Cuban Films History

After being popularised by the brothers Louis Jean and Auguste Marie Lumière, the cinematographe traveled through several capital cities in the Americas before arriving in Havana, which occurred on January 24, 1897. It was brought from Mexico by Gabriel Veyre. The first presentation was offered at Paseo del Prado #126, just aside the Teatro Tacón, today called Gran Teatro de La Habana. Four short films were shown: “Partida de cartas”, “El tren”, “El regador y el muchacho” y “El sombrero cómico”. The tickets were sold at a price of 50 cents, and 20 cents for kids and the military. Short after, Veyre performed a leading role in the first film produced in the island, “Simulacro de incendio”, a documentary centered around firemen in Havana.

In this first phase of introduction there were several locations devoted to cinema: Panorama Soler, Salón de variedades o ilusiones ópticas, Paseo del Prado #118, Vitascopio de Edison (in the famous Louvre sidewalk). The Teatro Irioja (today Teatro Martí) was the first to present cinema as one of its attractions. The first in a long list of movie theatres in Havana was set by José A. Casasús, actor, producer and entrepreneur, under the name of “Floradora”, later renamed “Alaska”.
In the six or seven years before World War I, cinema gets expanded and stabilized as a business in the most important cities in Latin America. Cuba, just as the rest of the countries in the continent, went through those first years with itinerant and sporadic exhibitions, changing from European providers to North American providers, starting the dependency on the big Hollywood companies.

The first ambitious genre in the continent was probably historic reviews. In Cuba films like “El Capitán Mambí” y “Libertadores o guerrilleros” (1914), de Enríque Díaz Quesada with support from the general Mario García Menocal are worth mentioning. Díaz Quesada adapted from the Spanish novelist Joaquín Dicenta in 1910, as a tendency widely used then, of using literary works adapted for movies, as well as imitating Chaplin, the French comedies and cowboys adventure films. The silent stage of production was extended until 1937, when the first full-length fiction movie was produced.

Pre-revolutionary cinema

Before the Cuban Revolution of 1959 the total film production was around 80 full-length movies. Some films are worth mentioning, such as La Virgen de la Caridad starring Miguel Santos and Romance del Palmar by Ramón Peón. Many famous people from the continent came to the island to film, and some leading Cuban actors had a strong presence mainly in Mexico and Argentina. Musicians such as Ernesto Lecuona, Bola de Nieve or Rita Montaner also performed and composed for movies in several countries.

By 1937, was film the Red Serpent, that with direction of Ernesto Caparrós and based on the novela/episodes of the detective Chan Li Po, episodes created by the famous Felix B.Caignet. In those years, most of the production was signed by the folclorismo, music and the vernacular popular theater, or imitated radial the Mexican melodrama and folletines: Romance of palmar, Havanan Stamps, and others.

On 1938 the Communist Party founded Cuba Sono Film, that realised with regularity the Periodic News programme Today, besides numerous documentary and two short ones of fiction. The decades of the Forties and fifty abound in numerous co-productions with Mexico, of low cost and little artistic relief. They save to the general mediocrity, Seven deaths fixed (1950) and on credit Chaste of oak (1953), both directed by Manuel Alonso, around got around him almost all the efforts of the incipient Cuban cinematographic industry with altruistic nor not at all artistic intentions.

In 1951 Our Time was created the Cultural Society, that included to several artists and intellectuals of whom soon they would found the Cuban Institute of the Cinematographic Art and Industry. In 1955, Julio Garcia Espinosa realised short documentary the Mégano, with the collaboration of Tomas Gutiérrez Alea, Alfredo Guevara and Jose Massip, proposal of a new type of critical and problematic cinema, that would give rise to the creation of the ICAIC, after the triumph of the Revolution, in 1959.

