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• 12 / 04 / 2008

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On December 3rd, of that year, the beautiful city greeted more than 600 Latin American movie makers, who tried to show the world the realities and dreams of Latin America and the Caribbean, through their movies. These realities were unknown at the time by the rest of the countries.

This meeting of moving images, which this year reaches the thirtieth anniversary of its creation, was inspired in the one that took place four decades ago in the Viña del Mar Festival, in Chile.

There, in 1967 took place the encounter of a generation of young movie makers eager to make quality movies that could show the reality of the continent.
Producer Pastor Vega said about this movement: Those of us who in one way or another lived through the beautiful experience of the Viña del Mar Festival felt the historical pressure of what it meant, of what it contributed with, of what it made our identity, our culture, our ideological and spiritual maturity richer.

Meanwhile Hollywood kept invading movie screens, imposing a banality that left juicy earnings to the magnates of the so called star Mecca, the Festivals of the Cuban capital aimed –according to moviemaker Julio García Espinosa- “to learn about the world starting from ourselves.”

By discovering us, we discover hidden realities everywhere else in the world, said the author of Reina y Rey.

The soon to come edition of the 30th New Latin American Movie Festival, makes us remember those days when new and dreaming creators got together in the homeland of Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral in order to exchange and fine new stiles and ways to make and to reflect Latin American identity.

Four decades of the historic meeting in the Chilean beach have already gone by.

To place bridge to unite Latin American moviemakers with those from the rest of the world is one of the purposes of the historic Havana event. Of course, every time we talk about bringing together the lovers of a cinema of quality and thematic diversity and not merchandises to fill the pocket of unscrupulous producers.

One of the best definitions of this renewing movement that is rising more and more each time was synthesized by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, president of the New Latin American Movie Foundation, when he stated: “our final aim is no less than to achieve integration of Latin American cinema. It is that simple and so huge.”

(Cubarte)