Jorge Perugorría
Nueva Gerona, May 11 (RHC)-- Isla Verde, the First International Film and Environment Festival of the Caribbean, will be held in Isla de la Juventud from May 31 to June 5 of this year, its president, Jorge Perugorría, Cuban actor and filmmaker, told the press on Wednesday.
After a year of intense work, we are finally going to materialize the collective dream of many people, of the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation and the Patrimonial Island project. We are happy and very optimistic," he said visibly moved, while thanking the local authorities for their unconditional support to the initiative.
He said that since this first edition is not competitive, the public will be able to enjoy a cinematographic sample of films that have won at festivals of the same name, thanks to the collaboration of Eleonora Isunza, co-founder of Cinema Planeta, an organization that has become the most important cinematographic initiative in Mexico.
She said that this was the right occasion to confer three Isla Verde awards to personalities such as Isunza, Déborah Andollo, owner of 16 world records in the four freediving modalities, who starred in many of her exploits as an athlete in the waters of this territory, and the Frenchman Yann Arthus-Bertrand, environmental and social activist and director of documentaries.
He underscored that thanks to the GoodPlanet Foundation headed by Arthus-Bertrand and the French Embassy in Cuba, moviegoers will be able to enjoy the retrospective exhibition of the scientific disseminator and photographer, as well as materials by Cuban creators who have directly or indirectly dealt with environmental issues.
The event includes a series of films that, as environmental education workshops, will generate talks with young people and teenagers, under the guidance of scientists and biologists, among other experts, and as collateral activities we will summon entrepreneurs from Havana and this special municipality to a kind of fair in areas near the Caribe movie theater, the main venue of the festival, he said.
He added that due to the support of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry and the Ministry of Culture, the screening of the films will be extended, with the use of mobile screens, to the communities of La Fe and La Demajagua.
Isla de la Juventud, the fifth largest island in the Greater Antilles, will be a regular venue for the Isla Verde festival because there is possibly no other island in the Caribbean with less tourist and industrial exploitation, which makes it a symbol of environmental conservation in the world, a contribution to sustainable tourism and organic agriculture, he said.
