They will remember Cuban filmmaker Santiago Álvarez in the virtual format

March 3, 2021

The International Documentary Film Festival Santiago Álvarez in Memoriam, which is held annually in Santiago de Cuba, will arrive next March at its XIX edition in a virtual format, due to the health measures established to prevent the spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

In an exclusive statement to the Cuban News Agency, Teresita Herrera, general coordinator of the Santiago Álvarez Office, confirmed that although it will not take place in person, nor will it have the expected competitive festival, the work of the prolific documentalist will be present in a broad program designed for the web and the Multivisión channel of Cuban Television.

To this end, the transmission of winning documentaries from previous events has been designed, interviews with personalities from Cuban culture from Santiago de Cuba and Havana, and a theoretical event on Álvarez's contributions to documentary cinema, which will feature renowned international filmmakers each day.

Today, March 3, Lázara Herrera, president of the Festival and director of the Santiago Álvarez Office of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), inaugurated the festival at 09:00, local time, and from there on the different moments included in the program will take place, the specialist highlighted.

For the afternoon sessions, the distinguished critic Frank Padrón Nodarse, the usual moderator, will outline the importance of the unforgettable filmmaker in the evolution of the documentary genre in revolutionary, Latin American, and universal cinematography.

Outstanding directors such as Cubans Belkis Vega and Jorge Fuentes, as well as Gabriela Bustos (Argentina), Orlando Senna (Brazil), and Ivennis Marcano (Venezuela), will appear to elaborate on the proposed topic, from their respective creative visions and the paradigms left by Santiago Álvarez (1919-1998).

Likewise, Teresita Herrera added, the organizing committee of the event has prepared a series of interviews that will include documentalist Gloria Rolando, visual artists Raciel Feria and Arnulfo Rodríguez, National Literature Prize winners Reinaldo González and Nancy Morejón, and pianist Esequiel Villa, among others.

Among the highlights of the International Santiago Álvarez in Memoriam Festival will not be missing a carefully selected compilation of the ICAIC Latin American Newsreel with the Vietnam theme, and titles such as El Drama de Nixon, about the invasion of Laos.

The ICAIC YouTube Channels, the Ministry of Culture and the Santiago Álvarez Office, as well as their Facebook and Instagram pages, will broadcast the program's contents simultaneously, and Multivisión will do so on a delayed basis on March 3, 4, 5, and 8, 9 and 10, starting at four in the afternoon.

Documentary as a weapon of struggle for peoples, and the value of cinema as a historical document, are among the main contributions of the event envisioned by the unforgettable filmmaker.

The 19th edition of the Festival, adapted to the circumstances imposed by the current pandemic, adds new analyses to highlight the portrait of "the Human" that Santiago Álvarez always envisioned.