Directing
No biography available.
Through the files of Cuban cinema news program Noticieros ICAIC Latinoamericanos, the documentary shows the most relevant events of the second half of the 20th century as seen by the documentary filmmakers of the island. During three decades and under the general direction of Santiago Álvarez, these moviemakers witnessed almost everything: from the shivers of the Cold War to Bola de Nieve's piano solos; from the discovery of the killing fields in Cambodia to the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. In 2009, the original negatives of Noticieros ICAIC Latinoamericanos were declared part of the "world memory" by UNESCO.
A tribute to Santiago Álvarez, a great innovator in the language of Cuban newsreel images, presented by the ICAIC over the course of thirty years. This unique figure in Latin American cinema is reconstructed. Told as a game of Chinese boxes (documentaries within documentaries, authors within authors, images within images), Álvarez's obsession is revealed to be identical to that of his disciples: to confront the reality of Cuba with other realities, staging aesthetic operations that are nevertheless political operations, always in favor of the Revolution.
A biting satire about life in contemporary Cuba. Alicia, a young drama instructor, is sent to the small town of Maravillas de Noveras, which is itself an exaggerated, but very ingenious reflection of the real Cuba. Her adventures there are almost as surreal as the ones experienced by Lewis Carroll's character, reflecting patterns of indoctrination, coercion, absolutism, and many other everyday problems in Cuban society.
Ana is a telenovela actress but because of financial troubles resorts to producing a prostitution documentary under false pretences.
Lorenzo, a Cuban policeman specializing in grave robberies is sent to Havana to investigate the death of a Havana-born German national, Hermann (or German in Spanish) found in a famous grave. Lorenzo recounts his findings to the police chief (Major Anancio) as he investigates Dora, an elevator operator and Herrmann's landlady, Aguila and Silvia (who work for Cultural Affairs), Chrissy (a British-born Socialist Internationalist lover), Xiomara (Hermann's mother and a local drag queen as well), a dwarf, and a false Guatemalan who had raped Chrissy during her internationalist "love/sex campaign" in Guatemala. These are the main, but not the only characters, one must absolutely follow to make sense of the plot.
Three crooks in Havanna plan the bankrobbery of a lifetime
Revolves around a love triangle that later evolves into a love square involving three Cubans and a Soviet soldier. Set in a fictitious rural village near a Soviet military base in central Cuba, their amorous adventures, or misadventures, unravel against the backdrop of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.