Havana

Screening featuring Jana Boková

A glimpse into life in contemporary Havana, the metropolis of Fidel Castro’s socialist experiment.
Against the backdrop of political trials that reached their peak in 1990, the film takes us on a journey through the homes of pre-revolutionary Cuban high society; talking faces with their expected and surprising stories, Cuban poetry, writers, and resonant, stirring verses, the sea on the outskirts of the city (which serves as both a border and an obstacle, and upon crossing which the filmmaker finds herself in Havana on the “other side,” in Florida).

“All my films try to capture personal conflict, human qualities; I don’t deliberately seek out political conflicts. But in Havana, I couldn’t avoid them. In Havana, everything is political.” The film was made under guerrilla-like conditions at a time when repression was intensifying on the “island of freedom.”

At the time, Boková perceived Havana as a sort of equivalent of totalitarian Prague in tropical conditions. Her subjects of interest were Cuban writers, including Reinaldo Arenas, whose fate was later brought to the screen by Julian Schnabel in the famous film Before Night Falls, based on her film. It was precisely these writers who, much like in our country, bore the brunt of the repression. In the film, however, far more screen time is given to the people living in crumbling colonial villas and massive Art Nouveau apartment buildings divided into communal flats. The film conveys a strong atmosphere of fear, as locals try to praise the regime in front of the camera, but often quickly run out of words and end up repeating only revolutionary slogans over and over again.

free admission