The Cinema of Cuba

The Cinema of Cuba
Author: Ann Marie Stock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2017-06-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1786722534

Contemporary Cuba is opening up to the rest of the world. Its colonial past and the Communist revolution have left a lasting imprint on society, yet there is a tangible sense of rapid change which is reflected in the island's national cinema. New screen technologies and digital distribution media have supported the efficacy and global reach of Cuban filmmakers whose work, somewhat in lieu of adequate distribution and traditional screening facilities in Cuba itself, is often disseminated via 'flash' (USB memory sticks).Channelling an energetic DIY attitude through grassroots movements and ad-hoc resourcefulness, the new filmmakers of Cuba have inspired the editors of this book to embrace their contagious enthusiasm through essays on authentic Cuban cinema. Whilst the book provides a comprehensive overview of the history behind current practices, it also moves beyond this to examine key case studies as well as 'snapshots' of individuals working within the industry today. Chapters celebrate the shared creativity as well as diversity of Cuban cinema, including both productions of the Cuban Film Institute's (ICAIC) as well as those from the industry margins. The films discussed demonstrate a driving cinematic force through social criticism, the emphasis of debate and historical change through film, reassessments of gender relations, the use of new technologies and much more.

Cuban Cinema

Cuban Cinema
Author: Michael Chanan
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2004
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780816634248

New chapters express ongoing concerns about freedom of expression, the role of the Havana Film Festival in restoring Havana's central position in Latin American cinema, & the changing audience for Cuban films.

A Cuban Cinema Companion

A Cuban Cinema Companion
Author: Salvador Jiménez Murguía
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2020-01-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1538107740

With the recent shift in Cuba-US relations stemming from the relaxing of travel restrictions and an influx of American visitors, interest in Cuba and its culture has increased substantially. A new emphasis has been placed on the island country’s many cultural and artistic achievements, specifically in film. Cuban cinema is recognized around the world as having produced some of the most celebrated works originating from Latin America—such as Fresa y Chocolate and La Muerte de un Burócrata—as well as many prominent artists—including directors Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Humberto Solás. In A Cuban Cinema Companion, editors Salvador Jimenez Murguía, Sean O’Reilly, and Amanda McMenamin have assembled a collection of essays about more than100 films across six decades, including feature films, documentaries, and animation. These entries also provide information on directors, actresses, and actors of Cuban cinema. Entries range from films like Retrato de Teresa to Buena Vista Social Club and include descriptions of each film’s plot, themes, and critical commentary, as well as comprehensive production details and brief suggestions for further reading. Beginning with the victory of the Cuban revolution—from the first ten years of what is often referred to as Cuba’s “Golden Age” of film to the present—this volume offers readers valuable insights into Cuban history, politics, and culture. An indispensable guide to one of the great world cinemas, A Cuban Cinema Companion will be of interest to students, academics, and the general public alike.

The Cinema of Sara Gómez

The Cinema of Sara Gómez
Author: Susan Lord
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 025305706X

Throughout the 1960s until her untimely death in 1974, Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez engaged directly and courageously with the social, political, economic, and cultural transformations promised by the Cuban Revolution. Gómez directed numerous documentary films in 10 prolific years. She also made De cierta manera (One way or another), her only feature-length film. Her films navigate complex experiences of social class, race, and gender by reframing revolutionary citizenship, cultural memory, and political value. Not only have her inventive strategies become foundational to new Cuban cinema and feminist film culture, but they also continue to inspire media artists today who deal with issues of identity and difference. The Cinema of Sara Gómez assembles history, criticism, biography, methodology, and theory of Gómez's work in scholarly writing; interviews with friends and collaborators; the film script of De cierta manera; and a detailed and complete filmography. Featuring striking images, this anthology reorients how we tell Cuban cinema history and how we think about the intersections of race, gender, and revolution. By addressing Gómez's entire body of work, The Cinema of Sara Gómez unpacks her complex life and gives weight to her groundbreaking cinema.

