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about the program
program notes and times
FIRST CHARGE OF THE MACHETE /
PRIMERA CARGA AL MACHETE
Manuel Octavio Gómez, 1969; 80m
During the war of 1868, Spanish soldiers and Cuban peasants recall how machete-wielding revolutionaries fought for the island's independence. In documentary style, using contemporary techniques, the film explores the history, use and and care of the machete--onetime tool of choice in the sugarcane fields, then lethal weapon in hand-to-hand combat.
Fri, Jan 29: 2 pm
Fri Feb 5: 4 and 8 pm
THE LAST SUPPER /
LA ULTIMA CENA
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba, 1976; 110m
In the wake of the Haitian slave rebellion of 1795, powerful Cuban plantation owners believe that the only way to keep up with the worldwide demand for sugarcane is to intensify slave labor. Trying to convince himself of his spiritual purity, one wealthy and guilt-ridden count stages a Last Supper for 12 black slaves from his plantation, with the benevolent host playing Christ, of course. Penelope Gilliatt noted that "Alea's dazzling moral tale...draws on sources of Christianity, socialism, blasphemy, humor, despair, horror."
Fri, Jan 29: 3:45 pm
Mon Feb 15: 2 and 6:15 pm
THE ELEPHANT AND THE BICYCLE /
EL ELEFANTE Y LA BICICLETA
Juan Carlos Tabió, Cuba, 1995; 85m
"Children gaze at a billowy cloud and see an elephant...or a bicycle. For those who are sure that their view of the world is the only correct one comes this gentle Cuban fable to remind us that the true meaning of anything lies in the eye of the beholder. Set in a small island community, ELEPHANT begins with an ex-convict coming home bearing gifts: an ancient projector and a silent version of Robin Hood. Never having seen a film before, the peasants are thrilled, but after a few viewings, a strange thing begins to happen. Suddenly the exciting adventure takes on greater significance: oppressed by the island's big landowner, the villagers begin to see the film as a serious political allegory about poor people successfully rising up against avaricious rulers. Inspired by Robin's daring, they stage a colorful revolution."-- edited from All Movie Guide
Fri, Jan 29: 6:30 pm;
Sat, Jan 30: 2 pm
THE OTHER FRANCISCO /
EL OTRO FRANCISCO
Sergio Giral, 1974; 100m
In the 70s, Sergio Giral made a trilogy of films on the subject of slavery, the first attempt by a black filmmaker in Cuba to reclaim an important part of his nation's past. The trilogy's opening film is an accomplished and imaginative deconstruction of Francisco, the first Cuban anti-slave novel written in 1839 by Anselmo Suarez Romero. Two city slaves, impossibly in love, are brutalized by their master in Giral's cruelly realistic version of Romero's romantic melodrama--thus, The Other Francisco.
Fri, Jan 29: 8:45 pm
Fri Feb 12: 2 and 6:15 pm;
Sat Feb 13: 4 pm
LUCIA
Humberto Solás, Cuba, 1968; 160m
Cuba's Gone with the Wind is a sweeping and magnificent historical epic about the century-long struggle for the island's liberation as experienced by three women--each named Lucia--in three crucial periods of Cuban history. The trio of politicized love stories--tragedy, melodrama and comedy--features a 19th-century aristocrat betrayed by her Spanish lover; in 1933, a middle-class activist for better factory conditions for women; and a '60s agricultural worker saddled with a reactionary spouse. In Ms. magazine, Marjorie Rosen called LUCIA "one of the wittiest, most sympathetic statements on the inequality suffered by women."
Sat, Jan 30: 4 pm
Thu Feb 4: 2 pm;
Sat Feb 6: 6:15 pm
TROPICANITA
1997, Daniel Diaz Torres, 112 m.
Set in present-day Havana, TROPICANITA begins as the body of a German tourist wearing angel wings and holding a bottle is discovered in a communal garden shared by several families. For most the dead man is simply evidence of a party gone too wild, but not for Lorenzo Columbie (Vladimir Cnn, co-star of STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE), a rural policeman recently transferred to Havana who imagines something more complex behind the tourist's death. Lorenzo 's investigation leads him to a remarkable assortment of characters, all of whom were involved with the German in various ways and who together offer a provocative look at a hidden, nocturnal Havana.
