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Islands / I Lands, NOW—Vista de Cuba
  • Wondering Cuba
  • Santiago Álvarez
  • Sara Gómez
  • Nicolás Guillén Landrián
  • Another Eye
  • Immigrants’ Island
  • Fernando Pérez
  • Following Suite Habana
  • Sara Gómez



    - Sara Gómez

    Born in Havana in 1943, Sara Gómez studied piano at the Havana Conservatory of Music. After working as a journalist, she became an assistant director at the ICAIC. In 1963, she worked as assistant director on and also appeared in Agnès Varda’s Hi There, Cubans. With her debut film, I Will Go to Santiago (1964), she became the first female film director in Cuba. Still in her 20s, she made a series of documentaries that were rooted in her African-Cuban background and that challenged male supremacy, racism, and economic marginalization within Cuba. Gómez also worked as assistant director on fiction films, including Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Cumbite (1964). One Way or Another (1974), which used both documentary and fictional elements to depict a story of love across class lines, was to be her first feature-length film, but she died of acute asthma during post-production, at age 31. Alea helped to finish the film, which was released in 1978 and remains one of the monumental works of Cuban cinema.

    For all the following films by Gómez, production company and source: ICAIC


    -Chronicle of My Family

    Guanabacoa: Crónica de mi familia

    CUBA / 1966 / Spanish / B&W / Video (Original: 35mm) / 13 min

    Director, Script: Sara Gómez
    Photography: José Tabío, Luis Marzoa
    Editing: Justo Vega
    Producers: Eduardo Valdés Rivero, Jesús Pascau

    An intuitive collage of images at first sight concerns the director’s family, but her family is the whole country, with its heritage of backwardness and, in particular, the racial issue, which the filmmaker, a black woman and the first female film director in Cuba, perceives against the backdrop of the conviction that the revolution will stamp out racism by dint of its egalitarian nature.



    -And . . . We’ve Got Taste

    Y. . . tenemos sabor

    CUBA / 1967 / Spanish / B&W / Video (Original: 35mm) / 30 min

    Director, Script: Sara Gómez
    Photography: Mario García Joya, José López
    Editing: Justo Vega
    Producer: Jesús Pascau

    Conga, bongo, claves, güiro, timbales, maracas . . . Some of the basic Cuban musical instruments are introduced and demonstrated by the legendary rumba master Alberto Zayas (1908–1983). In addition to Zayas’s insightful descriptions of the instruments’ materials, sounds, African origins, and Cuban adaptations, on-the-street and in-studio performances by leading artists give this documentary a lot of flavor!



    -An Island for Miguel

    Una isla para Miguel

    CUBA / 1967 / Spanish / B&W / Video (Original: 35mm) / 22 min

    Director: Sara Gómez
    Photography: Luis García
    Editing: Caíta Villalón
    Music: Chucho Valdés
    Producer: Jesús Pascau

    The first part of the “Isle of Youth” trilogy shows the process of the reeducation of adolescents who are sent as juvenile delinquents to Pinos Island (later renamed the Isle of Youth). Together with the second and third parts, On the Other Island and Treasure Island, this film represents the documentary production of Sara Gómez.



    -On the Other Island

    En la otra isla

    CUBA / 1968 / Spanish / B&W / Video (Original: 35mm) / 41 min

    Director, Script: Sara Gómez
    Photography: Luis García
    Editing: Caíta Villalón
    Producer: Jesús Pascau

    Pinos Island (later renamed the Isle of Youth) is an island where young “counterrevolutionaries” were indoctrinated after the revolution. The film-cum-survey features a seminarian seeking traces of God, the daughter of an émigré, and other young alleged enemies of the new regime.



    -Treasure Island

    Isla del Tesoro

    CUBA / 1969 / Spanish / B&W / Video (Original: 35mm) / 10 min

    Director, Script: Sara Gómez
    Photography: Luis García
    Editing: Caíta Villalón
    Music: Armando Guerra
    Producer: Jesús Pascau

    Traces the history of the Isle of Youth, formerly called Pinos Island or Treasure Island, from the discovery of the island by Columbus to 1969. The relationship between the old and the new world, humankind and history, and the meaning of human acts in a revolutionary era are considered in a brief story of Cuba. The aggressiveness of the film comes not only from the experimental use of sound but from an anti-Americanism born of a time in which Cuban film directors took an active part in politics.



    -One Way or Another

    De cierta manera

    CUBA / 1974 / Spanish / B&W / Video (Original: 35mm) / 82 min

    Director: Sara Gómez
    Photography: Luis García Mesa
    Editing: Iván Arocha
    Music: Sergio Vitier
    Cast: Mario Balmaseda, Yolanda Cuéllar
    Thanks to: Tokyo International Women's Film Festival

    The last film by Gómez combines documentary elements with fiction in a radical fashion, demonstrating, through the story of a teacher who fully identifies with the revolution and a macho worker who is forced to confront the woman’s desire for emancipation, the idea that racism, sexism, and class prejudice must be defeated if the revolution is to succeed. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea helped complete the film.