EXPERIMENTS IN CINEMA v12.3 -- Bryan Konefsky and his film students pushed boundaries again this past week in their annual festival of experimental cinema. The focus was on Cuba, where Konefsky had visited for the first time late last year.
We caught Program 3 (of 20) curated by Magaly Espinosa Delgado, who oversaw about an hour of experimental films from Cuba. It started slow, with a scattered documentary piece apparently about the relatives and/or friends of gang members talking about a violent night at a club.
The program finished strong with short films that found the intersection between parent/child relationships and patriotism in a changing land. The first featured a nana putting a baby down for a nap, patting the child's bottom in a percussive manner while singing the Cuban national anthem. In the second, an off-camera adult addresses a toddler who is standing in a crib, giving the child orders or suggestions (it wasn't translated), eliciting the word "no" from the child over and over again. Title: "Autocratico."
Our favorite was "The 'New Man' and My Father," a six-minute film from 2015 in which Adrian Melis sits his father, a former revolutionary, in front of the camera to be grilled about recent progress in Cuba and the prospects of changes in the horizon in a post-Castro nation. The questions are detailed and pointed, a clear challenge to the old guard. Melis' father sits shirtless and never gives an answer. It is apparent that Melis has included only interstitial shots of his father, outtakes and shots of set-up or prep. The premise suggests that the fading revolutionary generation has nothing left to say or no easy answers for what lies ahead. The film itself is a precise, stinging statement about both a father and a fatherland. Fascinating.
BONUS TRACK
The final film in the third program ended with vintage '60s footage scored to Miles Davis' "Now's the Time":
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