Documentaries shine light on Cuba

The man on the screen weeps as talks about going jobless in Havana, simply because he's an outsider from Cuba's distant east. "The children are screaming for something to eat and I don't know what to do!" he cries, his voice reverberating through the crowded theater.

The real-life drama is part of a 21-minute documentary called "Buscandote Havana" _ "Looking for You, Havana." Its inclusion among more than two dozen short films screened late last month in an officially sanctioned film festival has raised hopes that Cuba is becoming more open to criticism of its harsher social realities.

"When there are so many of us expressing something, that's something; something is happening," said Alina Rodriguez, the 22-year-old maker of "Buscandote Havana."

It comes at a delicate juncture in Fidel Castro's 47-year-old regime.

The five-day film festival at Cuba's official Cinematography Cultural Center took place just weeks after Cubans got an unwelcome blast from the past in the shape of two censors from the repressive 1970s who turned up on state-controlled television talking about culture.

Appearing on separate shows, they praised the successes of Cuban culture without mentioning their earlier roles in marginalizing homosexuals and outspoken artists.

Their appearance alarmed writers and artists who feared that with 80-year-old Castro ailing, the island might be in for a repeat of the censorship of the "five gray years" _ 1971-76 _ when many artists and writers were fired from their jobs and hounded into exile.

Bombarded with anxious e-mails from Cuban literati, the official National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba expressed its own "indignation" and said the "five gray years" would not be repeated.

The assurance was significant, given that the union is government-controlled and open only to approved members, while others have difficulty exhibiting art, publishing writings, traveling abroad on book and music tours or accessing the island's tightly controlled Internet service.

Several leading artists such as poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela were expelled from the union in 1991 when they signed an open letter calling for amnesty for political prisoners and freedom to travel.

The union may have been emboldened by acting President Raul Castro, who has been filling in since his brother Fidel had intestinal surgery last July and has been encouraging young people to honestly debate Cuba's realities _ though within the government structure.

These days many are recalling the line that Fidel Castro laid down in 1961 when he told intellectuals to keep their criticism within limits: "Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing."

Rodriguez's harsh look at the struggles of migrants from Cuba's east, her thesis project at Havana's Higher Institute of Art, was indeed critical. And it wasn't the only one.

A 14-minute documentary called "Las camas solas" _ "The Lonely Beds" _ highlighted Cuba's housing shortage, showing a group of families who leave their dilapidated Havana apartment building for a government shelter in 2004, seeking safety from Hurricane Ivan.

"It's a shame the building has been allowed to be destroyed like this," a woman says as the camera pans over her rundown home.

Politics, democratic reform and the legitimacy of more than 40 years of unchallenged communist rule don't figure in these documentaries. But still, Sandra Gomez worried she was crossing a line when she made "The Lonely Beds."

"I thought that it was going to be too critical and that it would never be allowed to be shown in a space such as this," said Gomez, 30, a graduate of Havana's International School of Film and Television. "I was really surprised."

Still, the filmmakers doubt their critical works will ever make it to television.

"This is a documentary not to be seen only by intellectuals," said Rodriguez, creator of "Buscandote Havana." "It's for all the people ... so that they can see what is happening, and that is not what they see every day on television."