The Cancellation of A Cyber-Gathering In Camagüey Sparks Outrage

The Cancellation of A Cyber-Gathering In Camagüey Sparks Outrage /
14ymedio, Orlando Palma
Posted on November 2, 2015

14ymedio, Orlando Palma, Camaguey, 2 November 2015 — The peaceful city
of Camagüey experienced a shock among its intellectuals this weekend.
The well-known film critic Juan Antonio Garcia Borrero denounced the
"intellectual conservatism" that led to the suspension of a
cyber-gathering programmed for this Thursday in Café Ciudad. In his
blog, Cine cubano, la pupila insomne (Cuban cinema, the insomniac
pupil), the specialist reflects on the "tribal thinking and
institutional self-censorship that follows from it."

"I seem to be living a nightmare," García Borrero said in a post, in
response to being informed by the leadership of the Office of the City
Historian that the gathering could not be held, "despite having been
promoted in all the media." His first reaction was to "take a breath,
breathe deeply… I won't give them the pleasure, neither those here nor
there, of making me into a disaffected person," he wrote in a brief post.

Known for his work in rescuing and spreading Cuban cinema, Garcia
Borrero has had a blog for more than eight years, where he reflects on
the seventh art. His work as a blogger has also led him to approach the
digital publication scene and he participated in the First Forum of
Audiovisual Consumption, held in Havana in 2014, an experience that he
had tried unsuccessfully to move to this native city.

The idea of the forum, according to the author of the book BLOGuerías –
published by the Cuban publisher Acana in 2009 – "was born of personal
exchanges that at some point" he had engaged in with the former Cuban
Minister of Culture, Abel Prieto. Initially, the event was scheduled in
Camaguey city, but the lack of time to organize it moved the first event
to the capital.

Following the Havana meeting, Pedro de la Hoz Gonzalez, vice president
of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), informed
the provincial section of the organization of the "confirmation of the
announcement of the Second Forum on Audiovisual Culture" for 30 and 31
October. However, the event did not happen. It was the local "UNEAC
which has put the most obstacles in the way," complains García Borrero.

Emotionally affected by the forum's not being held and the cancellation
of the cyber-gathering that would have taken its place, the film critic
shared with his readers on the Internet his concern that
the authorities would insist on decreeing his "civil death" in Camagüey.
"It doesn't matter. I will always have the cave, the solitary refuge to
which Nietzsche alluded*," he explained.

Garcia Borrero's complaint arrives within a few of a meeting of the G-20
Group in Havana, which is promoting the implementation of a Film Law, a
detail referred to by the critic Gustavo Arcos, in an article he
published this Friday in defense of the Camagueyan, and denouncing the
"tacit conspiracy of some people in power in the country to put an end
to everything that has to do with initiative in the audiovisual field."

Arcos says that this intention is seen "in the arbitrary bans on
[private] 3D movie rooms," decreed at the end of 2013, and in "the
current resistance to implementing a Film Law." The specialist adds that
these attitudes, "the systematic attacks on the weekly packet," and also
seen in the "continued mantle of suspicion and threats that are launched
against journalists, bloggers, graphic designers or artists linked to
alternative publications, web pages or spaces generated by individual
initiatives."

The controversy over the cancelled cyber-gathering has barely begun and
it could be joined by many other intellectuals, given the prestige
enjoyed by Garcia Borrero, as an outstanding professional and honest
man. The scene of the creation, production and film criticism in recent
weeks in Cuba resembles dry grass about to catch fire. What happened in
the city of Camagüey could be the spark.

*Translator's note: "Wherever there have been powerful societies,
governments, religions, or public opinions — in short, wherever there
was any kind of tyranny, it has hated the lonely philosopher; for
philosophy opens up a refuge for man where no tyranny can reach: the
cave of inwardness, the labyrinth of the breast; and that annoys all
tyrants." Friedrich Nietzsche, Schopenhauer As Educator, 1874. Source of
this English translation here.

Source: The Cancellation of A Cyber-Gathering In Camagüey Sparks Outrage
/ 14ymedio, Orlando Palma | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-cancellation-of-a-cyber-gathering-in-camaguey-sparks-outrage-14ymedio-orlando-palma/