Cuban director Lilo Vilaplana denounced the creation of a film festival in Cuba at the Presidio Modelo National Monument, located in the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud.
The prison, located on Isla de los Pinos, served this week as the venue for the “International Film and Environment Festival of the Caribbean, Isla Verde”, which arose within the framework of World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5.
The event began on May 29 and concluded on June 5, with a free concert by the Cuban troubadour and spokesman for the dictatorship, Silvio Rodríguez.
The festival program included documentaries from different countries, related to the environment, as well as the planting of 1,500 pine trees, to reforest the forest that gives its name to the Island.
In this sense, the director of Planted in conversation with Cuban newspaperdescribed the fact as an attempt by the dictatorship to “clean up” the image of the prison, which served the dictatorship for around 20 years before becoming a national monument and school in 1980.
“If someone wants to make a green, ecological film festival, I speak in Tope de Collantes, Pinales, but how are you going to do it there in front of the circulars where so many people were murdered and so much blood was spilled, and people were tortured there, and why? with the prison fund?” Vilaplana declared.
For the filmmaker, the regime at the same time seeks with its event to overshadow the opposition cinematographic creation, especially its films planted y Planteda saga that directly denounces the persecution and torture of Cuban political prisoners.
“And they are going to plant 1,500 pine trees, that is, ‘plant’- ‘planted’, as if to misrepresent the term ‘Planted’, I don’t know, but I see a bad intention in all this,” he added.
On the other hand, he mentioned that it would not be the first time that the regime tries to “clean” its torture centers with cultural events that give a “friendly” image to the foreign public.
“In the cabin, where they shot so many people on the wall, they held a book fair, and now in front of the circulars where they have murdered so many political prisoners in Cuba they are holding a film festival,” added Vilaplana.
Likewise, he stressed that the idea of the recently created festival coincides with the presentation of Plantedhis most recent film, in different places.
“Everything is very strange, and right now with the premiere of Planted They do this, an urgent festival that they had never done, they make it up, and in that place. It is very suspicious, ”he sentenced.
Although it is true that one of the strategies of the Cuban regime is to launch news or publications favorable to it with keywords to obscure opposition tendencies, as happened with “Patria y Vida”, official media have not echoed the conjugation “planted ”, and his own notes on the festival were scant.
