Havana: The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, today inaugurated the new headquarters of the Cuban Cinemateca, installed in the former residence of the prominent intellectual and filmmaker Alfredo Guevara, Prensa Latina publishes.
At the meeting, held in commemoration of the Cuban Culture Day, the dignitary of the Caribbean nation unveiled the plaque that pays tribute to Guevara, founder of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).
For his part, the director of the Cinemateca, Luciano Castillo, recalled the foundational moments of the entity, during the opening remarks of the meeting, as he reminded the people who have been part of this significant institution for Cuban cinema.
The assignment of this new headquarters, by the government and the Ministry of Culture, is appreciated as recognition of the work carried out, Castillo wrote, on the ICAIC institutional website.
And what better space to welcome it than the residence of Alfredo Guevara, representative of the lineage of the founders! We owe not only the new Cuban cinema promoted by ICAIC to his management, but also everything it generated, he said.
In this sense, he referred to Guevara’s imprint on the creation of mobile cinemas, animation cinema with an artistic criterion, the so-called ‘Cuban documentary school’ and the movement of a cinematographic poster with genuine distinctive features.
Alfredo Guevara, author of numerous books and essays, bequeathed a work that transcends the Cinematheque itself, as it is printed in the history of the seventh art in the country as in the Cuban Cinema magazine, the Latin American ICAIC Newscast, the Sound Experimentation Group and the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.
The institution’s opening ceremony was attended by distinguished personalities from the largest of the Antilles such as the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, the President of Casa de las Américas, Abel Prieto, the singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, the National Film Award, Manuel Pérez, among others.
The new headquarters of the entity, temple of the seventh art in Cuba, treasures a wide bibliography of Cuban and Latin American filmography, and becomes a source of knowledge for future work and research, which constitutes a guarantee for the preservation of the past and to define the route towards the future.
