The 40th Havana Film Festival will seek to recognize its origins and look ahead, said its president, Ivan Giroud, while preparing the event scheduled to take place from December 6 to 16.

In his opinion, a closed edition requires an introspection and to transform everything that tends to a deviation of the purposes; or to transgress logic; or to prevent evolution.

The event was founded in 1979 as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana and the next one will officially name the short nickname by which many are commonly called: Havana Film Festival.

One of the notable changes will be the reduction of the program, because according to Giroud, more than 400 films constitute an exorbitant figure for an event that now has a circuit of rooms much smaller than that of 30 years ago.

Therefore, just over 300 films will be accepted from more than a thousand films registered to opt for a Coral Prize, a distinctive feature of the contest that will be delivered on December 14.

Before the festival was held in the whole country and in Havana it extended to the whole city, but nowadays there are no neighborhood theaters and the event hardly takes place in a street in the capital, 23rd street in Vedado (a downtown) district, and the Acapulco cinema (located on avenue 26), Giroud stated in an exclusive interview with Prensa Latina.

The problem not only affects Cuba, the fall of the public is a global issue, nowadays more cinema is seen than before but not in the specialized halls, he analyzed.

According to the official, consumption habits changed over time and technological development, while recognizing that in Cuba also hit several factors such as the lack of modern reproduction technologies and other technical conditions in the facilities, just to mention its field.

But sometimes people say, 'Well, I'll see this movie later', and that's impossible because I can assure you that 90 percent of what is presented at the festival does not arrive, is not distributed, nor is it bought, Latin American cinema continues without scale the commercial circuits, that reality has changed very little since the beginning, he said.

According to Giroud, the 40th edition of the event will promote two seminars, the first on its four decades of history, to reflect on what it was and what it intends to be, where it may have lost, what is worth recovering, where to look and what are the current problems of Latin America.

For this we want to invite not only historical figures who were part of the movement that gave rise to the Committee of Filmmakers of Latin America, the creation of the Foundation of the New Latin American Cinema and the film school in Cuba, but also young filmmakers, revealed .

The festival was founded under the aegis of a political and cultural movement, that of the New Latin American Cinema, but today Latin American cinema is another, not that, and thanks because that also indicates that time has passed and has been learned; But, although it is not the same, it is a consequence of it, he reflected.

Another seminar with specialists will be dedicated to the outstanding Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (1928-1996), alias Titón, recognized for his cinematographic work in films such as The 12 Chairs (1962), Memoirs of Underdevelopment (1968) and Death of a Bureaucrat (1966) ).

Titón becomes an emblematic figure not only of Latin American cinema and constitutes an ethical reference in how a revolutionary filmmaker confronts the profession, he did it in a critical and deep, complexizing way, nothing propagandistic, nor reductive, nor opportunistic, he said.

To say of Giroud, Titón was characterized by reflection, depth and commitment, and its historical value deserves to be established, more in the face of the future.

For his part, the president thanked Casa de las Américas for organizing a theoretical event to develop it there within the days of the festival with the participation of young filmmakers from this continent in order to motivate reflection, analysis, thought.

Giroud is aware of the existence of a cheap commercial cinema -in terms of values- within the Latin American production, but his event points to works that speak from other places, of the own histories of each reality, and that in their speech they try to break with certain standardized codes, sometimes static and repetitive.

Precisely, the best of Latin American cinema today is being seen more in the world, classified in the selections of the most relevant festivals, such as Cannes, Venice, etc., despite showing a local historical perspective, very different from what may be happening in Japan, in Poland, in Toronto, he observed.

Much has changed the world in 40 years, more Latin Americans have moved around the planet and settled in different countries, audiovisual productions travel more easily through digital networks and life in general of the human species added dynamism with so much technology

The current filmmaking is not only the result of Latin American cinema before, it also drinks from the interaction with filmmaking globally, he said.

At the same time, the new generations that are taking the lead and the relay have a totally different origin, usually a training in film schools, one of the many now existing in Latin America, but in the 60s of the 20th century we were not aware that there was Latin American cinema, he said.

The president of the Havana contest recalled that at that time films were made in isolation: Argentine, Mexican, Brazilian cinema; more, without an awareness or a sense of Latin American identity and today these concepts are very clear, although some theorists are questioning them.

I believe that we are currently seeing so many Latin American film festivals, reaffirmed the director for Latin of the Dictionary of Ibero-American Cinema (Spain, Portugal, America).

According to Giroud -who has been a jury of several film festivals-, a festival must seek not only for people to go to the cinema, but to begin to see other worlds, other analyzes and discussions, other proposals of other realities and different interpretations.