1951-1960 Cuba Julio García Espinosa Politics Short Film

Julio García Espinosa – Sexto aniversario (1959)

adminMarch 13, 2019

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A commemoration of the 6th anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban revolution. 500,000 campesinos invited to celebrate the occasion pour into Havana.

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In Cuban film history, the documentary Sexto aniversario was the first made entirely by the ICAIC [Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos]. It had previously released Esta tierra nuestra (This land is ours) by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and [bLa vivienda[/b] by Garcia-Espinosa, but though both films were completed by the ICAIC, production credits belong to the Cultural Directive of the Rebel Army , which was where their filming had been started.

Sexto aniversario records that historical occasion of the movement of half a million peasants from various parts of the island to Havana on July 26, 1959 to celebrate the assault on the Moncada Barracks which had occurred six years previously. García Espinosa has evoked the experience as follows:

“In March, the law which created by ICAIC was enacted. It was the first law made concerning cultural policy. In July, I made Sexto aniversario, the first documentary produced by ICAIC. Everything was wonderful. We were members of a revolution and not just its passive spectators. I became head of the Department of Art in the Cultural Ministry of the Rebel Army. That same year, our brand new Film Institute began to take its first steps. This first film was made with a crew that consisted of practically the same people who had made El Mégano, with Guillermo Cabrera Infante also joining. And a while later Saúl, Saúl Yelín, one of the great founders of ICAIC, one of those angels who suddenly come into your life and wind up staying forever. It all would have been inconceivable at that first stage of ICAIC, its films, their promotion, the international scope of Cuban cinema, without the character of Saúl.”