MOVIES : Give That Festival a Cigar : Despite a depleted economy, Cuba retains an artistically strong movie industry, and among Latin American film fests, Havana is the major player.

Scratch a Cuban, uncover a paradox.

To spend time in this crumbling but still heartbreakingly beautiful city, to talk to Cuban filmmakers during the just-concluded 17th Festival of New Latin American Cinema, is to hear the same words repeated over and over: contradictory, paradoxical, inexplicable, miraculous, dichotomy. “It’s more difficult to explain what happens in Cuba in rational terms than to live here,” says prominent director Gerardo Chijona. “If you’re going to go by common sense, forget it.”

To examine this small island’s film history is to discover how far from conventional expectations everything is. Isolated and beleaguered by an American economic blockade that is almost as old as its 37-year-old revolution, Cuba should never have been able to muster the resources to develop any kind of film industry or to play host to a prestigious international festival dedicated to the socially conscious Latin cinema.

Yet, starting in the late 1960s, when Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s “Memories of Underdevelopment” and Humberto Solas’ “Lucia” astonished international audiences with their skill and brio, Cuba rapidly established itself as a world cinematic force.

And along with the industry the festival in Havana grew in the 1980s into the biggest, most important showcase for Latin American films, complete with Dionysian all-night parties that showcased the best in Cuban music. Helmut Newton shot the festival for Vanity Fair, Bob Rafelson slept in George Raft’s celebrated circular bed at the Hotel Capri, Treat Williams flew in himself, Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken in his private plane, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro took up so much of Jack Lemmon’s time that the actor commented, “Anyone who can make me shut up for three hours has got to be extraordinary.”

“During my years, cinema was born in the middle of the circus, the show was in the streets,” says Pastor Vega, who ran the festival from its inception through 1990. “Everybody overseas thought that people were not happy here, that Cuba was a big jail. I decided to make a festival that was a film, theater, music, alcohol and sex festival, all together at the same time. In my opinion, that was cultural.”

But all that was before what is known in Cuba as “the special period.” Beginning in 1990 the tightening of the American blockade combined with the collapse of the Soviet bloc (which had accounted for 85% of Cuba’s foreign trade as well as billions of dollars in foreign aid) to bring the island’s economy to nearly a standstill.

The legalization of the American dollar as local currency in 1993 introduced a two-tier economic system to a society that had prided itself on its egalitarianism, making those without access to greenbacks feel like refugees in their own country and leading to too-true jokes with punch lines about bellboys making more money than brain surgeons. If Cuba had somehow managed to have a film industry and a festival before, surely this deepest of crises would bring everything to an end.

And Cuba’s continuing economic miseries have made a difference in how its citizens see films. Estimates are that about half of Havana’s movie theaters have been closed, victims of everything from persistent blackouts to weakened public transportation due to the lack of gasoline to projectors so ancient some are reportedly held together with string.

As a result, most Cuban movie-going has transferred to television, especially a heavily watched Saturday night double bill that features hot items from Hollywood like “Forrest Gump” and “Jurassic Park,” all conveniently bootlegged off satellite transmissions. Enrique Colina, whose film analysis program on Cuban TV has lasted 27 years (“I will ask for the Guinness record, especially if there is money,” he laughs) says that “if relations with the U.S. become normal, it will be a big problem for the mass audience, because we couldn’t show these films.”

The special period has also affected Cuba’s prestigious Three Worlds International Film and Television School, where Francis Ford Coppola is fondly remembered for the day he cooked 4,000 gnocchi and fed the entire student body. Fernando Birri, the legendary Argentine director who was a founder of the New Latin American cinema movement and the school’s first director, was back this year to celebrate his 70th birthday. “Cuba is changing and the school will, too,” he somberly told the students at a cake-cutting party. “The revolution is like a flame that seems about to be extinguished but stays alive. The flame is different, but it does not go out.”

Yet, despite all these problems, the paradoxical truth is that, like the bumblebee that shouldn’t be able to fly but does, Havana’s film festival is not only surviving but--helped by the country’s ever-expanding tourist industry (more than 600,000 non-U.S. tourists spent an estimated $850 million in 1994)--is actually prospering compared to where it was three and four years ago.

Despite competition from festivals in Cartagena, Colombia, and Guadalajara, Mexico, Havana is still the major player in this market. This year’s competition attracted more than 90 features from a dozen Latin American and Caribbean countries, with the top prize, the Gran Premio Coral, going to “Miracle Alley,” the highest-grossing Mexican film and that country’s Oscar nominee.

