Actor Luis Alberto García Receives Lucía de Honor Award at Gibara International Film Festival

August 4, 2023

Actor Luis Alberto García moved the audience upon receiving the honorary Lucía de Honor award at the Gibara International Film Festival on August 1st.

In his moving speech, García paid tribute to the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers and pronounced the powerful phrase: "Our cinema will be free or it will not be."

The award recipient recalled the importance of figures like Guillermo Cabrera Infante and highlighted the influence of Humberto Solás, founder of the festival, who chose to keep the spirit of dreams alive through cinema.

García also shared his inspiration with young people who fight for their ideals and specifically mentioned the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers, which seeks demands from those in power amid the censorship and controversy stemming from the documentary "La Habana de Fito" by Juan Pin Vilar.

"For me personally it is an honor to receive this award in Gibara, which is the land of Guillermo Cabrera Infante, it is the land of Luis Catalá, whom I just portrayed in a film a few months ago. And it is also the land of my brother Armando Capó," he began his speech.

He also had words of gratitude for the late filmmaker Humberto Solás, founder of the festival.

"But it is also the place where Humberto Solás decided to make magic. This Festival that was called the Poor Cinema Festival. And now International Gibara. It is the place he chose and which, fortunately, you all keep alive. Because dreams are kept alive," he said.

"What a marvel it is to be young. Solás was 27 years old, only 27 years old when he made that marvel of a film that is Lucía, which is what this award is named after, premiered in October of '68, 5 months after the events of May '68 in Paris," he added.

From that reasoning, García referred to the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers that demands a series of demands from those in power, based on the censorship and unauthorized exhibition of the documentary Fito by Juan Pin Vilar.

"Young people have an immense capacity to dream, and to believe in utopias, and to carry them out. That is why today I have two of my daughters here (I have 4). I have always wanted my daughters to learn that you must learn to fight for your dreams, that when you believe in something you must fight for it," he said in the theater where the Festival awards ceremony took place.

"That is why today I want to dedicate this award to a group of young people, girls and boys, who have restored my faith in these days, and who are teaching me that it is worth fighting for the ideas one upholds, for the ideas one believes in. I share this with the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers," he stated amid applause from those present.

"It does not matter if they do not understand me for now, it does not matter if for now there are suspicions that make us invisible. I want to share my award with all those girls and boys. Our cinema will be free or it will not be," he concluded amid a standing ovation from the theater.

In addition to García, the Lucía de Honor was awarded to Violetta Cooper, a costume designer from Holguín with an extensive career in Cuban cinema.

In June, a public letter signed by more than 50 Cuban filmmakers rejected and criticized the decisions made by authorities of the Ministry of Culture who exercised censorship, manipulated and violated the copyright of filmmaker Juan Pin Vilar, by preventing a scheduled exhibition of his documentary "La Habana de Fito" and counter-programming it on Cuban Television against his will.

From this fact, Cuban filmmakers organized themselves in Assembly and have met with Cuban leaders to whom they have conveyed their frustration.

In July, it came to light how the meeting held by officials from the Ministry of Culture