Netflix announced this week that it has begun offering a special package of films and television series to Cuban viewers. With very few homes on the island connected to the Web, limited bandwidth, and costs for the streaming service beyond most families' budgets, big challenges remain.
But the announcement is seen as another step in the continuing thaw in relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
Film buffs in both countries are looking forward to a broadening cultural exchange. The Cuban film called "Conducta" was the country’s entry this year at the Academy Awards for best foreign language film.
The word "Conducta" means behavior. The film tells the story of eleven-year-old Chala, who’s growing up in a tough neighborhood in Havana.
The boy cares for his drug-addicted mother by raising pigeons and fighting dogs. He develops a close bond with Carmela, a schoolteacher, who's battling Cuba’s entrenched bureaucracy that would send the boy off to a reform school for misbehaving.
Writer and director Ernesto Daranas said the film is about “marginalidad,” or life on the edge. "The theme of marginality is of international interest," he said, "because life on the edge is growing. It's not a small problem. It’s one that affects a large part of today’s society."
Daranas was in New Haven recently for a screening of "Conducta" at the New England Festival of Ibero-American Cinema. He described creating the film, which features professional adult actors working alongside school children from the neighborhoods where the movie takes place.
Despite not making the short list for the Oscars, the film has won prizes at festivals in Malaga, Spain, Brazil, and Peru, and is a huge hit on the island.
Margherita Totora teaches Spanish at Yale University. She said "Conducta" follows in a tradition of Cuban cinema that demonstrates a love of country, but is unafraid to point out societal wrongs. "One of the main problems that a lot of people see in Cuba is this blind bureaucracy," she said, "having to follow the rules even when they don’t make sense. And I think that’s why it resonated so much with the Cuban people."
In one scene, as the aging schoolteacher Carmela refuses to agree to send the boy to reform school, she’s taunted by a social worker.
"The social worker says, 'Well Carmela, maybe you should just rest and retire, you've been teaching all these years,'" Tortora explained. "And when [Carmela] says, 'Well, the ones that are in power in this country have been in the government much longer than I’ve been a teacher, and how come no one tells them to retire?' the whole audience in Cuba [is screaming] aargh and clapping!"
Tortora said the film is about the need for Cuba to renew itself, "but in a Cuban way. A new Cuba, a better Cuba, but a Cuban Cuba. Change from within, not from without."
The film "Conducta" is still making the rounds of the international festivals. It should become available for viewing in the U.S. in the coming months.
