The Braziliansit Magazine - Clipping Desk - Films in Land That's Ready For Revolution Of the Mind

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Though it takes place in one of the last remaining Communist strongholds, the Havana Film Festival is still a competitive event; it may be the only festival to give an award to the best poster, which is not a bad idea. And two dramatic films, both with a focus on the young, shared the grand prize: ''City of God,' (see review) ' from Brazil, and ''Tan de Repente'' (''Suddenly'') from Argentina.

''City of God'' is Brazil's official submission for best foreign film for next year's Academy Awards. A teeming, explosive film, it is a 1970's action melodrama that follows a young photographer's emotional and professional development as he hovers on the outskirts of gang action; it could be viewed as a ''Pixote'' filmed by Quentin Tarantino. ''City of God'' drew an intriguing response; some thought it was well made but too American and not reflective enough of a Latin American sensibility.

''Tan de Repente'' is a black-and-white, minimalist film -- there's no music for the first 20 minutes, and when it's finally heard it issues from a car radio -- about the sexual politics of three young women that is part road movie and part dysfunctional-family drama dwelling on the gap between generations. (''Tan de Repente'' seems to bear down under the weight of American influence, too; it could be an independent film at the Sundance Film Festival.) The two films received two other important awards. ''City of God'' was given the best actor award and ''Tan de Repente'' best actress, in both cases for the ensemble work of the young men and women starring in the films.

Youth and the American film presence were issues that the Cuban Film Institute's president and co-founder, Alfredo Guevara, addressed two days before the results were announced. ''Youth is very important here,'' the round-faced and thoughtful Mr. Guevara said. ''We are making an effort to include the young, something that is not so popular here because it makes others feel like they're being ignored.'' (He also noted, with a smile, that he, in his mid-70's, is the same age as another important Cuban figure with an eye on the future, Fidel Castro.)

Mr. Guevara studied film in Italy in the 1950's and worked with the Italian neo-realist director Cesare Zavattini, whose perspective informed his own. ''I worked on scripts; that was for movies that were never produced,'' he said with a laugh.

Despite his interest in the personal visions of Zavattini and Luis Buñuel -- their friendship included a correspondence that lasted until Buñuel's death in 1983, in which they discussed Buñuel's attending the Havana Festival -- Mr. Guevara doesn't dismiss the presence of American commercial cinema. ''Hollywood makes some of the best movies in the world,'' he said, though chuckling that if the studios came to Cuba in force, there would be a revolution of the mind that Mr. Castro probably didn't intend. But this cultural revolution is one that Cubans are eager to be part of.

The festival's director, Ivan Giroud, points out that the attendance for the 10-day event is over 300,000, a figure borne out in the packed theaters, where overflow crowds park themselves on the steps and the floors, enthralled by the movies. The admission price is about 20 cents, and in a country where the national income is about $10 a month, that's a meaningful commitment. (During a tour of the Partagas cigar factory, which under the watchful eye of Abel Expósito Diaz, is deserving of a film itself, a happy murmur could be heard when free film festival tickets were offered.)

''City of God'' is a picture that underscores a crucial social truth, that in many cases movies have become the instigator of a national mythology: films can support the way countries define themselves and are understood by the rest of the world. They have been, in that respect, revolutionary. That cultural revolution is fought in a different way in Cuba, one of the few nations with a definition that has next to nothing to do with the movie business, since so few movies are made here because of the limited resources.

The tiny Cuban cinema functions in dramatic terms as a kind of circumlocution; certain things aren't said or shown in Cuban movies, just whispered as allusion. Their narrative subtlety reflects the kind of indirection that can be seen around the countryside. The billboards trumpet slogans like ''We are the Revolution,'' and the public figures seen on them are Jose Martí, Simón Bolívar and a Guevara who had not much to do with film: Che. You begin to notice that Mr. Castro is an extremely rare presence on them; one of the few billboards featuring El Presidente shows him raising an angry fist while an anti-terrorism slogan screams behind him.

Mr. Castro's savvy is evident. He has made the revolution romantic, using icons like Che and Martí to evoke the dreaminess of total commitment to an ideal instead of positing Communism as a cult of personality, with busts of himself and declamations of his power everywhere, the kind of thing one expects to see. Wisely, too, he has chosen representatives of the movement who can offer no opposition: they gave their lives to the revolution one way or another long ago. He has the caginess of a born director; when Steven Spielberg visited the country a month ago, he and Mr. Castro must have had a lot to talk about.