Sat, Jan 30: 7 pm;
Sun, Jan 31: 8:30 pm
ALICE IN WONDERTOWN /
ALICIA EN EL PUEBLO DE MARAVILLAS
Daniel Díaz Torres, Cuba,1990; 93m
"Inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Dìaz Torres adds Monty Pythonesque hijinks and an unmistakable Caribbean wit to this dizzying movie. The action takes place in Maravillas, a fantastical town where the craziest situations seem normal. Just appointed, the new drama teacher, Alicia (Thais Valdes) struggles with absurdities and an eclectic cast of characters, all conspiring to keep her in Maravillas. Comedy intertwines with grotesque horror until she finally escapes...or does she?"--edited from Cinematheque Toronto Spring 1998 program
Sat, Jan 30: 9:15 pm;
Sun, Jan 31: 6:15 pm
Sat Feb 20: 8:30
STORIES OF THE REVOLUTION /
HISTORIAS DE LA REVOLUCIÓN
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1960; 81m
"We didn't think much...about the technique, the shots, or the direction of the actors:...the film reflected a truth, a living reality for all of us." -- Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
In the neorealist tradition of Paisan and Rome: Open City, one of the first post-revolution films
produced by the ICAIC reconstructs three key moments in the Cuban revolutionary struggle. In the first, Le Herido (The Wounded Man), a wounded fighter takes refuge in a couple's apartment, with
dangerous consequences. Rebeldes (Rebels) takes place in the Sierra Maestra during a bombardment of guerrilla fighters by Batista's forces. The final episode, La Batailla de Santa Clara, scales the dramatic peaks of the revolution's decisive battle; during the joyous victory celebration, a compañera joins the funeral cortege of a fallen fighter only to find that the hero is her missing lover.
Mon Feb 1: 2 pm and 6:15 pm;
Tue Feb 2: 4 pm
DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT /
LA MUERTE DE UN BURÓCRATA
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1966; 85m
Gutiérrez Alea's first major film, this black comedy tells the story of a young man's attempts to disinter and re-bury his uncle, a move that lands him in a bureaucratic morass. Throughout this hilarious assault on the horrors of red tape, Alea pays homage to a long tradition of satirical comedy from the silent classics to Billy Wilder and Luis Buñuel.
Mon Feb 1: 4 pm and 8:15 pm;
Tue Feb 2: 2 pm
Shorts by Santiago Alvarez
THE FORGOTTEN WAR, 1969; 19m: a film summarizing the history and daily life of Laos;
NOW, 1964; 6m: on the American civil rights movement;
HANOI, TUESDAY THE 13TH, 1967; 38m:
Ho Chi Minh's life story; LBJ, 1968; 18m:
a stunning anti-imperialist satire with visual and musical montage made entirely of found materials.
During the 50s, while working in Cuban television, Alvarez participated in the underground struggle against the Batista regime. Later, when the very definition of revolutionary cinema was being forged, Alvarez authored groundbreaking newsreels and, working in the tradition of Chris Marker and Joris Ivens, set the standards for radical, innovative documentary filmmaking. "I have often said that before I am a filmmaker, I am a journalist: I like journalism because of its aventura. I like to record the news and world events. I see myself as a witness and a participant in these events. When people ask me why I don't make fiction films, I say there is no greater fiction than reality itself."
Wed Feb 3: 2 pm and 6:15 pm
THE ADVENTURES OF JUAN QUIN QUIN /
AVENTURAS DE JUAN QUINPIN
Julio Garcia Espinosa, 1967; 110m
Adapted from a picaresque novel, this quirky nonlinear comedy stands as Cuba's first fully accomplished experimental feature film. The indestructible Quin Quin adventures through war and peace and war again--skipping from genre to genre, including war movie,
western, detective story, and others. In a bravura attempt to create a brand-new form of cinematic entertainment/art, Espinosa constantly plays with film reality, teasing us with the obvious trickery of editing and special effects and deliberately breaking the rules of narrative logic.
