The Courage to Film when the Homeland Does Not Support

Abstract

This article reflects on the contradictions in the cinematographic creation of a country, Cuba, which is home to one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de San Antonio de los Baños, EICTV). Since its foundation in 1986, this institution has clearly had a transnational vocation. EICTV is a film school open to students from Latin America, Africa and Asia, and, in its three decades of existence, thousands of professionals and students from over fifty countries have made it a space for cultural diversity. However, the peculiarities of the Cuban socialist system limit cinematographic creation ideologically, conditioned by the absence of freedom of expression and marked by state censorship. Screenwriter, producer and documentary filmmaker Lola Mayo, professor of the School’s Documentary Department since 2010, presents the cases of several Cuban filmmakers who have graduated from this institution and have a difficult struggle with the Cuban state to produce and make their films, including Miguel Coyula.