France will host Cuban film festival in June

Havana, April 10 (RHC) - The town of Vitry-sur-Seine, in Paris, will host the first Cuban Film Festival in June with various proposals that address history, culture and society, according to the coordinator of the project, Miguel Quintero.

The first vice president of Cuba Coopération France (CubaCoop), the association promoter of the event together with the local Mayor's Office, specified that it will take place from June 17 to 24 with six feature films on display and an extensive program of activities.

“It will be an opportunity for the French public to get closer to the island and to get to know a part of its cinematography and also its reality, through conferences after the films and other activities”, the vice president commented.

The program is made up of the films Benny, which includes passages from the life of the famous Cuban singer-songwriter Benny Moré; the multi-award-winning Fresa y Chocolate; El Mayor, a film inspired by the patriot and independence fighter Ignacio Agramonte, the social drama Conducta; and very different comedies such as Esther somewhere and Boccaccerías Habaneras.

According to Quintero, the feature films will be screened in a cinema in Vitry-sur-Seine that has three rooms, with three sessions planned for each of them during the week.

In addition to the films, the public will be able to enjoy documentaries, with a planned tribute to Televisión Serrana on its 30th anniversary, an audiovisual platform created in 1993 in the municipality of Buey Arriba, in the heart of the Sierra Maestra, in the eastern province of Granma, to provide an approach to the local peasantry.

The first vice president of CubaCoop announced that the festival will be accompanied by the performance of French students from music schools, who will perform hits by Benny Moré, a painting exhibition and a photographic exhibition.

Regarding the conferences, he explained that they will be dedicated to the history of the island, daily life and the evolution of the rights of the LGBT community, the latter with the presentation of a guest from the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex) of the largest of the Antilles.

Quintero highlighted the support and enthusiasm of the Mayor's Office of Vitry-sur-Seine and the contribution of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic) in the preparations for an event that CubaCoop aspires to continue, without its definition being defined for the moment.

Solidarity with the island will have a space at the first Cuban Film Festival in Vitry-sur-Seine, with a meeting to denounce the US economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba for more than six decades.

Regarding the income from the event, he declared that they will be used to cover the shipment of a solidarity cargo from the host city to the Caribbean country, and if the benefits allow it, to finance other support projects. (Source: Prensa Latina)