Wed Feb 3: 4 pm; Sat Feb 6: 4 pm
MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT /
MEMORIAS DEL SUBDESAROLLO
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968; 97m
As the first film from post-revolutionary Cuba to be released in the USA, MEMORIES had a widespread impact unequalled in the history of Third World cinema. Set in the early 1960s, Alea's film centers on a Europeanized Cuban playboy and intellectual--too idealistic to flee to Miami, but too decadent to fit into the new society. A brilliant
critique of revolutionary society ("underdeveloped" has more than one target), a critique of that critique, and a remarkable demonstration that artistic commitment and entertainment are not incompatible.
Fri Feb 5: 2 pm, 6 pm and 9:45 pm
DAYS OF WATER /
LOS DÍAS DEL AGUA
Manuel Octavio Gómez, 1971; 110m
Based on actual events, DAYS OF WATER is a riveting "parable" about the inevitable collision between an individual's good works and society's tangled web of self-serving souls. Village "miracle woman" Antonica generates headlines and customers for foodstalls, earns the animosity of institutionalized "healers," and is saved, then discarded, by a pragmatic politician. Narrative point of view shifts from person to person as this "hallucinatory allegory" unreels, moving from miraculous gifts freely given to doomed revolution, from cures to violence, from dreamlike visions to newsreel immediacy.
Sat Feb 6: 9:15 pm;
Mon Feb 8: 4:30 pm and 9:10 pm
THE MAN FROM MAISINICU /
EL HOMBRE DE MAISINICÚ
Manuel Pérez, 1973; 124m
The film opens with a grim massacre straight out of a western, with a song to suit the genre. Perez cuts back and forth between the almost documentary adventures of Albert Delgado y Delgado in the Escambray mountains as he
infiltrates a band of counter-revolutionaries trying to
re-establish contact with the CIA and an inquiry into the cause of the heroic undercover agent's death. There's slow-burning tension as surprising truth emerges out of the film's tantalizing investigation.
Sun Feb 7: 6:15 pm;
Mon Feb 8: 2 pm and 6:45 pm
NOW IT'S UP TO YOU /
USTEDES TIENEN LA PALABRA
Manuel Octavio Gómez, 1974; 103m
Opening out from a specific moral question to probe underlying historical-political issues, NOW IT'S UP TO YOU begins with a conflagration in which the warehouse of a forestry collective goes up in flames, then moves into the courtroom where the accused counter-revolutionary arsonists stand trial. As the investigation progresses, the film becomes, in scholar Michael Chanan's words, "a Brechtian demonstration of the real concerns of popular justice...which is not so much a matter of facts and sworn evidence as the investigation of the state of consciousness in the community...and the guilt of those whose lack of political consciousness allowed the crime to happen in the first place."
Sun Feb 7: 8:45 pm;
Wed Feb 10: 2 pm and 6:15 pm;
Thurs Feb 11: 3:50 pm
ONE WAY OR ANOTHER /
DE CIERTA MANERA
Sara Gómez, 1974; 79m
Though she trained as a musician, Gómez decided she
didn't really want to be "a middle-class black woman who played the piano." In the ten years preceding One Way or Another, she shot powerful documentaries on a diverse range of subjects, including popular culture, child care, labor
relations--work that presages, in style and content, her final film. (She died during the editing process.) Gómez's
heroine in this cinematic investigation of machismo is an ordinary woman rather than a political vehicle; and the director mixes fiction and documentary with radical élan as she lambastes the conventions of Hollywood romances.
with
FOR THE FIRST TIME /
POR PRIMERA VEZ
Octavio Cortázar, 1967; 10m
A mobile cinema unit brings the movies to Los Mulos, a remote village whose inhabitants have never witnessed moving pictures. Watching the animated reactions of these innocents to cinematic illusions, we share in their
spontaneous delight and also re-experience a sense of the medium's raw power.
Wed Feb 10: 4:15 pm and 8:20 pm; Thurs Feb 11: 2 pm
RIO NEGRO
Manuel Pérez, 1977; 140m
During the first years of the revolution when counter-
revolutionary guerrilla fighters are abroad in the Escambray mountains, personal rivalry between two peasants is exacerbated by irreconcilable political positions. One supports agrarian reform, while the other joins the opposition army. Pérez works the conventions of a Cuban version of the "spaghetti Western" to mine tough truths out of popular genre.
