Intimate Spaces and Migrant Imaginaries: Sandra Gómez, Susana Barriga, and Heidi Hassan

Abstract

In 1986 the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television in San Antonio de los Banos (EICTV) was established in Cuba as a new space of cinema making—the “Utopia of the Eye and the Ear of the School of Three Worlds,” as Fernando Birri called it. Weathering the Special Period, bureaucracies, and blockades, and the weather itself, the EICTV is an “island on the Island” and has graduated some of the most inventive and committed filmmakers from Latin America, Cuba, and elsewhere. It has been the most welcoming place in Cuba for young women filmmakers, providing encouragement, connections, and mentorship that were difficult to find in the more traditional environment of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC). When we began this project, we were writing with reference to an institution with a vigorous past and future through which we would be able to trace and track the development of young Cuban filmmakers, particularly women and those who found themselves living outside of Cuba. However, in July 2013 the EICTV was hit with a set of very serious conflicts with the Cuban authorities, leaving its future uncertain. As Michael Chanan (2013) and others have reported,2 the conflict stems from a system of self-financing (the selling of beer for profit) and has resulted in the resignation of the school’s Director, the imprisonment of personnel from the financial office of the school, and the suspension of the coming year’s admission.