Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
| Tomás Gutiérrez Alea | |
|---|---|
| Born |
11 December 1928 Havana, Cuba |
| Died | 16 April 1996 (aged 67) Havana, Cuba |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1947-1996 |
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Spanish pronunciation: [aˈlea]; December 11, 1928 – April 16, 1996) was a Cuban filmmaker. He wrote and directed more than 20 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 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 not in a 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.
Born in Havana on December 11, 1928, Gutiérrez was raised in an affluent, politically progressive family. After receiving his law degree from the University of Havana in 1951, Gutiérrez studied cinema at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, graduating in 1953. He was heavily influenced by Italian Neorealism, 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 led by Fidel Castro 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 and The Twelve Chairs was entered into the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival.
...
Wikipedia