PAVEL GIROUD
Retrospective
As it is a tradition for more than a decade, VLAFF dedicates a retrospective to a figure of Latin American cinema. In past years, VLAFF has dedicated this retrospective to the Brazilian director ANNA MUYLAERT, to the Chilean actress MANUELA MARTELLI, to the Argentine screenwriter ANDRES DUPRAT, among many others. This year, in addition to having a focus on Cuban cinema, we will have a retrospective on the Cuban director and screenwriter PAVEL GIROUD.
VLAFF’s relationship with Pavel Giroud‘s cinema goes back more than 17 years, when we presented Pavel’s first feature film, LA EDAD DE LA PESETA, in 2007. On that occasion, the film’s editor, Lester Hamlet, visited us in Vancouver to present the film. Years later, in 2016, when VLAFF started a series of films related to music, we presented PLAYING LECUONA, co-directed by Pavel and the Canarian director Juan Manuel Villar.
For the 21st edition of VLAFF it is an honour to welcome PAVEL GIROUD to present three of his most significant works, and although this is not a complete retrospective, it is a way to get to know the work -and the country- of one of the most active Cuban auteurs today. Pavel Giroud is the director of a very diverse cinema, distinctly Cuban. As it is very difficult for foreigners to place themselves in such a complex society, difficult to understand if they do not live in it, Pavel’s cinema is therefore a precise, inside look at that Caribbean island so enigmatic for those of us who live in the North.
With director Pavel Giroud in attendance, VLAFF will screen PLAYING LECUONA, (a fabulous documentary featuring all-star Latin Jazz pianists and musicians); THE COMPANION (which tells the story of a disgraced boxer who gradually forms an unlikely friendship with an HIV+ patient whom he is tasked with monitoring at a military-run sanitarium in 1980s Cuba); and Pavel’s most recent feature documentary, THE PADILLA AFFAIR, a must-see film for Cuban history lovers (with never before seen footage of a mea culpa of the poet Heberto Padilla, with interventions from Gabriel García Marquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, among others). THE PADILLA AFFAIR premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and has screened at many prestigious film festivals around the world such as at Telluride and San Sebastián, among others.
¡BIENVENIDO PAVEL Y EL CINE CUBANO A VLAFF 2023!
Retrospective: PAVEL GIROUD
For the 21st edition of VLAFF it is an honour to welcome Cuban director and screenwriter
PAVEL GIROUD to present three of his most significant works.
With director Pavel Giroud in attendance, VLAFF will screen PLAYING LECUONA, THE COMPANION, and his most recent feature documentary, THE PADILLA AFFAIR, a must-see film for Cuban history lovers which premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and has screened at many prestigious film festivals around the world such as at Telluride and San Sebastián, among others.
¡BIENVENIDO PAVEL Y EL CINE CUBANO A VLAFF 2023!
THE PADILLA AFFAIR
Wednesday, Sept 13 at 8:15 PM
The Cinematheque
Dir. Pavel Giroud | Cuba, 2022
Spanish and French with English subtitles | 78 min | Documentary
The poet Heberto Padilla is released from jail and appears at a meeting of the Cuban Writers’ Guild. In an attempt at “heartfelt self-criticism,” he proceeds to incriminate himself, declaring his status as a counterrevolutionary agent and identifying many of his attending colleagues, including his wife, as the same. A month before, Padilla had been accused of attacking the security of the Cuban state, his arrest mobilizing the intelligentsia, who addressed a letter to Fidel Castro demanding Padilla’s release, claiming his only sin was dissent and criticism through his poetry. The writer’s filmed mea culpa, presented for the first time, is the centrepiece of a story punctuated by interventions from Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jorge Edwards, Carlos Fuentes, and Fidel Castro. The Padilla Affair is an astonishing documentary that explores aspects of Cuba’s past that still reverberate, including the struggle for freedom of expression.
PLAYING LECUONA
Wednesday, Sept 13 at 5:30 PM
The Cinematheque
Dir. Pavel Giroud | Cuba, 2016
Spanish with English subtitles | 110 min | Documentary
Playing Lecuona is a musical journey through the works and living spaces of Ernesto Lecuona, the internationally acclaimed Cuban pianist and piano composer. Serving as guides through Lecuona’s music are three of the most gifted Latin jazz pianists in the world: Chucho Valdés, Michel Camilo, and Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Valdés fuses Latin jazz together with Afro-Cuban rhythms in Lecuona’s native Havana; Camilo recreates elegant aural soundscapes in New York and the Canary Islands; and Rubalcaba fuses jazz and flamenco in Seville, the heart of Andalusian Spain. Together, these three musicians provide a rich portrait of Lecuona’s music and its lasting influence.
THE COMPANION
Thursday, Sept 14 at 5:30 PM
The Cinematheque
Dir. Pavel Giroud | Cuba, 2015
Spanish with English subtitles | 104 min | Drama
Cuba 1988. The government dispatches AIDS patients to sanatoriums under military rule. An unlikely friendship emerges between Horacio Romero, a disgraced boxing champion who fails a drug test and must serve as a “companion” (an euphemism for warden), and Daniel, a conflictive patient who is determined to spend his last days in freedom.
