Presence
Documentary/Experimental Short Film 2019 4.56 minutes
SYNOPSIS: The Past does not want or cannot accept that times have changed, it is tied to its experiences, to its moments of yesteryear. The Present is, being as it is, giving way to what could be the Future. Both dimensions are in conflict, a battle for understanding. The context suffers the consequences while waiting for an answer to the unknown…
This short film is the result of a creative residency sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Havana, the LEES Social Experimentation Scenic Laboratory and the Chullima Workshop, led by Cuban visual artist Wilfredo Prieto. In this residence, he was invited as a creator to develop, after a social and contextual investigation, a work that reflected on social and anthropological situations in one of the neighborhoods of the Havana municipality of Playa, a maritime place and away from the essence of the capital city, where the Almendares River runs, a polluted river and therefore said environmental reality, and residential and population changes, has mutated from a fishing place to be a receptacle of urban spaces to a certain point of conflict in its primary essences. What it was, what it is today and how uncertain it will be tomorrow is reflected in the film in a symbolic way, where on the one hand the later generations feel displaced and the current ones that coexist in the space do not adapt completely, perhaps because of the generational conflict that is perceived there. Many of those who used to be fishermen only take refuge in nostalgia and longing, due to contamination and the contemporary invasion of the place, in many cases said place is only a place of transit, said conflict is visualized from the center of the place, a park, a space that serves as a reflection of what happens there and the film does its best to take it from the documentary and the symbolic.
This film has had a tour of several national and international audiovisual festivals such as:
- Video Award Festival, Holguín 2019
- II Design Biennial of Havana 2019
- National Audiovisual Festival IMAGO 2019
- 29 National Image Warehouse Exhibition 2019
- SREC International Film Festival San Rafael en Corto, Spain 2019
- Documentary International Festival, Spain, 2020
- 1st International Film Festival of the Isthmus, Mexico, 2021
With what is collected from this NFT, the post-production of another film, which recently concluded its production, will be completed.