Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

the long version

"The films of Tomas Gutierrez Alea (1928-1996) have always defined the limits of expression in revolutionary Cuba. This book is a thorough introduction to Cuba's most prominent filmmaker. It covers all of Alea's twelve feature films, with special emphasis on Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), The Last Supper (1976), and Strawberry and Chocolate (1993). Not only are these considered his best films, but each is also symptomatic of an identifiable period in revolutionary Cuba - the period of triumph and affirmation in the 1960s, the period of consolidation and institutionalization in the 1970s, and the period of crisis since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Alea's Cuba, as seen through his films, is a complex reality that does not fit easily within the neat binarisms of the cold war, or the Manicheanism that has plagued discussions about the Revolution. Rather, it is a collective project full of contradictions, a process that has been, successively, progressive and reactionary, machista and feminist, dogmatic and tolerant, heroic and tragic. To paraphrase Alea, it is a project whose truth does not lie in either one of the poles, but rather in their confrontation, and what that confrontation suggests within a context that includes the cold war, Latin America's tradition of revolutionary struggles for independence, and Cuba's own particular history."--BOOK JACKET.