Filmografía
Some of the films were:

1937
La serpiente roja. (Ficc.)

1938
Ahora seremos felices. (Ficc.)
El romance del palmar. (LM. Ficc.)
Sucedió en La Habana. (LM. Ficc.)

1939
La canción del regreso. (Ficc.)
Cancionero cubano. (Ficc.)
Estampas habaneras. (Ficc.)
Mi tía de América. (Ficc.)
Prófugos. (Ficc.)
Siboney. (Ficc.)
La última melodía. (Ficc.)

1940
El deshaucio. (Ficc.)
Manuel García, el Rey de los campos de Cuba. (Ficc.)
Cuba. (Ficc.)
Yo soy el héroe. (Ficc.)

1941
Luna sin miel. (Ficc.)
La Quinta Columna. (Ficc.)
Romance musical. (Ficc.)

1942
La que se murió de amor o La niña de Guatemala o Martí en Guatemala. (Ficc.)

1943
Cosas de Cuba. (Ficc.)
Dos cubanos en la guerra. (Ficc.)
Fantasmas del Caribe. (Ficc.)
Ratón de velorio. (Ficc.)

1944
Un desalojo campesino. (Ficc.)
Hitler soy yo. (Ficc.)

1945
Embrujo antillano. (Ficc.)
Sed de Amor. (Ficc.)
La tremenda corte. (Ficc.)

1947
Garrido gaito. (Ficc.)
Levanta parejo. (Ficc.)
María la O. (Ficc.)
Oye esta canción. (Ficc.)
El paso de la jicotea. (Ficc.)
Piñero limosnero. (Ficc.)
¡Qué clase de niños!. (Ficc.)
El robo del brillante. (Ficc.)

1948
El ángel caído. (Ficc.)
Ecce Homo. (Ficc.)
Hermanos siameses. (Ficc.)
El vigilante Chegoya. (Ficc.)

1949
A la Habana me voy. (Ficc.)
Cecilia Valdés. (Ficc.)
Chicharito alcalde. (Ficc.)
El diablo fugitivo o La Ley contra el crimen. (Ficc.)
Escuela de modelos. (Ficc.)

1950
Una gitana en La Habana. (Ficc.)
Hotel de muchachas. (Ficc.)
Ídolo de multitudes. (Ficc.)
Música, mujeres y piratas. (Ficc.)
Príncipe de contrabando. (Ficc.)
Qué suerte tiene el cubano. (Ficc.)
La rumba en televisión. (Ficc.)
Siete muertes a plazo fijo. (Ficc.)
Sin otro apellido (SOA). (Ficc.)

1951
Cuando las mujeres mandan. (Ficc.)
Cuba canta y baila. (Ficc.)
Nudismo en el trópico o Bajo el cielo habanero. (Ficc.)
La renegada. (Ficc.)

1952
Paraíso encontrado. (Ficc.)
Honor y gloria o La vida de un ídolo. (Ficc.)
Samson rifle en La Habana o Ladrón de seda. (Ficc.)
La única. (Ficc.)
Yo soy el hombre. (Ficc.)

1953
Ángeles en la calle. (Ficc.)
Bella, la salvaje. (Ficc.)
Casta de roble. (Ficc.)
Hotel tropical. (Ficc.)
Martí, mentor de juventudes. (Ficc.)
Más fuerte que el amor. (Ficc.)
Los zapaticos de rosa. (Ficc.)

1954
Un extraño en la escalera. (Ficc.)
Frente al pecador de ayer. (Ficc.)
Golpe de suerte. (Ficc.)
Misión al norte de Seúl o Cuando la tarde muere. (Ficc.)
Morir por vivir. (Ficc.)
La mujer que se vendió. (Ficc.)
Mulata. (Ficc.)
La rosa blanca. (Ficc.)
Sandra, la mujer de fuego. (Ficc.)
El sindicato del crimen o La antesala de la muerte. (Ficc.)

1955
La fuerza de los humildes. (Ficc.)
Una gallega en La Habana. (Ficc.)
La mesera del café del puerto. (Ficc.)
El tesoro de la Isla de Pinos. (Ficc.)
Tres bárbaros en un jeep. (Ficc.)
El Mégano. (CM. Doc.)

1956
De espaldas. (Ficc.)
No me olvides nunca. (Ficc.)
Tropicana. (Ficc.)
Yambaó. (Ficc.)
Y si ella volviera. (Ficc.)

1957
El árbol de la fiebre. (Ficc.)
El farol en la ventana. (Ficc.)
Olé, Cuba. (Ficc.)

1958
Cargamento blanco o Santo contra hombres infernales. (Ficc.)
Cerebro del mal o Santo contra cerebro del mal. (Ficc.)
Con el deseo en los dedos. (Ficc.)
¡Qué mujer! o Una chica de Chicago. (Ficc.)
El señor Salomón y la Reina Cleopatra. (Ficc.)
Tahimí o La hija del pescador. (Ficc.)

Cuban Films in the Diaspora

After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Cubans who were ideologically ill at ease with the new revolutionary government made their way to the United States, where they settled in concentrated communities made up of other Cubans in South Florida, New York, and New Jersey. Unlike traditionally immigrants who chose to leave the homeland behind in search of a better way of life in a new place, most of these Cubans consider themselves exiles forced out of their homeland by political or economic circumstances. Because they continue to think of themselves as Cuban even after decades in the United States, it’s appropriate to talk about them as part of a Cuban diaspora that links them emotionally and psychologically to the island. Over one million Cubans have left Cuba since 1959 in different waves of immigration. Among those are talented directors, technicians and actors who settled in the USA, Latin America or Europe, in search of work and creative space in the field of cinema.

Orlando Jiménez Leal, one of the best known exile filmmakers, produced El Super (1979), the first Cuban exile fictional film, directed by Jiménez Leal and his young brother-in-law, Leon Ichaso.[4] Based on a play by Ivan Acosta, the film was broadly distributed in the U.S. and won awards at film festivals in Manheim, Biarritz and Venice. The film examines the trauma of the Cuban middle class, showing them as displaced from their former life and unable to adapt to new circumstances. It also highlights generational conflicts between Cuban-born parents and their teenage children who have been raised in the U.S. and reject tradition in favor of the American way of life. Jiménez Leal went on to make documentary films such as The Other Cuba (1983) and Improper Conduct (1984) in collaboration with Néstor Almendros. Improper Conduct is a highly controversial film that deals with the treatment of gays in Cuba. The Other Cuba is a bitter denunciation of the Revolution told from the point of view of the exiled community. The director’s strong anti-Castro stance gave voice to the growing community of Cuban political exiles in the U.S. in the 1980s.

Leon Ichaso’s best known film in the U.S. is Bitter Sugar (1996), a fictional film that strongly criticizes life in post-revolutionary Cuba. It shows the disillusionment of a young Communist and his girlfriend, who are pushed to the breaking point by a repressive society. In tone and theme, it’s similar to Jorge Ulla’s Guaguasí (1982), which had less distribution in the U.S. Guaguasí portrays a simple man from the countryside who is brutalized by his experiences with the revolutionary government in Cuba. The reactionary stance of directors like Ulla, Ichazo, Almendros and Jiménez Leal has made them the cinematic spokespersons for Cuban Americans who believe that Fidel Castro is personally responsible for negative changes that have occurred in Cuba since 1959.

An important theme in cinema of the Cuban disapora is the coming and going of people in exile, and the difficult process of adaptation to a new culture. Iván Acosta made the film Amigos (1986) to show the painful bicultural existence of Cuban-Americans living in Miami. Although it’s a low-budget film, it does an effective job of capturing the problems of the younger generation of Cuban Americans who are torn between the desire to fit in and the pressure to uphold tradition. Lejanía (1985) by Jesús Díaz is the first film to deal with the issue of Cuban exiles returning to the island for visits with relatives. Cercanía (2008) by Rolando Díaz, the brother of Jesús, shows a recent arrival from Cuba attempting to reconcile with his family in Miami after decades apart. Rather than address political themes in a direct way, these films focus on personal issues related to adaptation and culture shock. Honey for Oshún (2001) by Humberto Solás, a Cuban director who remained in Cuba, addresses the clash between Cuban Americans returning to the island and those who never left. It hints that reconciliation is possible, as long as those who return are willing to accept Cuba on its own terms and not force capitalist ideology on the Cuban people.

