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Cuban Film: On the Rocks
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19521 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1991 |
1,609 Words |
| Author
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Claudia Woolgar
Claudia Woolgar is a free-lance theater critic and arts
journalist based in London. |
"The cinema is the greatest medium of mass propaganda. We must take it in our hands," declared Stalin in August 1919 on nationalization of the Soviet film industry. Cinema's new role as a socioeducational force led Lenin to observe in 1920 that it "is for us the most important of all the arts."
Fidel Castro took these words to heart. His first law relating to a cultural activity established the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) in 1959, only months after he came to power. The blue movies that dominated the Cuban screen before the revolution gave way to the declaration "El Cine es un arte," not in the sense of art for art's sake, but art firmly entangled with political necessity. Since then the Cuban film industry has played its part well. Stalin and Lenin would have been very pleased.
Part of the 1991 Brighton Festival, Cine Cubano presented a season of Cuban films dating from 1969 to 1991 in the Duke of York's fringe cinema. The selections revealed that Cuba can artistically hold its own on the screen; it is the politics of the Cuban cinema that seals its commercial doom. Each of the seven films clearly grew out of the revolution and exists for the revolution. Themes differed very little: the revolutionary struggle to overcome Machado and then Batista; machismo v. the education and liberation of women; the struggle against colonization; and the benefits of life under Castro's rule. Although these themes are paraded again and again in an unrelenting celebration of nationalism and socialism, the films are far from boring.
Cubans cannot help but be cosmopolitan: Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences make Cuba a culturally varied country. Geographically, the island lies in close proximity to the United States. Right from the start foreign filmmakers were invited to Cuba (among them Peter Brook and Tony Richardson). All these external influences have resulted in films that, while being of necessity propagandistic, are artistically challenging and culturally diverse.
The Brighton season opened and closed with two films that have already received considerable critical acclaim outside Cuba. An artistic tour de force for director Humberto Solas, Lucia (1969) was also his feature debut. It was the most artistically experimental of the films shown--a triptych employing a different idiom and visual style for each section. Lucia is also highly political, as Solas depicts his country's--and his countrywomen's--struggle for liberation.
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