Many of the movies that come to festivals such as the Traverse City Film Festival are serious documentaries that examine real-world problems and, while they inform us, sometimes leave us with hung heads. I saw “The Tillman Story” on Wednesday and “South of the Border” on Friday, and while I walked out of those movies a more informed citizen, and journalist, I salivated for films that would also make me laugh and smile.

Enter “Heartbreaker”, a French comedy about a team of sly weasels who are paid to seduce women in order to break up potentially rocky marriages. The film had me laughing, shaking my head and leaving the State Theatre yesterday in a light-hearted mood. At the Film Maker party last night, I rubbed elbows and raised glasses with a series of directors, of films both serious and funny, whose passion and inspiration for their craft had me smiling from ear to ear.

Last night I interviewed Ian Padron, the excitable director of the Cuban baseball movie, “Dreaming in Blue”. Padron, whose documentary is a love letter to the team, “Habana Industrial” (the New York Yankees of Cuba), might be enjoying this film festival, its features and its parties, more than anyone else. He’s tickled pink that Michael Moore brought him and three other Cuban filmmakers all the way to Traverse City, that his movie has been shown to a public audience (and not on pirated DVDs, as it is in Cuba), and that our tiny, hand-held digital cameras are capturing his presence here. Ian Padron is a riot!

“Dreaming Blue” was banned outright in Cuba for five years, and it’s still censored from state television, radio and legal DVD — all because 10 minutes of the otherwise testament to his favorite Cuban team features “El Duque” Orlando Hernandez and others who have left the island for the wealthier United States (Hernandez became a star pitcher for the New York Yankees upon arrival; Jose Contreras enjoyed a productive career with the Chicago White Sox and today pitches in relief for the Philadelphia Philles, and Kendry Morales is currently a star first baseman for the Anaheim Angels). When a player leaves defects to the United States, Cuban authorities view him as a “traitor,” and more-or-less blacklist his reputation.

But Padron’s presence at this film festival is a testament to growing cross-national relations between Cuban and American artists, and hopefully one day, between Cuban and American citizens, outright. During a quest and answer session following the movie, Padron removed his “Industriales” jersey to reveal a Detroit Tigers shirt. Talk about a good ambassador! Members of the audience were invited afterwards to sign their names to a “Dreaming in Blue” poster. Because when Ian Padron returns to Cuba next week, he wants to know that this trip to the Traverse City Film Festival, where hundreds of Americans saw his movie and heard him speak, wasn’t just a dream. ¡Que viva la revolucion de beisbol!

Watch this video (in Spanish) of last night’s interview with Ian Padron: