TODAY: Lucía (Directed by Humerto Solas) FRIDAY: Fresa y Chocolate

Wednesday, November 10

 Lucía (Directed by Humberto Solas)

LUCIA  / The following film notes were prepared for the New York State Writers Institute by Kevin Jack Hagopian, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Pennsylvania State University:

Told in three segments, set in 1895, 1932, and in the heady years just after the Revolution, Lucia is an epic of Cuban history. The three Lucias are literally, different women, each of their stories combining into a larger narrative of slow, painful progress for Cuba, less as a nation than as a society. The three Lucias each offer different visions of class; Solas deftly links concern with economic materialism to character growth and change, in the process transforming that often very bourgeois cinematic genre, the family melodrama, into a platform for social investigation. Solas has made a cinematic political tract that simultaneously offers an inquiry into the strategies of our identification and sympathy for cinematic characters, making these novelistic creations a vehicle for political understanding.

As Lucia abundantly shows, the Cuban revolutionary cinema is a profoundly analytical form; accustomed to the demonizing of all Cuban cultural products as "propaganda, American audiences are frequently surprised at how critical of revolutionary hypocrisy the great Cuban films of the 1960's are, and how subtly they interrogate the nexus of personal and political engagement. Deeply influenced by the methods and the goals of documentary cinema, Lucia and other `60's Cuban films recruit documentary techniques to reduce the space between "the cinema" and the lived experiences of its Cuban audiences. In the third section of Lucia, the documentary mode becomes dominant, insisting on the material and physical truthfulness of the revolutionary understanding of class struggle.

Friday, November 12
Fresa y Chocolate "Strawberry and Chocolate"
(Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea )

 

 

The film revolves around the relationship between a stereotypically devout revolutionary student David Alvarez and an equally stereoptyped homosexual Diego who works in a cultural office in Havana. David is torn between his interest in Diego's illicit books (though not sexually illicit) and his desire to turn Diego in as a subversive--not only as a homosexual, but for all of his "counterrevolutionary" views on culture and the state of the revolution. Fresa y chocolate is a significant examination of the ins and outs of revolutionary culture and society--it details the interactions of a number of people who exist outside the official dogma of the state, but are still dedicated to the revolution in their own ways.

 

 

 

Amigos del Cine Latinoamericano extends a very cordial invitation to 

Fall 2010 Film Series

Cuban Eyes/ Cubanize:
Fifty Years of Cuban Cinema since the Cuban Revolution

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

 

Most films will be presented on Wednesdays or Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

As usual, we will give a short introduction of the film and after the presentation you are welcome to stay for a discussion.

 

Some films are adult in nature and may not be appropriate for young audiences.