Enrique Pineda Barnet
The first gay-themed film produced in Cuba by the Institute of Cinema since Strawberry & Chocolate in 1993. The theme, however, is the same as in Guttiérerez and Tabìo's film: homophobia, machismo and fear. The fatal attraction between Alfredo, a doctor in the merchant navy, and handsome Carlos starts in a rundown Havana bar and ends at the sailor's house. But Alfredo's flirting and seducing of Carlos immediately turns into something complicated, ambiguous, dangerous. In a claustrophobic, tense atmosphere, their bodies are powerfully attracted, and the words, though violent, intensify the level of sensuality. Does each man kill the thing he loves? Evoking dreamlike atmospheres and characters, 80-year-old veteran director Enrique Pineda Barnet openly references Fassbinder's Querelle and Jean Genet. Quite controversial in its approach, the films demonstrates the milder attitude of Raul Castro's regime towards Cuba's LGBT Community.
A look at the life and work of Cuban filmmaker Tomas Gutierrez Alea.
Contemporary film critics regard the epic film I Am Cuba as a modern masterpiece. The 1964 Cuban/Soviet coproduction marked a watershed moment of cultural collaboration between two nations. Yet the film never found a mass audience, languishing for decades until its reintroduction as a "classic" in the 1990s. Vicente Ferraz explores the strange history of this cinematic tour de force, and the deeper meaning for those who participated in its creation.
Heaven is in chaos. God left for Earth to seek faith and hope in humanity. San Wichón stays in charge of the Celestial Senate and, in his campaign for the governorship, things get out of control. Disillusioned because Heaven is no longer a paradise, the girl angel María de las Estrellas (Mary of the Stars) descends to Earth to look for Heaven's top boss.
Story shows the genesis of the career and the rise of Esther the most beloved actress of most popular theater in Havana at the turn of the 19th century.
Experimental historical film, with documentary elements. A study of the conceptual development of the young hero Julio Antonio Mella, founder of the Communist Party of Cuba, from the process of the Student Reforms to his assassination in Mexico at the age of 25, in the arms of the Italian photographer Tina Modotti.
An unabashed exercise in cinema stylistics, I Am Cuba is pro-Castro/anti-Batista rhetoric dressed up in the finest clothes. The film's four dramatic stories take place in the final days of the Batista regime; the first two illustrate the ills that led to the revolution, the third and fourth the call to arms which cut across social and economic lines.
