Currently in preparation
Cuban Cinema: A Critical Filmography
Cuban cinema gained international prominence as the ‘revolutionary cinema’ par excellence during the heady days of worldwide cinematic new waves and social upheaval in the 1960s and 70s. After the 1959 revolution, young Cuban filmmakers—among them Alea, Alvarez, García Espinosa, Sara Gómez and Solás—established a compelling new film aesthetic with astonishing speed, one based by turn—or sometimes simultaneously—on collage, modernist reflexivity, the use of popular genres such as comedy and melodrama and the interpenetration of fiction and documentary, all imbued with the country’s revolutionary political project.
Cuban Cinema: A Critical Filmography will provide the definitive and most detailed and comprehensive discussion of this crucial chapter in world film history available to date in any language. Through its discussion of key individual films—features, shorts, documentaries, animation, newsreels—it will also probe the inner workings of the state film institute ICAIC and the thorny issue of ideological control. The volume will also look back to the country’s silent films and scattered but consistently interesting sound films before 1960, featuring such international stars as Ninón Sevilla and Rita Montaner, when Cubans were among the most enthusiastic film audiences in the world. It will conclude with a discussion of the exciting new developments in Cuban film today by filmmakers such as Fernando Pérez and Juan Carlos Cremata as well as amateur and underground film, video and the cinema of the Cuban diaspora.
is assistant professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on international media with an emphasis on ‘Latin’ America, Spanish-language film and television in the U.S. and digital technologies. She has written about film and political culture, revolutionary imagination in the Americas, telenovelas, contemporary Latin American cinema, Cuban cinema and co-productions. Her book Digital Dilemmas: The State, the Individual and Digital Media in Cuba was published by Rutgers in 2009. She has curated numerous film programs on Latin American and indigenous film in the U.S. and Canada and is co-founder and artistic director of the Latino CineMedia Film Festival in Santa Barbara, co-presented with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
