• Submitted by: admin
• Cinema
• 05 / 06 / 2010

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The movie Memorias del desarrollo (Memoir of development), by the young Cuban moviemaker Miguel Coyula, achieved the Havana Star Award to the Best Movie, within the 11th edition of the Havana Film Festival, in New York.

The contest took place between April 16 and 23, 2010.

Memorias... is a free version of the homonym novel by the Cuban Edmundo Desnoes, published a few years ago, that seeks to be the continuation of the famous Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memoirs of underdevelopment), published in Cuba in 1967.

Cuban moviemaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea started here in his 1968 cinema adaptation, after which Memorias del subdesarrollo became the most important Latin American movie, according to the critic.

Memorias del desarrollo includes the performances of Ron Blair, Eileen Alana, Susana Pérez, Léster Martínez, Dayana M. Hernández and Reb Fleming.

This movie is the result of five years work, under the regime of an independent production. Coyula was in charge of the script, direction, photography, edition, part of the production and the original music.

This movie is centered once again in Sergio's subjectivity, a bourgeois intellectual, three decades after abandoning Cuba, dealing now with old age, alienation and exile in New York.

When he received the Havana Star Award, Coyula expressed: "to receive this award means a lot to me, since it is the testimony of a jury that is prepared to take the same risk that I assumed as film director.

This means much more today, in a world plagued with many film festivals that are directed more towards political correction, commercial attractiveness, and less towards artistic integrity."

Coyula is a graduate from the Directing Specialty in the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (International Cinema and Television School) (EICTV in Spanish) from San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba.

With Memorias del desarrollo, his second full length fiction movie, he obtained the John Simón Guggenheim scholarship.

The jury of Havana Film Festival, made up by Louis Perego Moreno, Michael Hausman and Sandy Lieberson, chose this full length movie from among fifteen films from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and USA.

Memorias' had held its world premiere during the Sundance Cinema Festival, which took place last January. For the next months, it will assist to a chain of appointments in other European and American contests.

Other awards from the Festival:

Best director was for Rafi Mercado, for his movie Miente (He lies) (Puerto Rico).

Best script was for Ray Figueroa, for La bodega / La galería (The cellar/ The gallery) (Guatemala).

Special Mention of the Jury, for Huacho by Alejandro Fern?ndez (Chile).

By: Yaima Leyva Martínez

Source: www.cinelatinoamericano.org and Cubarte