14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 14 December 2023 — Two speeches, completely opposed, have marked these days of the film festival in Havana. On the one hand, we have the inaugural words of Alexis Triana, the appointed official at the head of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). On the other, those of the filmmaker Ernesto Daranas, in the presentation of his feature film Landrián.
Daranas spoke with the authentic humility that characterizes him. Behind his slow tone was all the firmness of the artist who does not resign himself to obedience and silence. The renowned director of films such as Los dioses rotos, Conducta and Sergio y Sergéi, publicly condemned exclusion and censorship, those “great stigmas of Cuban culture and society in general.” The director dedicated the presentation of his documentary to the Assembly of Filmmakers and to all the colleagues and compatriots who have been the object of injustices. His words, simple and direct, were widely applauded, shared and commented on by thousands of Cubans on their social networks, although the official media prefer to pretend that they were never said.
Those same media, on the contrary, have not lost a minute in spreading the speech of official Alexis Triana to the point of exhaustion
Those same media, on the contrary, have not lost a minute in spreading the speech of official Alexis Triana to the point of exhaustion. The new commissioner of the ICAIC used the pompous, laudatory and demagogic style that he has been rehearsing in all his years as an employee of the bureaucratic apparatus. The people of Holguīn know well that declamatory intonation that he used to throw from the balcony of La Periquera, always losing his voice, as if he were a mixture of Republican mayor and revolutionary cheerleader.
Alexis has spent his