Cuba

  • Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – Hasta cierto punto AKA Up to a Certain Point (1983)

    1981-1990CubaDramaTomás Gutiérrez Alea

    Documentary filmmaker Oscar (Oscar Alvarez) is researching machismo in Cuba. He learns that the nation’s chauvinistic men have problems with strong and autonomous females and expectations that fidelity is essential for women, but not for men.
    However as the project progresses he begins to fall for his spirited colleague (Mirtha Ibarra), presenting a dilemma.
    Should he be honest about his feelings and leave his wife for this new love, and can he make an objective documentary when he is himself entwined in the issues he is studying.Read More »

  • Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – La muerte de un burócrata AKA Death of a Bureaucrat (1966)

    1961-1970ArthouseComedyCubaTomás Gutiérrez Alea

    SYNOPSIS
    A worker dies in an accident at his work and is buried with his union card, essential for the widow to receive a pension. To recover it, the family is forced to carry out a clandestine exhumation. The impediments of the bureaucracy make it impossible to bury the corpse again. The absurdity of the situation degenerates into violence.Read More »

  • Armand Gatti – El otro Cristóbal (1963)

    1961-1970Armand GattiArthouseCubaPolitics

    Using satire, encoded in symbolism and surrealism, the French director Armand Gatti tells the story of an imaginary country in Latin America governed by Admiral Anastasio. In this setting, Cristóbal, a foreign sailor, and Julio Bobadilla, a black peasant convinced of the importance of the organ music from Manzanillo to stimulate the revolution, become the leaders of a social movement that plans to overthrow the tyrant to the rhythm of conga.Read More »

  • Fernando Pérez – José Martí: el ojo del canario AKA Martí, the Eye of the Canary (2010)

    2001-2010ArthouseCubaDramaFernando Pérez

    This historical drama, depicting different phases in the late childhood and youth of the so-called “Apostle of Cuba” José Martí, is most of the time a biopic full of commonplaces often found in this genre, directed by Fernando Pérez, one of the most respected names in Cuban cinema.

    Narrated in four movements, in the first two (“Bees” and “Arias”), the 9 year old Martí (endearingly played by Damián Rodríguez) is bullied in school by schoolmates and abused by his schoolmaster, while he learns notions of justice and oppression from his father. He discovers the beauties of Mother Nature with an old slave, explores his sexuality and enters into the world of high art in a Havanan theater. The boy also becomes aware of the high price a poor child has to pay for education.Read More »

  • Irene Gutiérrez Torres & Javier Labrador Deulofeu – Hotel Nueva Isla (2014)

    2011-2020CubaDocumentaryIrene Gutiérrez TorresJavier Labrador Deulofeu

    Despite the building’s imminent collapse, the last inhabitant of a once luxurious hotel refuses to leave: he remains convinced that treasures, hidden by the hotel’s original owners, lie waiting within its walls.Read More »

  • Gloria Rolando – Oggun: An Eternal Presence (1992)

    1991-2000CubaDocumentaryExperimentalGloria Rolando

    In Oggun, Gloria relates the patakin or mythical story of Oggun, the tireless warrior who, enamored of his mother, decided as punishment to imprison himself in the mountains: only Ochun, goddess of love, succeeded in captivating him when she let fall a few drops of honey on the lips of the god of metal, war, progress, and civilization. This film of 52 minutes includes chants, dances, a “tambor” (Yoruba religious ceremony with the bata drums), and the experiences of Ros, who not only made his the beauty of the African chants, but had the opportunity to sing them in trips throughout the world. The noted “apwong” works incessantly to preserve the lore and transmit it to the younger generations.Read More »

  • Fernando Pérez – Clandestinos (1987)

    1981-1990CubaFernando PérezPoliticsThriller

    “Clandestinos” is the second film in First Run Film’s new Cuban Masterworks Collection and it is a dynamite film. It is a tense political thriller which centers on the romance between two Cuban revolutionaries as they fight for their lives against the secret service of Batista in the 1950’s. The film is based on actual events which occurred during the early days on the revolution in Cuba.Read More »

  • Fernando Pérez – La vida es silbar AKA Life is to Whistle (1998)

    Drama1991-2000ArthouseCubaFernando Pérez

    The film tells the stories of three end-of-the millennium Cubans, whose lives intersect on the Day of Santa Barbara (the African Saint Chango, ruler of destinies). Mariana, a ballerina, ponders breaking chastity vows she made to land the coveted role of Giselle; Julia has fainting spells each time she hears the word “sex,” and Elpidio, a musician, seduces a gringa tourist while Bebe, the narrator, takes us for a taxi ride along the streets of Havana. In Life Is to Whistle, Fernando Perez displays the same cinematographic lyricism that won his first film, Madagascar, the Special Recognition in Latin American Cinema award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Read More »

  • Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – Las Doce Sillas AKA The Twelve Chairs (1962)

    1961-1970ClassicsComedyCubaTomás Gutiérrez Alea

    Plot outline from IMDB:
    When her country is taken over by socialist revolutionaries, a wealthy woman can’t bear to give up all of her wealth and possessions to the new government, so she hides all of her treasures in the 12 chairs of a dining-room set. After her death her nephew finds out what she had done and, since the chairs had been “nationalized” and are now in the possession of a dozen different people, he sets out to track them down and get the treasures he believes rightfully belong to him.Read More »

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