Enrique Colina Comes to the Defense of Cremata Condemns “Censorship and its Demons”

Enrique Colina Comes to the Defense of Cremata Condemns "Censorship and
its Demons" / 14ymedio
Posted on November 14, 2015

14ymedio, 30 October 2015 — The critic and filmmaker Enrique Colina came
out Thursday in defense of the Cuban director of films and plays Juan
Carlos Cremata with a strong message titled On Censorship and Its
Demons. In the text, which has been widely circulated by email, he
affirms that to remain silent in the face of the censorship suffered by
the playwright, "Is to fold before the arbitrary decisions that
potentially affect all of us as creators, but also as citizens."

A reading of Colina's article was a part of the agenda of the upcoming
meeting of the G20 Group, a gathering of numerous artists and producers
who demand a law for the cinema. However, Cremata said that the
organizers of the meeting determined "it is not the time" to present the
article at the meeting this coming Saturday at their headquarters at
Fresa y Chocolate in Havana's Vedado district.

The letter was made public via email with the consent of the author, who
sees no "contradiction in discussing a cinema law which we are fighting
for, in which it is explicitly guaranteed that the law supports us to
defend the culture against the exercise of a censorship which calls
itself revolutionary."

Colina, a man of great prestige without the Cuban film industry, and the
creator of a work that enjoys great popularity, says in the message that
accompanied the letter that there is an "ethical deterioration fed by
neglect, corruption and the most cowardly and opportunistic faking." As
the only remedy, the director of the films "Neighbors" and "The Marble
Cow" calls for a ripping away of "this gag that the bureaucratic
bastards want to impose on committed artistic expression.

"After so many years preaching Marxism-Leninism seems that the
custodians of orthodoxy of silence have forgotten the laws of
dialectics," Colina reflects strongly, adding that "faith and obedience
to immobility seem to be the altars of worship at which we convene with
their damning anathemas and excommunications," and, in a colloquial tone
concludes: "But no, my friend, we protest."

"There is already a stagnation in citizen awareness and ideological
exhaustion from the spent propagandistic character of the media," says
the letter. "This conduct of intolerance expresses well the weakness and
the intellectual and political shabbiness to take on an open and
responsible debate," he added.

"What real constructive sense does an exclusive censorship bring to the
debate between those who undertake these artistic activities and are
potentially the subjects of this same arbitrariness," asks the director.

Colina's support is added to a long list of cultural figures inside and
outside Cuba who have denounced the censorship against the play the The
King is Dying (also produced in English as: Exit The King), directed by
Cremata and closed down last September. Later, the authorities revoked
Cremata's contract as a theater director.

Just a week ago, Cremata announced a fundraising campaign to "continue
independent work in film and theater in Cuba," a gesture that opens the
way to self-financing after decades of working with the Cuban Institute
of Art and Film Industry (ICAIC) and the National Council for the
Performing Arts.

Source: Enrique Colina Comes to the Defense of Cremata Condemns
"Censorship and its Demons" / 14ymedio | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/enrique-colina-comes-to-the-defense-of-cremata-condemns-censorship-and-its-demons-14ymedio/