Cinema Thirty Years of the Cuban Federation of Film Clubs

Actually, little has been published about this anniversary – a sad oversight. The Federation was founded in November 1984, by means of a Constituent Assembly, while its official registration took place on June 9, 1985, through a resolution by the Ministry of Justice’s Register of Associations.

More than 80 cinema clubs were members, bringing together nearly over six thousand people in 13 Cuban provinces. It had, by the late 1980s, an outstanding international projection. Since a few years before, the film clubs enjoyed a great boom in the heat of the country’s 1976 institutionalization processes, which enabled the development of a broad movement of Community Culture Centers, together with the appearance of a large number of universities in almost every province.Already in earlier decades, especially the 1960s, the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC), had promoted the establishment of the types of organization that grouped people interested in showing and discussing films with recognized artistic values. ICAIC, in its original integration, boasted a large membership of film clubbers, coming especially from the Cultural Association Nuestro Tiempo, the Vision Film Club and others. Obviously, therefore, the film clubs had been the nutritive entities of the film institute founded in March 1959.

The Ministry of Higher Education’s policy, implemented in the late 1970s, of teaching artistic appreciation in all its centers, met an enthusiastic response by thousands of students who chose film as their favorite artistic expression. This led to the training of some dozens of professors in this specialty in the above-mentioned centers and the need to equip most of them with movie halls. This is the reason there’s a significant development of university film appreciation clubs at the time.

The vigorous and enthusiastic movement of amateurs that emerged in the late 1970s gave the major impetus for the idea of creating a national association of film clubs. Some of the members of this movement had already previously demonstrated their individual wills, and even alien to official institutions, to be recognized as such.

ICAIC’s leadership was not so willing, or rather reluctant, to create a group that would bring together these people – more and more numerous – interested in making cinematic materials of a certain artistic and social scope with their very modest resources. The “technological” basis, so to speak, of these small but hardworking film teams consisted of mostly 8 millimeter cameras and films imported from the today former socialist countries.

It was in 1978, when ICAIC, which is now part of the Ministry of Culture, in coordination with that same ministry’s National Board of Directors of Community Cultural Centers, implemented a project that would set out the basis for recognition, advisement and coordination of amateur filmmakers. This project was the Cinematic Interest Circle of the Community Cultural Center in Plaza de la Revolución, in Havana.

The ideas and proposals that brought together all Cuban filmmaker enthusiasts throughout the country came out of this circle. Important filmmakers such as Tomás Piard and Jorge Luis Sánchez emerged out of it. Finally, in the quarters of this same Community Cultural Center, in November 1984, the Constituent Assembly of the future National Federation of Cuban Film Clubs was held.

The Federation was born marked by two unusual aspects. Firstly, this is the only federation of film clubs worldwide that groups film appreciation and creation clubs. This means, internally, there are traditional film clubs – made up of people who see and debate films – and also film clubs or groups that make films. That is, groups of amateur filmmakers.

Secondly, from the very beginning, the Federation enjoyed an outstanding international participation. That in 1984, the General Secretary of the FNCCC became the vice president of the International Federation of Film Clubs for seven years testifies to this. The annual celebration of the continental meetings of Latin American film clubs in Havana for eight years must also be considered on this same order of events. It can be said that such a sustained meeting of this nature for associations of continental film enthusiasts hadn’t existed either before or after.

All of this was due to a particular historical conjuncture: the presence of left, non-euro-centric forces in the very European International Federation of Film Clubs (FICC), a UNESCO consultative organization, enabled a close relationship between this entity and Latin American film clubs, with the Cuban Federation a major link. No less important is the role played by ICAIC and the Festivals of New Latin American Film, supportive of Cuban film clubbers. Finally, but maybe more importantly, the vigor and organization shown by the rising Federation and its members lent prestige and credibility to the Cuban filmclubbist movement.

Although it couldn’t be said it’s at its peak, the Cuban Federation of Film Clubs is now thirty years old. It exists, first of all, due to the irreducible vocation of many members to keep it alive. One can’t get around the importance the festivals of amateur filmmakers possess: Cubanacán in Santa Clara, Cine Plaza in Havana and the filmclubby meeting Yumurí in Matanzas: more than cinematic events, acts of “proof of life.”

What’s important, given the set of difficulties and no little indifference, is that Cuban filmclubismo is alive. This activity that produced, in the first half of the 20th century, quite a few of the most important Cuban filmmakers, such as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Santiago Álvarez and Julio García Espinosa. It hasn’t ceased channeling interests and concerns of film amateurs in our country, a demonstration in which, according to Chaplin, “That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.”