Adolfo Llauradó
Ruben lives in Cuba and Andy is exile in the United States. Both are trapped by history at opposite poles and want to change places, but they can't do it.
Matanzas, Cuba, 1913. Two young people who are in love communicate through letters written by penman. When the young man leaves town, to become a pilot, the girl discovers she is really in love with the one who wrote the letters.
An elderly man with wings is blown off course during a tropical storm in this symbolic fantasy. The Old Man lands near a Caribbean island where a poor family gives him shelter in a chicken coop. Father Gonzaga is the skeptical priest who rushes to damn the creature. Soon the Old Man is the subject of curiosity seekers as Elisinda and Pelayo start charging admission. A traveling carnival of human oddities camps near the Old Man as people flock to see the show. The Old Man is reduced to being an unwanted pet, and after six years, he mends his wings and flies away. Nudity, simulated sex with a spider woman, and the ugliness of human exploitation definitely put this fantasy in a category not for children.
Teresa is overwhelmed: with a husband, three young sons, a job as a crew leader in a textile factory, and volunteer commitments as cultural leader of her union. Her husband, Ramón, wants more of her attention; her feelings are mixed, wanting domestic peace, feeling responsibilities to the revolution, and wanting to control her own life beyond doing dirty dishes. They separate; he begins an affair. When he wants a reconciliation, she asks what his response would be if she'd had an affair too. "But men are different," is his reply. He's failed her test, and to hold on to independence and self-respect, she remains uncompromising and hard-edged.
In 19th century Cuba, runaway African slaves known as 'Cimarrons' hiding in settlements in the eastern mountains. But discord among the Cimarrons is sown by a limited offer of freedom from the Spanish. Maluala is part of a trilogy of films about Cuba's slave uprisings made by Sergio Giral, the best known Afro-Cuban director.
Based on the novel Francisco by Anselmo Suárez y Romero, "The Other Francisco" is a socio-economic analysis of slavery and class struggle through the retelling of the original novel. The film contrasts the romantic conceptions of plantation life found in Suárez Romero's novel with a realistic expose of the actual historical conditions of slavery throughout the Americas. It offers a critical analysis of the novel, showing how the author's social background led to his use of particular dramatic structures to convey his liberal, humanitarian viewpoint.
1964, in the Escambray mountains: the area is infested with counter- revolutionary bands which are trying to spread terror among the population and re-establish contact with the US, CIA. The murder of a man led to a reprisal to wipe out the bandits.
This Cuban feature examines the circumstances arising out of a woman's claim to have seen the Virgin Mary and to have been healed by waters from a nearby stream. In an accelerating storm of cynical opportunism, her sincere beliefs are exploited by businessmen, politicians and military men. Rival groups compete to exploit the hysteria the vision causes, and the chaos culminates in a revolution. Striking imagery and skillful camerawork enhance this feature.
Cuban peasants wield machetes in a violent uprising against Spanish authorities in the late 19th century.
In his award-winning film Lucía, Humberto Solás interpreted the theme of Cuba’s hundred years' struggle in an entirely novel way to create an epic in three separate episodes, each centred around a woman called Lucía and each unfolding in a different period of Cuban history, corresponding to the three stages of colonialism (1895), neocolonialism (1930) and socialist revolution (1968). The three episodes also present us with "Lucías" of different social classes. Solás described his film in this way: "The woman's role always lays bare the contradictions of a period and makes them explicit: Lucía is not a film about women, it's a film about society."
