Chronicles of the Absurd
Chronicles of the Absurd (Spanish: Crónicas del absurdo) is a 2024 Cuban documentary film directed by Miguel Coyula. It held its world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam where it won the award for Best Film at the Envision Competition.[1] PlotWhen independent filmmaker Miguel Coyula casts actor Lynn Cruz in his dystopian feature Blue Heart (film) in 2011, it marks the beginning of a professional as well as a romantic bond. It’s also the starting point of this documentary exposing a range of disturbing interactions the artists subsequently had with a wide variety of institutions and individuals—in true Kafkaesque fashion, oppression looms everywhere. Even outside of Cuba, from a reverse ideology, they are met with similar dogmatism by critics of the Cuban regime. ReceptionChronicles of the Absurd has received critical praise. Dutch newspaper Het Parool described it as "a Kafkaesque Masterpiece".[2] At Los Experimentos, Pablo Gamba wrote "Chronicles of the Absurd is also a documentary about the commitment and courage of sincere friendship, love and solidarity."[3] Documentary Magazine's Nicolas Rapold called it "a fascinating dispatch that freely tests audiovisual bounds of documentary" [4] In his review at J.B Spins, Joe Bendel observed that the film "would be quite amusing in a farcical and aptly absurd way, if it were also not so Orwellian. They use cleverly monstrous looking stand-in icons and slyly selected photos for bureaucrats with an online footprint, creating dramatic montages. Despite the scarcity of actual video, Absurd is quite visually dynamic—to a genuinely surprising degree."[5] At Impulse Magazine, Ben Burton wrote: "Coyula collapses the boundaries between the personal, the artistic, the intellectual, and the political in part by threading together interrogations, family illness, and festival tours across vast periods. The way they are edited together makes these categories inescapable from each other. This makes the film both incredibly specific about life, art creation, and politics within Cuba but an equally poignant testimony to the reason why film is such an essential medium."[6] At Gay City News Steve Erikson noted that the film: "seems less foreign after the Trump administration’s takeover of the Kennedy Center. Even in authoritarian societies, the arts have been a means to speak about undercurrents of unease and rebellion."[7] Susan Morris at Design Observer felt that "words are enhanced with graphics and colors, and with photos of the artists in a style inspired by late 1980s–early ’90s role-playing video game grids with multiple characters. We don’t know what the officials conducting the interrogations look like, so Coyula uses figures from Expressionist painter Antonia Eiriz’s (1929–1995) Edvard Munch/Francisco Goya–like grotesques to emphasize their absurd, surreal behavior.[8] Awards
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