The Festival Cinemaissí and the Audio-visual File of the Nation will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Institute of Art and Industry Cinematographic ICAIC with a retrospective of Fernando Pérez Valdés. The event will be provided with the participation of Pérez Valdés, one of the most important Cuban filmaker of the nineties.

Pérez Valdés (1944-) has captured in his movies the Cuban spirit of last decades with a style poetical, sharp and warmth.
His career began in the ICAIC already in the sixties, and worked approximately two decades as the directors' assistant as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Julio García Espinosa and Santiago Álvarez.

His first full-lenght film, Clandestinos (1987), tell the story of the young opponents to Batista in the fifties. The film is a heroic epic and a political thriller, which on the premiere was a big success in Cuba: in a few weeks it had one million and a half spectators.

La vida es silbar (1998), which will open the festival, it is a ludicrous study of fast rhythm on the force that moves the dreams. The movie narrates the fortunes of three men from La Havana in the search of the happiness. It was rewarded in the Festival of Berlin and it won the Goya to the best Latin-American movie.

Pérez Valdés did Suite Habana (2003) commissioned by a spanish producer. The silent documentary open to various interpretations about daily life in Havana through ten of its habitants.

Madrigal (2006) Pérez Valdés took a new turn. The film dedicated to the french director René Clair is located halfway between the theater and a future dominated by Lynch-style eroticism.

Pérez Valdés belongs to the second generation of cuban directors. Their achievements are located in the nineties, a period when cubans were forced to redefine their relationship with the state and with the outside world. Perez tried to encourage and offer hope to the future visions of his lovely Cuba: his works no longer convey empathy and affection for his characters. Perez does not rely on the counter-worn in his movies but seeks above all to express the range of interpretations that the reality presents.