make a cinema that was not the same as the rest, that did not coincide with the rest, that was a very personal cinema (…) The image was more important than the word itself. “I was interested in developing the image through a new language, a daring language, interesting for the viewer.”

This experience triggered schizophrenia, for which he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he received electroshocks. After recovery and having served his sentence, he returned to his position at the ICAIC.

Upon returning to the ICAIC he directed Arabica Coffeeone of his greatest documentaries, defined by the Digital Encyclopedia of Cuban Audiovisual (ENDAC) as “an irreverent exercise of creation, the most varied techniques (still photography, archive images) combined with a use of music where there is no shortage not even The Beatles, banned at that time on national radio.”

However, Line Workshop and 18 led him to be definitively dismissed from the ICAIC, harassed and repudiated until his exile in 1989.

His widow, Gretel Alonso explained that “the 80s were a particularly miserable decade. Nicolás already knew that there was no return to cinema, but rather a fight for survival and constant persecution.”

Already in the United States, Landrián filmed his latest documentary, Inside Downtown (2001), co-directed with José Egusquiza Zorrilla. The filmmaker died of cancer in Miami in 2003, at the age of 65.

Many years after his death, the Cuban Government has shown signs of trying to rescue his figure; as has been the case of some editions of the Young Show, which prepared cycles with part of his work. In this edition of the Havana Film Festival, almost 20 years after his death, tribute is paid to him with the presentation of the audiovisual Landrián, made by filmmaker Ernesto Daranas.