Tomás Gutiérrez- Alea (; December 11, 1928 – April 16, 1996) was a

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

n film director and screenwriter. Gutiérrez Alea 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 Neocolonialism is the control by a state (usually, a former colonial power) over another nominally independent state (usually, a former colony) through indirect means. The term ''neocolonialism'' was first used after World War II to refer to ...

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 in no 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 Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.University of Havana The University of Havana (UH; ) is a public university located in the Vedado district of Havana, the capital of Cuba. Founded on 5 January 1728, the university is the oldest in Cuba, and one of the first to be founded in the Americas. Originall ...

in 1951, Gutiérrez studied cinema at the '' Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia'' in Rome, graduating in 1953. He was heavily influenced by

Italian Neorealism Italian neorealism (), also known as the Golden Age of Italian Cinema, was a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class. They are filmed on location, frequently with non-professional actors. They p ...

, and created his first films in Rome with future Cuban colleague Julio García Espinosa, with whom he co-directed the documentary film ''El Mégano'' (''The Charcoal Worker''). Shortly after the success of the

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution () was the military and political movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, in which Batista overthrew ...

led by

Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...

in 1959, Gutiérrez, Espinosa, and several other young filmmakers founded the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). As ardent supporters of the Revolution, ICAIC was a filmmaker's collective which believed film to be the most important modern art form and the best medium to distribute revolutionary thought to the masses. Gutiérrez's ''Esta Tierra Nuestra'' (''This Land Of Ours''), was the first documentary made after the revolutionary victory. ICAIC focused mostly on documentaries and newsreels in its formative years, but eventually expanded into production of feature films, including Gutiérrez's early '' Historias de la Revolución'' (''Stories Of The Revolution'') (1960), ICAIC's first fiction film, and '' Doce sillas'' (''The Twelve Chairs''), (1962). ''Stories of the Revolution'' was entered into the

2nd Moscow International Film Festival The 2nd Moscow International Film Festival was held from 9 to 23 July 1961. The Grand Prix was shared between the Japanese film '' The Naked Island'' directed by Kaneto Shindo and the Soviet film '' Clear Skies'' directed by Grigori Chukhrai. ...

and ''The Twelve Chairs'' was entered into the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival.

Most popular works

Gutiérrez's first widely successful feature, '' Muerte de un burócrata'' (''Death of a Bureaucrat'') (1966) introduces itself as a sort of homage to the history of cinematic comedy, and includes direct allusions to the work of

Buster Keaton Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent films during the 1920s, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts. He frequently ...

, Laurel & Hardy,

Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish and Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians and directors to be one of the greatest and ...

, and many others. The story follows a young man's confounding plight through bureaucratic offices to have his dead uncle exhumed and then reburied after the body is buried with his identification card. His next film, '' Memorias del Subdesarrollo'' (''Memories of Underdevelopment'') (1968) was the first Cuban film to be shown in the United States since the Revolution. Based on Edmundo Desnoes’s novella "Inconsolable Memories," the film is the memoir of a morally ambiguous bourgeois intellectual living in Havana in the period between the

Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...

and the

Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...

. The protagonist is unwilling to take a political stance one way or another, yet continues to despise the country around him for being backwards and underdeveloped. His life eventually fades into nothingness, becoming a personality which has no use in this new Cuba. In a self-reflexive cameo appearance, Gutiérrez calls the film a "collage...with a little bit of everything". Gutiérrez uses a dizzying array of materials and filmic styles in ''Memories'', from documentary-style narrative sequences which use long unbroken shots taken from handheld cameras to agitational montage sequences reminiscent of the films of early Soviet filmmakers such as

Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein; (11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, he was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is no ...

. ''Memories'' makes use of various types of media including direct documentary footage shot, still photos, archive and newsreel footage, clips of Hollywood films, and recorded speeches by

and John F. Kennedy, to create a seemingly disarticulated film language that is in direct contrast to the straightforward Hollywood style. Although criticism of the Revolution and Cuban society was at the heart of not only ''Memories'', but all of Gutiérrez's works, Gutiérrez continued to be a dedicated supporter of Cuban Socialism. But his works could hardly be described as propaganda either. Gutiérrez described the motivation for his contradictory approach by saying: "...cinema provides an active and mobilizing element, which stimulates participation in the revolutionary process. Then, it is not sufficient to have a moralizing cinema based on harangue and exhortation. We need a cinema that promotes and develops a critical attitude. But how to criticize and at the same time strengthen the reality in which we are immersed?" Commenting on his style, Gutiérrez called himself "a man who makes criticism inside the revolution, who wants to ameliorate the process, to perfect it, but not to destroy it".

