Mariano Mestman — Internationalist Solidarity and Third Worldist film culture (Havana, 1968)
“Ralph Featherstone (left), John La Rose (centre) and C.L.R. James (right) attending the Congress” (The George Padmore Institute)
The Cultural Congress of Havana, held in Cuba in January 1968, was one of the greatest attempts to articulate a global cultural solidarity coalition-building with Third World struggles of the time. More than 600 artists and intellectuals from over 60 countries arrived at the Cultural Congress to discuss the situations of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It followed the impulse of the Tricontinental Conference (of January 1966) and other radical political and cultural meetings also held in Havana during 1967. Although the Cultural Congress was not a cinema meeting, some political filmmakers from different countries arrived there, among other intellectuals and artists.
In this talk, against recent readings that saw in that Congress a moment of "Sovietization" of Cuban cultural policy, I will analyze the creative convergence at the meeting of a Third Worldist internationalism with the experimental, avant-garde visual culture trends of the times (including the overlooked Cuban newsreel about the meeting, as an example). I will also mention the role of the Cuban cinema institute (ICAIC) during the meeting in order to show the links between the Cultural Congress and the so-called New Latin American Cinema movement (1967-1974), as well as the dialogue and debates between European and Third World filmmakers.
BIO
Mariano Mestman is a Researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and at the Instituto Gino Germani (University of Buenos Aires) in Argentina. He holds a doctorate in Film History from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and has published articles on cinema, arts and communication in several international journals.