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• 07 / 21 / 2008

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This year’s event will be held December 2nd through the 12th.

During a press conference in Havana, Alfredo Guevara, president of the annual film festival, stressed: “We want to have young filmmakers, new faces participating in the festival, contributing to the invigorating tradition.”

“To that aim,” he said, “new sections will be included at this year’s event, designed to promote the works of young filmmakers and putting them in touch with experienced producers.”

For the first time ever, the upcoming Havana film festival-contest will include new initiatives to achieve the above-mentioned objective. The initiatives will include a workshop on scripts by Latin American artists. An international jury, made up of prestigious experts, will choose among 10 projects for fiction films.

There will be a national contest here in Cuba to select the scripts that will represent the island, while the scripts in competition by other Latin American artists will be those selected as outstanding by the jury of unpublished scripts during last year’s Havana film festival.

There will also be a new section entitled ‘Latinoamérica, primera copia’, sponsored by the Havana film festival and the cultural program of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). The aim is to support the completion of audiovisual works, needing post-production technical or financial resources.

An international jury, made up of renowned personalities from the film industry, will grant the prize -- consisting of the provision of services or financial support on the basis of a 150 thousand-dollar fund.

Another initiative is the setting up of a market to copyright audiovisual materials produced on the island.

As usual, this year’s contest will include all the various categories: fiction films, documentaries, first works, animation, unpublished scripts and posters.

There will also be a retrospective of Edith Piaf’s films and a special series of African and Polish films.

This year’s event will grant honorary Coral prizes to outstanding Latin American filmmakers, among them: Brazilian Nelson Pereira Dos Santos, Bolivian Jorge Sanginés, Chilean Miguel Littín and Mexican Paul Leduc.

(Cubarte)