Havana, August 1 (RHC)-- The documentary Landrian, by Cuban filmmaker Ernesto Daranas will participate in the Venice International Film Festival, announced Monday the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematographic Industries -Icaic-, and the Cuban Cinematheque.

The work, one of those selected for the 80th edition of the prestigious Italian festival, is a tribute to Cuban filmmaker Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938-2003), a renowned avant-garde figure in Cuban cinema.

With Landrián a paradox arises, he is one of the filmmakers less known by the Cuban public and yet one of the most written about, which is of great academic interest, Daranas explained in a meeting with the press on Monday.

He had the ability to reflect the spirituality of the nation without the need to address religion many times, although he does address it; in his work there is a highly respectful look at what we are as a people, said the filmmaker about the filmmaker's artistic talent. "Landrián" makes the most honest possible approach to this complex and controversial creator about whom there are so many opinions, added Roberto Smith, vice president of Icaic.

Through interviews and bibliographic material, the feature film shows the viewer passages of the life and work of the controversial Cuban filmmaker, including his phase as a poet and the causes that led him to emigrate to the United States in the 1980s.

It was a process of film archeology that Daranas has carried out with the archive's team and it is a historical fact to have this filmography, said Luciano Castillo, director of the Cinemateca de Cuba.

The presence of this work at the Venice Film Festival, as it is also known, is a great honor for the country.

More than 2,000 films were registered for the Festival, so it is an additional source of pride that a Cuban work is present in the selection, which is a prize in itself, Castillo acknowledged.

He explained that originally the idea was to send, in addition to the feature film, the ten documentaries by this cult filmmaker that have been restored, but the festival does not accept short films for the Classics section.

On the meaning of the film for its director, Daranas declared that it was, among other things, "a spiritual mass that vindicates suffering and many things that unfortunately continue to damage our cinema".

The Venice International Film Festival held its first edition in 1932, and is the oldest in the world; Cuba participated for the first time competitively in 1969, although it premiered its official presence at the event in 1962, in an informative way.