In Cuba, films made by Cuban-Americans or Cubans in exile are not widely distributed or well known, in part because the films deal with the Revolution in a negative light, but also because Cubans on the island dispute the notion of a Cuban diaspora and believe that those who live in exile no longer represent Cuban reality in an authentic light. They take the position that directors who experience life outside Cuba represent Cuba through a distorted lens, and that the films they make are largely works of propaganda. We have to give a good grade to the film “The Lost City” with Andy Garcia and different actors from Cuba and the United States..

Many important Cuban actors now live in exile. Among them are César Évora, Anabel Leal, Reinaldo Cruz, Francisco Gattorno, Reynaldo Miravalles, Tomás Millán, William Marquez, Orestes Matacena and Isabel Moreno. Cuban American actors who were born in Cuba but grew up in the U.S. include Andy García, Steven Bauer, William Levy, and Tony Plana.

List of Cuban Films Post Revolution (1959-Present)

A list of some of the more important Cuban films produced since 1959:

Las Doce Sillas — The Twelve Chairs (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1962)
Muerte de un Burócrata — Death of a Bureaucrat (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1966)
Memorias del Subdesarrollo — Memories of underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)
Lucía (Humberto Solás, 1969)
El Hombre de Maisinicú — The Man from Maisinicú (Manuel Pérez (filmmaker), 1973)
De Cierta Manera — One Way or Another (filming finished by Sara Gómez in 1973 before her death, technical work completed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea before its release in 1977)
La Ultima Cena — The Last Supper (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1976)
El Brigadista — The Teacher (Octavio Cortázar, 1977)
Retrato de Teresa — Portrait of Teresa (Pastor Vega, 1979)
Los Sobrevivientes — The Survivors (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1979)
Guardafronteras — Coastguards (Octavio Cortázar, 1980)
“Crónica de una Infamia” Miguel Torres (1982)
Los Pájaros Tirándole a la Escopeta — Birds Shooting the Shotgun (Rolando Díaz, 1982)
Vampiros en La Habana — Vampires in Havana (Juan Padrón, 1983)
Hasta Cierto Punto — Up to a Certain Point (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1983)
Se Permuta — House for Swap (Juan Carlos Tabío, 1984)
El Bohío — The Hut (Mario Rivas, 1985)
De tal Pedro tal Astilla (Luis Felipe Bernaza, 1985)
Clandestinos — Clandestines (Fernando Pérez, 1987)
Plaff — Too Afraid of Life or Splat (Juan Carlos Tabío, 1988)
La Bella del Alhambra — The Beauty of the Alhambra (Enrique Pineda Barnet, 1989)
Fresa y Chocolate — Strawberry and Chocolate (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, 1993)

“Cubacollage” Miguel Torres (1998)
Madagascar — (Fernando Pérez, 1994)
Guantanemera (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, 1995)
La Vida es Silbar — Life is a whistle (Fernando Pérez, 1998)
Lista de Espera — The waiting list (Juan Carlos Tabío, 2000)
Suite Habana — Havana Suite (Fernando Pérez, 2003)
Habana Blues — Havana Blues (Benito Zambrano, 2005)
El Benny — (Jorge Luis Sánchez, 2006)
Memorias del Desarrollo — Memories of Overdevelopment (Miguel Coyula, 2010)

Source: Wiki/CubanFilms/IntenetPhotos/TheCubanHistory.com
Cuban Films History/ The Cuban History/ Arnoldo Varona, Editor

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