Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (; December 11, 1928 – April 16, 1996) was a Cuban film director and screenwriter. He wrote and directed more than twenty features, documentaries, and short films, which are known for his sharp insight into post-Revolutionary Cuba, and possess a delicate balance between dedication to the revolution and criticism of the social, economic, and political conditions of the country.

Gutiérrez's work is representative of a cinematic movement occurring in the 1960s and 1970s known collectively as the New Latin American Cinema. This collective movement, also referred to by various writers by specific names such as "Third Cinema", "Cine Libre", and " Imperfect Cinema," was concerned largely with the problems of neocolonialism and cultural identity. The movement rejected both the commercial perfection of the Hollywood style, and the auteur-oriented European art cinema, for a cinema created as a tool for political and social change. Due not in a small part to the filmmakers’ lack of resources, aesthetic was of secondary importance to cinema's social function. The movement's main goal was to create films in which the viewer became an active, self-aware participant in the discourse of the film. Viewers were presented with an analysis of a current problem within society that as of that time had no clear solution, hoping to make the audience aware of the problem and to leave the theater willing to become actors of social change.

Early life

Born in Havana on December 11, 1928, Gutiérrez was raised in an affluent, politically progressive family. After receiving his law degree from the University of Havana in 1951, Gutiérrez studied cinema at the '' Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia'' in Rome, graduating in 1953. He was heavily influenced by Italian Neorealism, and created his first films in Rome with future Cuban colleague Julio García Espinosa