Of course, much has changed. “Now,” says Gerardo Chijona, “we are making a festival according to our times.” Which means, Pastor Vega unhappily notes, “no parties, only seminars, something ‘serious,’ in quotes.” Almost everyone pays their own way these days, and the festival has begun to sell advertising space on everything from billboards to opening night tickets. Even Fidel Castro, far from schmoozing with Jack Lemmon, missed this year’s event entirely. He was visible nightly on the TV news, however, visiting China and Vietnam, a weary presence in an overcoat being greeted by small children and giggling circus acrobats as he searched for tips on improving the country’s economy.

And, as a concession to the Cuban population, the nature of the festival has shifted markedly as well. Where in the 1980s the films shown were almost exclusively Latin American, now European, Asian and even American films form a major presence. This year, for instance, what audiences at more than 20 theaters in Havana and several elsewhere in Cuba (the festival travels to half a dozen cities) saw included “Pulp Fiction,” “Raise the Red Lantern,” “In the Name of the Father,” “Babette’s Feast” and dozens more. The reason: The country lacks the money to procure these films for regular theatrical runs, so if they were not brought in for the festival, Cuban audiences would not get to see them at all.

If all this sounds grim and somber, it shouldn’t, because the passion and enthusiasm of the convivial Cuban audiences, the people the event is really intended for, make the Havana festival just the opposite. Packs of lively fans crowd around the posted screening lists as if they were winning lottery numbers, and enormous throngs line up for hours in advance at major Havana theaters like the Yara and the Charlie Chaplin, the festival headquarters, and respond lustily to what’s on screen.

It’s difficult to think of another country where film is so important, has so transfixed an entire population from top to bottom. “Cubans are the most cultured people in all Latin America,” director Solas says flatly. Moreover, adds veteran director Julio Garcia Espinosa, “It’s the only country in Latin America where people will stand in line to see Latin Americanfilms. Other audiences see that a film’s in Spanish and they will not go.”

Though Cuba was receptive to cinema even before 1959 (Solas remembers seeing such classics as “The Bicycle Thief” and “The Battleship Potemkin” by the time he was 10), there is no doubt that the Cuban Revolution raised the importance of film to a level never seen before. In March 1959, less than three months after Castro’s triumph, when other things likely were on his mind, the new regime’s first cultural act was to create a state film organization, Instituto Cubano de Arte y Industria Cinematograficos, universally known by its initials as ICAIC.

Though propaganda and national self-image were reason enough to found ICAIC, Cuban filmmakers know, as critic Enrique Colina puts it, “all revolutions have family names, they depend on the people who make them.” And if it wasn’t for Alfredo Guevara, a courtly, cultured man rarely seen in public without a sports jacket draped over his shoulders, the Cuban film industry might not exist at all.

Half a century ago, when Guevara was an undergraduate leader at Havana University, he took the advice of friends and sought out someone new on campus. “When I came back I said, and people remember my judgment, ‘This student will be either the worst of gangsters or a new Jose Marti,’ ” the revered 19th century Cuban patriotic leader.

The new student was Fidel Castro, and from then on Guevara’s life intertwined passion for film and for the revolution. “I am who I am because Fidel is who he is,” he says today. “If I hadn’t met Fidel when I was so young, my path would have been different.” Exiled in Mexico in the 1950s, he worked as a screenwriter and was Luis Bunuel’s assistant on “Nazarin.” Always close to Castro, he became one of the leader’s most trusted assistants after the revolution, but he never forgot about film.

“Fidel knew I was obsessed with the idea of starting a film institute, we had talked about it a lot, but when I brought it up immediately after the revolution, he said, ‘Don’t think about that now,’ ” Guevara remembers. “But I think something was nagging at him, because a few months later he changed his mind and asked me to organize one.”

Guevara became the first head of ICAIC and his closeness to Castro immediately gave cinema considerable prestige. Also, since Guevara believed that ICAIC should be run by filmmakers and not bureaucrats, that gave Cuban writers and directors something unusual among state-run film systems: the ability to have give-and-take discussions about what can and cannot be filmed.

“Censorship is not organized in a bureaucratic sense, you have discussions and agreements,” says Gutierrez Alea, considered Cuba’s master director both inside and outside the country. “In these 35 years that’s the way it’s been with me. No one has ever said, ‘Do that.’ I have made the films I wanted to make.

“When I went to Hollywood when ‘Strawberry and Chocolate’ [which he co-directed with Juan Carlos Tabio] was nominated for an Oscar, I said I would be happy to make films in America because they are seen everywhere, but I was afraid of the price I would have to pay. I am not sure I’d have the freedom I have in Cuba. That’s the paradox.”

