Contemporary Cuban Cinema

Black Camera invites submissions for a Close-Up focused on contemporary Cuban cinema. The cultural currency of film in Cuban revolutionary society has provided for a uniquely crafted and skilled film culture in Cuba, rich in nuance and inventiveness. Nationalized in 1959 by the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos, commonly referred to as ICAIC, through the almost sixty years of revolution, Cuba's film industry has long held a privileged position within Cuban society, and also served as an informal measuring stick for the nation's progress. Despite a lack of resources and varying degrees of restriction and censorship of artistic expression through the years of the Cuban Revolution, the Cuban film industry has not only continued to thrive but also fostered a premium valuation of Cuban art and cultural production internally as well as externally. Major national and international film festivals centered on the latest offerings of the Cuban film industry, such as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, celebrating its fortieth iteration, further emphasizes the importance of Cuban film as a canonical juggernaut in the study and appreciation of contemporary film.

The early years of the revolution produced seminal films from directors such as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Santiago Álvarez, Humberto Solás, and Julio García Espinosa, who inserted themes of race, class, and gender into the revolutionary dialogue. Alternative voices such as Nicolás Guillén Landrián, Sergio Giral, and Sara Gómez served as warnings to those who would posit in their work serious questions regarding the incongruities that existed between the tenets of the Cuban revolution and artistic and racial dialogue and expression. Contemporary directors such as Gloria Rolando and Eric Corvalán Pelle have utilized a variety of genres and embraced new filmic techniques and resources such as international partnerships to develop and distribute their films globally and also to interrogate more freely themes in their films that might be considered controversial and antirevolutionary within contemporary Cuban society, furthering the evolution of Cuban Cinema in more recent years.

This Close-Up endeavors to explore the use of film not only as a narrative mode for the official voice of the Cuban nation but also as a narrative tool for counter histories. Essays framed around major sociohistoric and sociopolitical developments in the revolution as well as those examining intersections of identity politics, counter narratives, and techniques of film production are highly desired.

Suggested topics include

• • filmic responses and reactions to major sociopolitical and socio-historic developments of the Revolution

• • intersections of identity politics

• • incongruities between tenets of the Cuban Revolution and limits of artistic expression

• • counter narratives

• • examination of influence of foreign resources on the development of Cuban Cinema

• • revolutionary and antirevolutionary discourse

Additional topics may include but are not limited to

• • post-Castro film

• • reimagining the past

• • the Special Period

• • Mariel Boatlift

• • the Angola Campaign

• • the limits and allowances of artistic expression

• • past, present, and future projections of Cuban history

• • encounters of gender

• • the influence of foreign hands and partners in film production

• • antirevolutionary themes and topics

• • identity politics

Please submit completed essays, a 150-word abstract, as well as a 50–100 word biography by May 1, 2020. Submissions should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. Please see journal guidelines for more on the submission policy.

www.indiana.edu/~blackcam/call/#guidelines

Direct all questions, correspondence, and submissions to guest editor Aisha Z. Cort at aisha.cort@howard.edu.