Hollywood in Havana

Hollywood in Havana
Author: Megan Feeney
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2019-01-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 022659369X

From the turn of the twentieth century through the late 1950s, Havana was a locus for American movie stars, with glamorous visitors including Errol Flynn, John Wayne, and Marlon Brando. In fact, Hollywood was seemingly everywhere in pre-Castro Havana, with movie theaters three to a block in places, widely circulated silver screen fanzines, and terms like “cowboy” and “gangster” entering Cuban vernacular speech. Hollywood in Havana uses this historical backdrop as the catalyst for a startling question: Did exposure to half a century of Hollywood pave the way for the Cuban Revolution of 1959? Megan Feeney argues that the freedom fighting extolled in American World War II dramas and the rebellious values and behaviors seen in postwar film noir helped condition Cuban audiences to expect and even demand purer forms of Cuban democracy and national sovereignty. At the same time, influential Cuban intellectuals worked to translate Hollywood ethics into revolutionary rhetoric—which, ironically, led to pointed critiques and subversions of the US presence in Cuba. Hollywood in Havana not only expands our notions of how American cinema was internalized around the world—it also broadens our view of the ongoing history of US-Cuban interactions, both cultural and political.

Cuban Image

Cuban Image
Author: Michael Chanan
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 559
Release:
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1452906920

New chapters express ongoing concerns about freedom of expression, the role of the Havana Film Festival in restoring Havana's central position in Latin American cinema, & the changing audience for Cuban films.

Cines de Cuba. Photographs by Carolina Sandretto. Ediz. Illustrata

Cines de Cuba. Photographs by Carolina Sandretto. Ediz. Illustrata
Author:
Publisher: Skira
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2019
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9788857234397

In 1953, Cuba had 694 cinemas and theaters. Havana alone had 134, more than New York or Paris. In 2014, documentary photographer Carolina Sandretto set out to find and photograph, with a 1950s_ medium-format camera, the remaining cinemas from that golden era. This book is the visual document of her journey. _The book is a voyage around the Island during which I documented what are the cinemas now and how do they look like outside and inside. These buildings, that where once the gathering of the people, have fallen into the oblivion of their own society_. Carolina Sandretto

Cuba and the Tempest

Cuba and the Tempest
Author: Eduardo González
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807830151

In a unique analysis of Cuban literature inside and outside the country's borders, Eduardo Gonzalez looks closely at the work of three of the most important contemporary Cuban authors to write in the post-1959 diaspora: Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929@-2005), who left Cuba for good in 1965 and established himself in London; Antonio Benitez-Rojo (1931@-2005), who settled in the United States; and Leonardo Padura Fuentes (b. 1955), who still lives and writes in Cuba. Through the positive experiences of exile and wandering that appear in their work, these three writers exhibit what Gonzalez calls "Romantic authorship," a deep connection to the Romantic spirit of irony and complex sublimity crafted in literature by Lord Byron, Thomas De Quincey, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In Gonzalez's view, a writer becomes a belated Romantic by dint of exile adopted creatively with comic or tragic irony. Gonzalez weaves into his analysis related cinematic elements of myth, folktale, and the grotesque that appear in the work of filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Pedro Almodovar. Placing the three Cuban writers in conversation with artists and thinkers from British and American literature, anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and cinema, Gonzlez ultimately provides a space in which Cuba and its literature, inside and outside its borders, are deprovincialized.

Cinema in the Cuban graphics

Cinema in the Cuban graphics
Author: Luigino Bardellotto
Publisher: Silvana
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES
ISBN: 9788836633203

The film poster is one of the best-known forms of Cuban art. Hecho en Cuba: Cinema in the Cuban Graphics is a compilation of Cuban film posters from the 1950s through the present, and an exploration of the designers who created them. The bold sensibility and visual inventiveness of post-revolutionary Cuban graphic design makes it instantly recognizable. But the designers contributing to this new style were still individual artists, bringing their different backgrounds to the task of creating a new visual identity for a post-revolutionary nation. With lavishly illustrated sections on Eladio Rivadulla, Raùl Martinez, Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Antonio Reboiro, Antonio Pérez Gonzáles (Ñiko), Renè Azcuy, Alfredo Rostgaard, Rafael Morante, Raùl Oliva, Julio Eloy Mesa and Jorge Dima, Hecho en Cuba brings out the individual design sensibilities that shaped an extraordinary graphic culture, where the poster became the populist art form par excellence.