Choteo, revolución, y la historia cinemática de Cuba

By: جورج دي لاباز

Films with perspectives on Cuban history, its revolutions, and its unique culture of irreverence towards all systems and societies:

“Si le pedimos, pues, al cubano medio, al cubano “de la calle”, que nos diga lo que entiende por choteo, nos dará una versión simplista, pero que se acerca bastante a ser una definición porque implica lógicamente todo lo que de hecho hallamos contenido en las manifestaciones más típicas del fenómeno. El choteo –nos dirá—consiste en “no tomar nada en serio”….nos aclarará que el choteo consiste en “tirarlo todo a relajo.”
-Jorge Mañach, Indagación del Choteo, 1955 Version.

“The existence of a revolutionary cinema is inconceivable without the constant and methodical exercise of practice, search, and experimentation. It even means committing the new film-maker to take chances on the unknown, to leap into space at times, exposing himself to failure as does the guerrilla who travels along paths that he himself opens up with machete blows. The possibility of discovering and inventing film forms and structures that serve a more profound vision of our reality resides in the ability to place oneself on the outside limits of the familiar, to make one’s way amid constant dangers.”
-Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, Towards a Third Cinema ‘Hacia un Tercer Cine’, 1969.

[Tomás Gutiérrez Alea had] a special bent for satire, both dramatic, in La ultima cena, and comic, in Las doce sillas, Muerte de un burocrata, Los Sobrevivientes and Guantanamera. -Michael Chanan, Remembering Titón
“I think film is the one area of [Cuban] culture that has been capable of caustic, biting and thus constructive criticism from within the revolution.”
-Humberto Solás