Guevara eventually left ICAIC to be Cuba’s delegate to UNESCO in Paris, but the crisis of the special period, which led to rumors that ICAIC would lose its independence and the film festival would go under, brought him back to run things again 4 1/2 years ago. “Fidel called me and said, ‘Come on, this is your problem,’ and after all I am only a wink of Fidel,” Guevara reports. A believer in youth, Guevara gave a 26-year-old graduate of the film school, Arturo Sotto, his chance to direct a feature, the first that someone under 30 had done since the late 1960s, and saw to it that his film, “Pon Tu Pensamiento En Mi,” was the surprise choice to open this year’s festival.

Coincidentally, Guevara also came back at a critical time for the philosophical direction of Cuban cinema. “Alice in Wondertown,” a satire on the Cuban leadership that won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, was removed from local theaters after only four days of screenings, an unprecedented act that caused such a fuss that most Cuban filmmakers feel it helped pave the way for official toleration of the country’s next controversial film, “Strawberry and Chocolate.”

While on the one hand, “Strawberry” is part of a Cuban tradition of irreverent comedies that mock the country’s problems, it is impossible to overestimate the impact this film (Solas called it “extraordinarily audacious”) had on Cubans, many of whom saw it numerous times despite hours-long lines. Filled with inside references that only Cubans notice, the picture not only treated homosexuality sympathetically for the first time, it also called passionately for tolerance of all differences of opinion.

And it found a strong champion in Guevara, who even now speaks with feeling against the film’s opponents, “those who think they are the most revolutionary but in fact are the most scared, the most conservative, the people who think that the revolution rests on a single card and are afraid if it’s moved the whole house of cards will collapse.”

Despite “Strawberry’s” success, some Cuban filmmakers continue to worry about the future of films that combine pointed looks at contemporary reality with a popular, comedic touch. They note that Gutierrez Alea and Tabio’s latest film, “Guantanamera,” a gleeful dark farce that follows a coffin from one end of Cuba to the other, did not open the festival as might be expected for such prestigious filmmakers (though it did end up winning the second place Coral). Or that Rolando Diaz’s “Melodrama,” a raucous and crowd-pleasing sex comedy with a noticeable social message, was absent from the official catalog and screened only once at a non-prestigious morning slot.

Is subtle repression at work here, the exercise of personal taste, or a combination of both? The answer depends on whom you ask.

For most Cuban filmmakers, however, the more pressing problem is getting films made at all. Economic problems have cut down Cuba’s annual production from a dozen or more features to three or four, and co-production agreements with other countries (“now you have to convince a person who’s living in San Tropez,” Solas half-jokes) are close to essential before a project can proceed. “A film is a mobile factory, it needs fuel,” says director Garcia Espinosa, who ended up shooting his last film, “Reina y Rey,” across the street from his house.

Things are so grim, in fact, it is surprising to see any film production at all. “It’s another miracle, because most Latin American countries, even though they’re not facing our situation, are not producing any films,” says Garcia Espinosa, who ran ICAIC when Guevara was in France. Given the credit are a tradition of fighting windmills plus the goad of hard times. “Man grows when faced with difficulties,” says Guevara, and Gerardo Chijona quotes Tolstoy to the effect that “art is born in chains and dies in freedom.”

Even if films do continue to get made, a larger worry for thoughtful Cubans is what the materialism and opportunism the special period is breeding will do to the soul of the country in general and young filmmakers in particular.

Though he admits that “there is a danger that Cuba will become like Italy, the most cynical country in the world,” director Solas believes otherwise. “The day in which the USSR was dismantled was the happiest in my life, for though we had material splendor there was a lot of spiritual poorness. Now it is my hope that there will be a new Utopia here. We have been through so much, from the excesses of commercialism through wrongly done socialism, we don’t want to come to the end of the century feeling shame.”

Still, it is difficult finally to dismiss the thoughts of Solas’ comrade Gutierrez Alea. Universally known by his nickname of Titon, the 67-year-old director has been battling cancer for several years and talks with difficulty, but everything he says resonates with thought and feeling.

“The revolution was very clear in the beginning, but now it is another system,” he says. “It didn’t work 100%, it didn’t work a big percent, but those who didn’t have to fight for this don’t understand how important it is. Those of us who were inside want to save the moral values and dignity the revolution brought to this country, but it’s not easy.”

Gutierrez Alea pauses and is reminded of a line from his 1968 “Memories,” when his protagonist says, “This island is a trap. We’re too small and too poor. It’s an expensive dignity.”

The director nods.

“Yes, it’s a very expensive dignity,” he says. “But we have to try to pay for it, that’s what I think. Because if you lose your dignity, you lose everything.”