Nicolás Guillén Landrián: Memory in Progress screening and Q & A

About the screening

Inside Downtown (2001; 29 minutes), Nicolás Guillén Landrián and Jorge Egusquiza 

Retornar a la Habana con Guillén Landrián (2013; 34 minutes), Julio Ramos and Raydel Araoz

Coffea Arábiga (1968; 18 minutes), Nicolás Guillén Landrián

Born in Camagüey, in central Cuba, the son of an attorney – a prominent advocate of Camagüey sugar workers – Nicolás Guillén Landrián worked intermittently at the Cuban national film institute, ICAIC, in Havana from the early 1960s to the early 1970s, first as a production assistant and later as a director primarily in the newsreel and scientific documentary division. Guillén Landrián was one of only three Afro-Cuban directors active at the ICAIC in its first decade. Nephew of revolutionary Cuba’s national poet Nicolás Guillén and disciple of Joris Ivens and Theodor Christensen, Guillén Landrián shot on 35mm film such Cuban classics as Ociel del Toa (Ociel of the Toa, 1965); Retornar a Baracoa (Return to Baracoa, 1966), about the construction of highways and infrastructure in eastern Cuba; Desde la Habana ¡1969! recordar (From Havana: 1969! Remember, 1969); and the notoriously censored Coffea arábiga (1968), which ironized the Havana greenbelt urban agricultural project, unearthing its racialized undertones. After leaving Cuba for Miami, Florida in 1989, Guillén Landrián filmed in video his final and only audiovisual work in exile, Inside Downtown (2001).

Working alongside Jorge Egusquiza Zorilla, Inside Downtown is a charming portrait of artists and poets of Guillén Landrián’s generation, including the cult Afro-Cuban poet, Esteban Luis Cárdenas. Retornar a la Habana con Guillén Landrián (Return to Havana with Guillén Landrián, 2013). This final film, directed by Julio Ramos and Raydel Araoz, contains extensive interviews with Guillén Landrián’s widow, the painter Gretel Alfonso. 

About the Q&A

6:00-7:00pm

• Jorge Egusquiza, co-director Inside Downtown 
• Julio Ramos, co-director of Retornar a la Habana con Guillén Landrián and Emeritus Professor Spanish & Portuguese, Berkeley

In conversation with:

• Dr Raquel Ribeiro, Senior Lecturer in Portuguese, UofE
• Dr Jessica Gordon-Burroughs, Lecturer in Latin American Studies and Visual Culture, UofE

There will be additional testimonies available on the Festival Page from Nicolás Guillén Landrián's widow, painter Gretel Alfonso, co-director of Retornar a la Habana con Guillén LandriánRaydel Araoz, Cuban film critic Dean Luis Reyes, Cuban critic and curator Luisa Marisy, among others.

Take me to the Havana Glasgow Film Festival website to book my tickets

This event is sponsored by the LLC Impact Fund, The University of Edinburgh.

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