Mon Feb 15: 8:35 pm;
Tue Feb 16: 2 pm
PARTING OF THE WAYS / LEJANÍA
Jesús Diaz, 1985; 90m
Ten years after abandoning Cuba and her son Renaldo (unable to accompany her because of military duty), Susana returns to visit Havana, importing American values in the form of a suitcase full of presents. The distance between mother and son is partly ethical, partly emotional; Susana's arrival prompts Renaldo to explore his memories of childhood and to re-establish his personal and political bearings.
Wed Feb 17: 2 pm and 6:15 pm
UP TO A CERTAIN POINT /
HASTA CIERTO PUNTO
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1983; 88m
Sexual politics is the theme of Gutiérrez Alea's introspective comedy: While researching a documentary on Cuban machismo, Oscar, a married, middle-aged Cuban filmmaker, meets Lina, an independent young dockworker. Their ensuing romance recalls MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT in that it wittily dissects what it means to be liberated and the nature of the bourgeois intellectual.
Wed Feb 17: 4 pm and 8:10 pm
PATAKIN / ¡PATAKIN!
Manuel Octavio Gómez, 1983; 108m
A wild musical comedy about wastrel Shango Valdes-- who betrays the woman who supports him by trying to seduce Caridad, the fiancée of ultra-responsible Oggum Fernandez. Romping through a variety of musical styles, from Broadway to cabaret to soviet tractor music, PATAKIN fits Oscar Levant's description of a musical comedy as a series of disasters followed by a floor show--with the added attraction of Mr. Death making a cameo appearance as a boxing match referee....
Thurs Feb 18: 2 pm;
Fri Feb 19: 4 pm and 8:20 pm
PORTRAIT OF TERESA /
RETRATO DE TERESA
Pastor Vega, 1979; 103m
In this portrait of a contemporary Cuban family, Teresa works hard in a textile factory while her very macho husband is busy repairing TVs--and philandering. Trying to raise a family, taking an active role in politics and their community, the couple find themselves at odds, caught between traditional and changing gender roles.
Thurs Feb 18: 4 pm;
Fri Feb 19: 2 pm and 6:15 pm
HOUSE FOR SWAP /
SE PERMUTA
Juan Carlos Tabío, 1984; 103m
In this hilarious send-up of Cuban society--characterized by perfect comic timing--Gloria wants to move to a more upscale neighborhood because her daughter Yolanda is being courted by a mere mechanic. Through a series of strategems, she tries to arrange for a swap of her old house in a working-class neighborhood for a modern apartment in a chic quarter. The knotty
question--addressed here with pointed humor--is how to get ahead in a society in which everyone is equal.
Sat Feb 20: 4 pm; Tue Feb 23: 4:10 pm
A SUCCESSFUL MAN /
UN HOMBRE DE ÉXITO
Humberto Solás, 1987; 116m
Think of a Cuban Visconti, a master of sumptuous period detail and exquisite costume, set and art design: In this lavish production, Solás conjures up fabled Havana through three decades of glitter, corruption, and the decline of the middle class. In 1932, two young, wealthy students--brothers--embark on very different lives: one becomes an idealistic activist, the other, a money- and power-hungry moral bankrupt. An epic investigation of the complex roots of the Cuban Revolution.
Sat Feb 20: 6:15 pm;
Tue Feb 23: 8:30 pm;
Wed Feb 24: 2 pm
ADORABLE LIES /
MENTIRAS ADORABLES
Geraldo Chijona, 1992;108m
What happens when we act out dreams--the sweet lies we tell ourselves and others? Jorge Luis may really be a callow married man without a job, but when he meets aspiring actress Sissy, he styles himself a movie director in search of a star. There's a tender enchantment abroad in this love story that's both melodrama and dark comedy.
Sun Feb 21: 6:15 pm;
Wed Feb 24: 4:15 pm
STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE /
FRESA Y CHOCOLATE
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1994; 110m
With the collaboration of Juan Carlos Tabío, Alea creates a comedy of unlikely friendship that radiates wisdom about the nature of masculinity and Cuban attitudes toward hetero- and homosexual men. David, a good-looking sociology student, happens to make the acquaintance of Diego, a charmer with civilized tastes and an irresistible sense of humor. They hit it off, but Diego inevitably falls for David, and sexual tensions are upped by his nextdoor neighbor--the beautiful, very available Nancy--and Miguel, a fellow student of David's, for whom Diego can only be a non-person. STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE is both great fun and a cinematic vote for empathy and tolerance.
