Epicentro

Hubert Sauper’s new film EPICENTRO is a pained, at times ecstatic, often quietly ironic look at what’s become of the complex national project of independence, equality, and social progress that comprises contemporary Cuba. Sauper roams Havana’s streets, hops on for rides with jaunty European tourists, chats up locals, and follows children, whom he calls “little prophets” in the credits. He thus weaves a contemporary Iliad that takes stock of utopian dreams and permutations of contemporary imperialism, mostly seen through Cubans’ eyes. There’s an irresistible, melancholy beauty in Sauper’s images and in the evocative soundtrack, but also a darkness. Tourism emerges as a plague that deepens oppressive attitudes, rather than a means of encountering the Other or an economic boon. Sauper’s film is all the more poignant and pointed because we enter it through the history of cinema: Children watch films as part of an art program; they bridle at lies in American films about the American-Spanish War, but also dream of acting, glossy foreign magazines, Florida, and Disney. In this sense, as Sauper comments in the voiceover, “the industrial cinema that is produced in Hollywood won the war.” Cinema, as both a dream and an empire’s tool, makes images that invade our minds. (Ela Bittencourt)

In the presence of Hubert Sauper, Gabriele Kranzelbinder and other members of the team.

Hubert Sauper: WER FÜRCHTET SICH VORM SCHWARZEN MANN? (1989, K), PIRATEN IN Ö. (1990, K), ON THE ROAD WITH EMIL (1993, K), SO I SLEEPWALK IN BROAD DAYLIGHT (1994), KIS- ANGANI DIARY (1998), ALONE WITH OUR STORIES (2001, TV), DARWINS NIGHTMARE (2004), LAISSEZ-LES GRANDIR ICI! (2007, Episode), WE COME AS FRIENDS (2014)