Fernando Pérez: "For there to be dialogue there must be will"

Film director Fernando Pérez expressed his belief in dialogue as a tool to achieve changes in the Cuban reality, from the sphere of culture to politics.

"For there to be dialogue there must be will," said the director of films like Clandestinos, Life is whistling and Suite Habana.

In an interview granted to Neighborhood Journalism, Pérez explained how it was their participation in the demonstration that gathered on November 27 at the doors of the Ministry of Culture (MINCULT). He also gave testimony of what he observed there and shared his reflections on the event, as well as its impact on the institutions and reality of the country.

“I think it is a moment of dialogue, even with those who have been excluded, not only because of their 'creative' positions, but also because of their political positions,” said the director, for whom cultural policy has to be open and understand that “Creative freedom has to do with freedom of expression. And freedom of expression is free, or it is not”.

The filmmaker tried to locate what happened to the San Isidro Movement (MSI) and the protest in front of the MINCULT in the context of the tension that has always existed between the world of art and cultural institutions, and in general the “revolutionary” institutionality of the country. In that sense, he mentioned the controversial “assembly of filmmakers” who demanded that their opinions be listened to when the institutions addressed the situation of Cuban audiovisuals.

Pérez considered it as a precedent for what is now happening “with young filmmakers and artists who demand participation and dialogue with institutions that, on many occasions, have not been synchronized with the reality that young artists are living.”

“From there came responses to certain demands, such as the Development Fund, the recognition of the independent individual creator. “I believe that they have been positive measures and signs of dialogue and updating of production processes that preserve the principle that cinema is an art and that, as such, it has to be free in its expression,” added the director.

In his defense of dialogue as a mechanism to bring positions closer together, Pérez chooses to maintain a balance between criticism of what has been wrong and recognition of what has been good in the behavior of Cuban cultural institutions. In his opinion, the ICAIC has exercised censorship, but cannot say that it is a censoring institution. “Beyond the historical circumstances that those who have justified its existence may cite, censorship is always the same: something that, for me, should not exist,” he explains in the interview.

“I defend the open policies that the ICAIC has maintained and I have been against the closed policies that it has maintained in 'extreme situations'. As sometimes happens to me with young people, sometimes I share their ideas and sometimes I don't. But I defend their right to express themselves,” said the Madagascar director.

“The important thing is to maintain the ideas in which one has believed. And those that I believe in do not deny that the ICAIC has enriched our cinema. At the same time, I share, support and recognize myself in the new ideas that young people bring,” Pérez declared in the interview, while acknowledging that he had heard about the MSI, but that the Cuban press and television did not report on them.

Therefore, when the actor Jorge Perogurría told him "I think we should go there to see what happens," decided to go to MINCULT on 27N. “I went without knowing what I could say. I imagined what the young people's complaints would be. And what those guys said there... I identified with them and their demands. I felt that there was something essential that unites these young people in their diversity and that is the right to free expression.”

“Next come the nuances, the individual and group positions; but that is precisely the richness of diversity. And I believe that 'unity within diversity' is something that has been demanded for a long time, and there a fundamental step was taken to, based on that dialogue, achieve it," he stated.

Fernando Pérez repeats: freedom of expression is free, or it is not. And he assures that it has taken a long time to respond to these complaints. “Our press does not reflect this, nor the diversity and complexity of all these things. And there will be different criteria, opposition, but those spaces have to exist and cannot be repressed.”

“Something that has to stop completely are acts of repudiation”, claims Pérez. A claim that questions the regime's main argument to justify these acts: the supposed spontaneous adhesion of the people.

“The media here have not reflected the entirety of what really happened there (at the meeting). No one has been shown what happened there, the complaints that were made, those of us who entered, the chants of those outside. A still photo is posted and the comments are written on top of it,” criticized the filmmaker.

However, for Fernando, what happened there “was a first step, and for there to be dialogue there must be will on both sides.” The film director hopes that this will exists in cultural institutions and beyond the ministry. “There are many institutions that are called upon to respond to this group of young people. But also in this group of diverse young people there must be a willingness to dialogue with the institutions. I felt that will in them on an emotional level. I saw them there singing songs by Pablo, by Serrat… the national anthem,” Pérez said.

“You cannot run a country as if it were a camp, with a single idea and with orders. And that is the Cuba that you don't want, and neither do I," the director concluded. Fernando Pérez, one of the most lucid and respected Cuban filmmakers, has the dignity to recognize what happened on November 27 and the courage to call for reflection on it.