Cine cubano

If the Mexican and Argentine film industries, the two largest in Latin America, experienced significant contraction during the 1960s, that of Cuba began its golden age. In fact, while there had been isolated Cuban movies made in the Island, as well as some Mexican and US productions, the fact is that a film industry only began with the Revolution. ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos) [Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry] was founded in 1959. For the Cuban revolution, especially during the 1960s, as was the case with Lenin’s Soviet Union, film was the most important of the arts. In part, this was due to the emphasis placed by the Cuban Revolution on film as a central means of communication of social and political values and values. Moreover, if the goal of the revolution was the creation of a “new man” (and, obviously, also woman), a new visual culture was also required.
But in addition to state support, the birth of the Cuban film industry benefitted from the explosion in creativity that surged throughout the Cuban artistic community and, more generally, population immediately after the triumph of the Revolution. As Michael Chanan notes: “ The Revolution . . . unleashed among a new generation of filmmakers a furious creative energy as they turned the cameras on the process they were living, and told the Cuban people—and anyone else who was interested—who they were and what they were doing.” Revolutions are wont to create upsurges in enthusiasm and creativity, at least until the optimism begins to cool and censorship starts tightening.

To its credit, ICAIC has managed to maintain a surprising degree of independence from direct government interference. This was particularly the case during the late 1960s. In 1969, when rock and other US musical styles were discouraged by the government and banned from television, the ICAIC created the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora (Sound Experiment Group) which brought together, under the direction of the classical composer Leo Brouwer, folk/rock singer-songwriters Pablo Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez, and Noel Nicola, jazz musician Emiliano Salvador, etc, who would later become central figures in the Cuban music scene. ICAIC not only gave them a space in which to develop musically during a time when they were marginalized from Cuban media, but even provided formal musical and film musical training. As Leonardo Acosta, a writer and musician who participated in GES notes: “A revolutionary system of theoretical and practical studies was elaborated, which were combined with practice and the listening of almost all possible music: from Beethoven to John Coltrane, from Gilberto Gil to Ravi Shankar, from Anton von Webern to Xenakis, from Frank Zappa to Blood, Sweat and Tears, from Sindo Garay to Juan Blanco and, of course from Bach to the Beatles.”

As we are discovering in our readings on Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment, many saw in this film a dissident, even anti-revolutionary statement. While Gutiérrez Alea consistently dismissed this interpretation of his film, as we have seen, the ICAIC cannot be seen as unequivocally representing the Revolutionary government’s positions. In fact, I think there can be found a “dissident” ethos in many Cuban cultural products, even if this “dissidence” can, at least during the 1960s and 1970s, be interpreted as coming from the left. The flaws denounced are not presented as the product of the attempt at implementing socialism, but as flaws in the manner in which socialism is being implemented. The solution is more socialism, not a turn (or return) to capitalism.