From March 22 to 30, the Fest of Cuban Cinema Week chose the 23 y 12 movie theater in the Havana neighborhood of Vedado to screen films kept at the Cinematheque of Cuba that had been restored.
The Cuban public has the opportunity to see excellent quality copies of films by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Titón), including “Memorias del Subdesarrollo” (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968), “Una Pelea Cubana Contra los Demonios” (A Cuban Struggle Against the Demons, 1971) and “La Ultima Cena” (The Last Supper, 1976).
Other films include “De Cierta Manera” (In a Certain Way, 1974) by Sara Gómez, restored by the German company Arsenal, “El Otro Cristóbal” (The Other Christopher, 1963) by Armand Gatti, one of the first co-productions between ICAIC and France, which became the first Cuban film at the Cannes Film Festival.
Luciano Castillo, director of the Cinematheque of Cuba, said that years have passed since the Havana International Festival of New Latin American Cinema welcomed the initiative of other prestigious events of its kind, such as Cannes and Venice, to include an exhibition of restored films after an extensive and costly process of restoring them to their original splendor.
The film critic recalled that in the case of Gutierrez Alea’s “Los Sobrevivientes” (Survivors, 1978), the laboratory contracted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Hollywood made the chromatic treatment intended at the time by the filmmaker and photographer Mario Garcia Joya.
Castillo suggested Cuba’s cinemagoers not miss “La Muerte de un Burócrata” (Death of a Bureaucrat, 1966) and “El Arte del Tabaco” (The Art of Tobacco, 1974), two films also directed by Titón that will be included in the program thanks to the US Academy’s contribution through an agreement promoted by the Cinematheque of Cuba.
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