Havana Glasgow Film Festival - final four days have many jewels. HGFF preview 2

The Havana Glasgow Film Festival enters its final four days with the arrival of Cuban film and video

Arturo Santana

director, Arturo Santana. Flying in from Havana yesterday - thanks to sponsorship from Unite - to talk about his much-acclaimed first feature film Bailando con Margot (Dancing witb Margot) – Thursday 17, 20 15 in the GFT A ‘neo-noir’ mystery, Bailando con Margot follows the femme fatale, Margot de Zarate and her involvement (or not) in an art heist. Santana made his name (as most Cuban directors do) directing music videos.

A review of some of the highlights so far is on the Culture Matters blog and it also refers to the welcome support for the festival from the Cuban ambassador to the UK, Teresita Vicente Sotolongo, who came to see Amor Cronico – Cucu Diamantes love letter to Cuba.

Sheila, meet Aidan!

Other highlights still to come include Where you’re meant to be  - a great film following Arab Strap’s poet Aidan Moffat crossing swords with determined doyenne of travelling singers, Sheila Stewart as he tries to rewrite traditional Scottish folk tunes (Wednesday 16, 19,30 in the CCA – it will be followed by a Q&A with director Paul Fegan.  Cuba Libre – Thursday 17. 14.45 CCA - a historical drama on the Spanish American War in Cuba follows Chris Dolan’s fascinating story of anarchist Ethel MacDonald, who broadcast from Republican Spain during the Civil War. An Anarchist's Story is in the CCA Thursday 17, 12.50pm). 

Back to Cuba we then can see Los Bolos En Cuba – Friday 18. 19.45 CCA – a warm, nostalgic and irreverent film exploring the times of the 'eternal' friendship of Cuba and the Soviet Union

On Friday morning also, there is an important masterclass by Festival co-Director, and writer, Hugo Rivalta. He will be talking about cinema’s role in the Cuban revolution. - 11.00 Friday 18 in the Glasgow School of Art (Reid Building).

The final day focuses on Cuban animation (CCA 17.30 on Saturday 19), and the success of the festival will be celebrated in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum, from 12.30pm where Gordon Cree will be playing Cuban salsa on the huge organ, and some recently discovered Cuban film archives, brought to Scotland for restoration, will be shown.

The programme is available on the Havana Glasgow Film Festival website - http://www.hgfilmfest.com/ programme

Political, cultural and lifestyle links celebrated in Glasgow/Havana film festival.

Many people over the years have commented on the parallels between the cities of Glasgow and Havana. The enthusiasm for dance, music and film that envelopes both cities has been often referred to, and no doubt led in part to the historic twinning of the two cities 13 years ago this month. Tangible evidence of the benefits of that twinning are on screen in Glasgow this week, as the first Glasgow/Havana Film Festival opens.

The festival, brainchild of the Cubaphile screenwriter and director, Eirene Houston, features at least three (count ‘em) UK premieres of Cuban films, Q&As with well-known Cuban directors – including Fernando Perez whose La Pared de las Palabras premieres at the GFT on 7 Nov, and Alejandro Valera who recently moved to live in Glasgow. His Boccaccerias Habaneras premieres on 8 Nov at Gilmorehill. It also features Houston’s own 2012 film Day of the Flowers.

Eirene Houston. Pic-Martin Shields

 Houston said at last night’s opening, that she had been ‘in love with Cuba, since 1997. The people are so similar.’ She herself worked at the film school in Havana and has built up many film and TV contacts which became key to the creation of the festival.

The political links between the two cities are also covered by a film and discussion night on Saturday 7, at Gilmorehill, Glasgow University. Glasgow TUC Chair and UNISON official, Jennifer McCarey chairs a discussion on Socialism Reinvented, and two seminal Glasgow-based TV productions are given a welcome airing – Barbara Orton’s 1993 feature on Rolls Royce shop steward, Labour councillor and dance enthusiast, Agnes McLean – In Cuba they’re still Dancing is followed by Red Skirts on Clydeside, the 1984 programme that started the reassessment of the role of Glasgow’s women in red Clydeside.

Me Dicen Cuba - Alexander Abreu

Other films that promise much include, Me Dicen Cuba (6 Nov, Gilmorehill) – the story of Cuba’s greatest musicians coming together to record the title song of a documentary in support of the Cuban 5; Conducta – the UK premiere of the most universally successful Cuban film since Strawberry and Chocolate (5 Nov, GFT); and La Pericula de Ana (3 Nov, GFT) a film about a native Cuban actress and exploitative foreign filmmakers!

Couple all this with a celebration of Cuban food (in Stravaigin on 4 Nov), the launch of Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt’s book on the central role of Cuban Culture – To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture - (in the CCA on the 7 Nov) and to make the cities’ links complete – a revival of the Club Cubana nights, Glasgow used to see! (In Mango, Sauchiehall Street, 6 Nov). Full Programme is available from the festival website, here. You’ll find something you want to see, hear or eat/drink!

Bread, and Roses too.

The increasing use of cultural and artistic forms by labour movement groups in Scotland continues apace! In addition to November 30th's Tony Benn celebration (see previous blog), news comes of a new initiative in the area of cinema.

Bread and Roses

A local Glasgow GMB branch is tentatively starting to show a series of films in a small cinema space in the city's Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA).   The first film is due next Sunday (23 November, doors at 6.15 pm) and it will be a screening of Bread and Roses. This is the entirely appropriate story of the unionisation and fight for fair treatment and pay waged by mainly immigrant cleaners and janitors in a Los Angeles office block. Ken Loach’s film follows the feisty Maya and Rosa as they meet union organiser Sam and stand up for their rights – often at great risk to themselves. The film will be followed by a discussion with local trade unionists.

The showing, which is intended to test out the water for a regular series of screenings, is timed to be part of Glasgow's regular anti-racist celebrations around St Andrew's Day (details of the Rally here). Tickets for the film are available from the CCA, here.

If this specific initiative by the GMB Apex Branch (which includes the staff of the STUC among its members) is successful, other screenings are planned next year, including Land and Freedom, another Ken Loach Film, this time on the Spanish Civil War timed to coincide with the anniversary of the first action by the British battalion of the International Brigade, and The Navigators a film where five Yorkshiremen try to survive after British Rail is bought out by a private company. This will be scheduled to mark International Workers' Memorial Day.  

As well as the two events above, greater Glasgow Hope not Hate has teamed up with a number of other groups to provide a whole cornucopia of films, discussion and talks around the St Andrew's Day celebrations. Spreading wider than Glasgow, it includes a talk by Denis Goldberg, one of the Rivonia trialists, alongside Nelson Mandela. This is in Irvine. Back in Glasgow's STUC, well known author, Daniel Gray (Homage to Caledonia) delivers one of the regular Morning Star Our Class, Our Culture talks (Weds 3 Dec, 7.00pm), and Jess Smith, a Scottish Traveller talks about her experience of discrimination in an event at the City's Hillhead library (Sat 6 Dec, 1.00pm).  A programme of events is at http://issuu.com/greaterglasgowhopenothate/docs/hnhstandrewseventslist2014

It is great news that the TU and labour movement is enthusiastically adopting staging cultural and artistic events.  Music and song have been with us for some time, of course, but other formats are also in the great tradition of the movement, which in the 1930/40's had regular programmes of book readings, film showings and even theatre performances. Will we eventually see a resurgence of the likes of the Unity Theatre?