Sun Feb 21: 8:30 pm;
Wed Feb 24: 6:20 pm;
Thurs Feb 25: 2 pm
PLAFF! OR TOO AFRAID OF LIFE /
DESMASIADO MIEDO A LA VIDA O PLAFF
Juan Carlos Tabío, 1988; 110m
Plaff! is the unmistakable splatting sound an egg makes as it hits a wall--and along with enduring mysterious egg-slinging, superstitious Concha (played by the effervescent Daisy Granados) finds herself oddly out of sorts with friends, relatives, and neighbors. Seems everything has gone wrong since scientific-minded daughter-in-law Clarita moved in. PLAFF!'s wicked-funny satire takes aim at jealous mothers-in-law, the religion of Santería, the Cuban housing shortage, racial and sexual tensions, family relations, bureaucracy--and even the process of making movies.
Tue Feb 23: 2 pm and 6:15 pm
GUANTANAMERA
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and
Juan Carlos Tabío, 1996, 101m
Titled after the super-familiar song, GUANTANAMERA is a road movie that recalls Alea's DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT in its satirical send-up of political and financial crises in Cuba. During an undertakers' convention in Havana, Adolfo proposes a solution to the gasoline shortage: all undertakers should pool their gas coupons to help each other transport the dead to cemeteries. Meanwhile, a famous soprano returns to Guantánamo, her hometown, for a celebration of her career. There, she rekindles an old flame, only to expire
suddenly--giving Adolfo his first chance to try out his plan. Crossed paths and epiphanies abound during the ensuing journey in this "artful farce of misunderstanding, slapstick and comeuppance. The performers are winning--especially Perugorría, the homosexual from STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE, as a guy who can't say no, and Ibarra, also from STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE, as a woman who can't say yes." -- excerpted from the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival program
Wed Feb 24: 8:30 pm;
Thurs Feb 25: 4:10 pm
Sergio Giral's Cuban Slave Trilogy
Two decades before Hollywood "discovered" slavery in films such as Amistad and Beloved, Afro-Cuban director Sergio Giral grappled with its historical and individual impact in three remarkable films. Celebrating Black History Month, we present Giral's perceptive, hard-hitting dramatizations of the role of
slavery in colonial society and its legacy in Cuban history and society.
THE OTHER FRANCISCO /
EL OTRO FRANCISCO
Sergio Giral, 1974; 100m
In the 70s, Sergio Giral made a trilogy of films on the subject of slavery, the first attempt by a black filmmaker in Cuba to reclaim an important part of his nation's past. The trilogy's opening film is an accomplished and imaginative deconstruction of Francisco, the first Cuban anti-slave novel written in 1839 by Anselmo Suarez Romero. Two city slaves, impossibly in love, are brutalized by their master in Giral's cruelly realistic version of Romero's romantic melodrama--thus, The Other Francisco.
Fri, Jan 29: 8:45 pm
Fri Feb 12: 2 and 6:15 pm;
Sat Feb 13: 4 pm
SLAVE HUNTER / RANCHEADOR
Sergio Giral, 1976; 95m
The second entry in Giral's slave trilogy
was adapted from Cirilo Villaverde's novel Diary of a Slave Hunter. A savage dissection of the socio-economics of slavery in the form of an epic western, Slave Hunter follows the bloody fortunes of Estevez, employed by landowners to track down runaway slaves and to suppress rebellion among small farmers. When his atrocities become too much even for his bosses, the maddened Estevez tries to redeem himself by going after Melchora, legendary woman leader and symbol of freedom.
Fri Feb 12: 4 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sat Feb 13: 6 pm
MALUALA
Sergio Giral, 1979; 95m
Chapter Three in Giral's trilogy takes us into a palenque, a settlement of escaped slaves hidden somewhere in Cuba's eastern mountains, where discord is sown between black "kings" by clever subversives working for the Spanish government.
Sat Feb 13: 8 pm;
Mon Feb 15: 4:20 pm
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