Late career and legacy

In the following decades, Gutiérrez divided his time between making his own films and mentoring promising young filmmakers through ICAIC. In 1972 and 1976, respectively, Gutiérrez completed two historical feature films, ''Una pelea cubana contra los demonios'' (''A Cuban Fight Against the Demons'') and '' La última cena'' (''The Last Supper''). Both set in Spanish colonial Cuba, the films study contradictions and hypocrisy in Cuba's past of imperialism, religion, and slavery. ''Hasta cierto punto'' ('' Up to a Certain Point'') (starring Gutiérrez's wife, Mirta Ibarra.) The film underwent some censorship and remains to this day considered by Cuban critics one of his lesser works, though it is still highly regarded. The director himself said jokingly that the film was only successful "up to a certain point" In the early 1990s, Gutiérrez fell into ill health, forcing him to co-direct his last two films with his friend Juan Carlos Tabío. The first, '' Fresa y Chocolate'' (''Strawberry and Chocolate'') (1993) became the first Cuban film to be nominated for the

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

for Best Foreign Film. The film's story centers on the oft conflictory relationship between a committed Marxist student and a flamboyantly gay artist. Gutiérrez's final film, ''

Guantanamera "" (; ) is a Cuban patriotic song, which uses a poem from the collection ''Simple Verses'', by the Cuban poet José Martí, for the lyrics. It is an expression of love for Cuba and of solidarity with the poor people of the world. The official ...

'', (1994) uses traditional elements such as an ensemble cast and romantic comedy to take a more subtle approach to Gutiérrez's old targets: underdevelopment and bureaucracy. The film won the Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize at the 44th Berlin International Film Festival. Titón, as he was known to his friends, died in Havana on April 16, 1996, at age 67. He is buried in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Three of Gutiérrez's films—''Death of a Bureaucrat'', ''Una Pelea Cubana contra los Demonios'', and ''Los Sobrevivientes''—were preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2017 and 2019.

Filmography

*''La caperucita roja'' (1947) - short film *''El faquir'' (1947) - short film *''Una confusión cotidiana'' (1950) - short film, codirected with Nestor Almendros and based upon "A Common Confusion" by

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

*''Il sogno de Giovanni Bassain'' (1953) - short film, codirected with Filippo Perrone *''El mégano'' (1955) - short documentary film, codirected with Julio García Espinosa and made in collaboration with Alfredo Guevara, José Massip *''La toma de La Habana por los ingleses'' (1958) - short documentary film *''Esta tierra nuestra'' (1959) - short documentary film, codirected with Julio García Espinosa *'' Stories of the Revolution'' (''Historias de la revolución'') (1960) - Fiction, 81 minutes *''General Assembly'' (''Asamblea general'') (1960) - short documentary film *''Death to the Invader'' (''Muerte al invasor'') (1961) - short documentary film, codirected with Santiago Álvarez *''

The Twelve Chairs ''The Twelve Chairs'' () is a Russian classic satirical picaresque novel by the Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, published in 1928. Its plot follows characters attempting to obtain jewelry hidden in a chair. A sequel was published in 1931. The ...

'' (''Las doce sillas'') (1962) - Fiction, 97 minutes *''Cumbite'' (1964) - Fiction, 82 minutes *''Death of a Bureaucrat'' ('' Muerte de un burócrata'') (1966) - Fiction, 85 minutes *''Memories of Underdevelopment'' ('' Memorias del Subdesarrollo'') (1968) - Fiction, 97 minutes *''A Cuban Fight Against Demons'' (''Una pelea cubana contra los demonios'') (1971) - Fiction, 130 minutes *''El arte del tabaco'' (1974) - short documentary film *''El camino de la mirra y el incienso'' (1975) - short documentary film, codirected by Constante Diego *'' The Last Supper'' (''La última cena'') (1976) - Fiction, 120 minutes *''La sexta parte del mundo'' (1977) - documentary film, codirected with Julio García Espinosa *'' The Survivors'' ('' Los sobrevivientes'') (1979) - Fiction, 130 minutes *''Up to a Certain Point'' (''Hasta cierto punto'') (1983) - Fiction, 88 minutes *'' Letters from the Park'' (''Cartas del parque'') (1989) - Fiction, 88 minutes *''Far Apart'' (''Contigo en la distancia'') (1991) - segment of the anthology film ''Con el amor no se juega'' *'' Fresa y Chocolate'' (1993) - codirected with Juan Carlos Tabío, Fiction, 110 minutes *''

'' (1995) - codirected with Juan Carlos Tabío, Fiction, 101 minutes

References

External links