Cuban Film Archive to Commemorate Fidel’s Centennial with Major Documentaries
The Cuban Film Archive (Cinemateca de Cuba) will screen four major documentaries this month to mark the centennial of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, which will be commemorated on August 13, according to film critic Joel del Río, the institution’s programmer.
Two of the films are works by master documentary filmmaker Santiago Álvarez, who created an entire audiovisual mythology around the figure of the Cuban leader. Mi hermano Fidel and La guerra necesaria both rely heavily on interviews with direct sound and will be screened on August 14. In the following days, audiences will be able to watch Momentos con Fidel, a remarkable documentary built through editing and archival footage, directed by Rebeca Chávez.
To reaffirm the Cuban Revolution leader’s international significance, the 23 y 12 theater will screen another important testimony centered on the interview format: Comandante, by Oliver Stone, a film that offers a deeper understanding of the work of the outspoken American filmmaker.
Cuban director Arturo Sotto recently donated to the Cinemateca a collection of more than fifty DVDs from his private archive, and the institution has decided to share some of those titles with the public. To inaugurate this initiative, it organized a cycle devoted to three acclaimed actors who rose to fame in the 1950s and to their respective landmark films.
The program features Marlon Brando (Un tranvía llamado deseo), James Dean (Rebelde sin causa), and Paul Newman (La gata sobre el tejado de zinc caliente). These films became widely popular, among other reasons, for introducing American cinema to the naturalistic acting methods developed by the Actor’s Studio, which adapted for the American cultural context the principles created by Konstantin Stanislavski for Soviet theater and cinema in the 1920s.
New Collaborative Space with Italy
The sweltering month of August began with a new collaboration initiative with the Orizzonti Italia-Cuba Festival, which has helped expand the visibility of Italian cinema throughout the Caribbean archipelago. As part of this effort, the first two days of August featured the outstanding documentary Fellini y la sombra, which allowed audiences to explore the boundless creativity of the visionary genius behind La Strada, Ocho y medio, and Amarcord.
The Cinemateca announced that every month it will include an important title in this section, which has been named Abriendo Orizzonti.
The program will then continue with the cycle Thriller y Neonoir con sello iberoamericano, featuring several gems from Spain and Mexico, such as Amantes and Profundo carmesí. In these films, the demands of realistic crime cinema—emphasizing suspense and identification with antiheroes—are combined with retro filmmaking approaches and reinterpretations of the 1940s and 1950s.
More recently, the label “thriller” has come to be used almost adjectivally to describe films featuring characters driven toward crime and marked by intense narrative tension. The program will therefore include works such as Nueve reinas and Taxi para tres, from Argentina and Chile, respectively.
To close out the month, the Cinemateca will pay tribute to three significant films starring the greatest erotic icon of French cinema: Brigitte Bardot. The actress, who took on important roles from the beginning of her career, became the muse of both filmmakers from the “old guard”—including Claude Autant-Lara, Christian-Jaque, and Henri-Georges Clouzot, whose La verdad will be screened in the cycle—and directors of the French New Wave, such as Louis Malle and Jean-Luc Godard, whose filmographies are represented with Viva María and El desprecio, respectively.
Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez
