Donald Trump has been thundering against Cuba for years now, but never so aggressively as in recent months, especially since what practically amounts to the annexation of Venezuela happened. Each new day, new sanctions are imposed on the small Caribbean island synonymous with son cubano, rum, boxing, baseball, and a deeply inspiring tradition of documentary filmmaking. Such was the spirit of defiance against the odds instilled into more than one generation of Cuban documentarians by the post-revolution political leadership that they soon began to look upon themselves as part-artists, part-statesmen committed to rebuilding their society along humane and egalitarian lines.

Trump, the bully and the boor that he is, is not expected to know all this. But the fact is that he will have to contend with the lasting works of more than one Cuban filmmaker if he were to be so unwise as to attack the life and legacy of the revolution of January 1, 1959.

In the event of such a calamity descending on Havana and Trump succeeding militarily, it may not be equally easy to erase the strong sentiments for radical change that caused a home-grown genius like Santiago Álvarez to direct his documentaries on, notably, the Black civil rights movement in the United States (Now), the life and funeral of Ho Chi Minh (79 Primaveras), and the efforts to recover from a devastating cyclone that struck the island (Ciclón).

Sparkling, innovative films such as these made no less an icon than Jean-Luc Godard speak of Álvarez as “the world’s greatest living film editor.” Álvarez, idolised the world over for both the radicalism of his aesthetics and the visionary qualities of his politics, famously said: “Give me two photographs, a moviola, and some music, and I will make you a film.”

In its introduction to an interview with the distinguished Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (1928–1996), Cineaste, the reputed US film journal, said in January 1977: “Cuban cinema was literally born in 1959 with the triumph of the revolutionary movement led by Fidel Castro. As the infant industry began to produce a series of engaging documentaries and features which won international film awards, the Cuban Film Institute became a champion (and often a physical haven) for radical filmmakers of Latin America. By and large the American public was not aware of the quality of Cuban cinema until the American release of Memories of Underdevelopment in 1973. Few of the critics who hailed the film as a masterpiece and wrote about director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea mentioned that it was his fifth film or that the US government had consistently thwarted easy distribution of Cuban films north of Key West.”

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What many of the critics also failed to notice was Alea’s emergence as a seminal film theoretician, stressing the need for new aesthetics to establish a new kind of cinema for revolutionary societies struggling to unburden themselves of borrowed European and Hollywood models. Although Alea’s films covered a rainbow of themes and subjects, genres and styles—from madcap comedies to historical explorations to polemical dramas to love stories—his manner of storytelling never lost sight of the artist’s role in a revolutionary society contending with the awesome burden of an unjust past and the bursting expectations of a liberated people for instant correction of hoary sins of omission and commission.

This role, according to Alea, was in its own way as important as that of the politician engaged in the task of repair and reconstruction in the more visible and immediate public domain. This critical perspective around men and matters, subjects and situations, is present in measure big and small in all his films, whether it is a comedy with a touch of the black and the weird like The Death of a Bureaucrat, a love story like Up to a Point, or a cerebral celebration like Memories of Underdevelopment.

Alea and the anatomy of slavery

The Last Supper, by Alea’s own admission “the most coherent expression of my thinking,” is a haunting examination in a biblical format of exploitation on a sugar plantation in the Spanish colonial era. In this memorable mix of history, satire, music, and depictions of humanity and the lack of it, Alea surpassed himself. His engagement with Cuba’s historical past is as striking as his articulation of the need to harness personal and collective resources to overcome its huge negative aspects.

The closing years of the 18th century saw Europe in the throes of some great bourgeois revolutions, often led by people of aristocratic origin, many of whom, alas, literally lost their heads in the process. Those European outbursts caused the beginning of independence struggles in the colonised and brutalised world of Latin America. The Last Supper pushes the viewer into a seething spectacle of masters and slaves, of social hypocrisies and tyrannies, of espousal and rejection of imposed religious rituals. This was, as Alea put it, his most complete film—complete in the sense that here he succeeded in bringing together the artistic and ideological elements of all his previous films.

Humberto Solás, a major figure in Cuban cinema on account of his historical melodramas enacted in the context of Cuban political, social, artistic, and personal realities in the 20th century, as well as his many polemical essays relating to the history and contemporary life of a revolutionary society, welcomed the fact that “there are so many films on the history of slavery.”

Speaking to the critic Marta Alvear in Havana in March 1977, Solás, a younger colleague of Alea, said: “I feel that The Last Supper is a very important film because it offers a very complex vision of slave society. All sorts of slaves, with their contradictions and their particular problems, are represented there.” He would also say that in the early years of the revolution, “we indulged in a romanticisation of the slaves and the dispossessed, which we are now correcting.”

The statesman in Alea made him dedicate The Last Supper to Sara Gómez, the younger Cuban director who died prematurely in the midst of what promised to be a brilliant career. Gómez’s One Way or Another (1974), which questioned machismo in a quiet, profound mix of the documentary and the fictional, was completed by Alea and his associates when she was struck down by an acute asthma attack before she could edit the film. These facts point to a culture of comradeship where personal ambitions fused with a sense of political togetherness to give a definite persona to the revolution of 1959.

The politics of desire

In the evening of his life, Alea—by then stricken with cancer and working with a close directorial associate in Juan Carlos Tabío—scored the kind of success with audiences and critics all over the world that can be compared only with the runaway popularity of Memories. A surface reading of Strawberry and Chocolate would certainly restrict one to the intolerance that homosexuality excites in Cuba, as indeed in varying degrees in other Latin American societies. Same-sex love was (and is) a controversial, highly emotive, almost political subject in Cuba, even as revolutionary change was (and is) happening in other areas.

Alea’s film went some way in causing official restrictions to be relaxed, although Latino macho aberrations in society may never completely disappear. In the film, an effeminate, relaxed gay man is shown to be more sensitive and intellectually superior to the other main player—a Communist idealist and homophobic macho man. There is no denying that Strawberry and Chocolate is a work of considerable charm, great humanity, and focused social commitment, notwithstanding the somewhat simplistic portrayal of the relationship between the two men.

Speaking in Madrid in the summer of 1994 at the opening of a retrospective of his films, Alea said: “More than the story itself, this is a pointed reminder that above and beyond politics, there is the country called Cuba and its culture. Strawberry and Chocolate is a story about an educated, cultivated homosexual in love with his country, about its culture, its music and about the city of Havana. There is too much polemicising about Cuba. It is seen either as a communist hell or a communist paradise. It is hard to focus attention on the real country.”

Having mentioned these words of the late master, there is a need to stress that till the end of his life, Alea’s faith in the ideas and ideals of the revolution remained undiminished. The need for the spirit of the revolution to continue was, to him, an article of faith with which no compromise was possible.

Close friends like Edmundo Desnoes, author of the novel on which Memories was based, left Cuba to live in the West. So did the cinematographer Néstor Almendros, who later worked with François Truffaut and other French New Wave directors. But Alea never contemplated exile despite his occasional differences of opinion about the way the regime tackled certain subjects or situations. His quarrels were never with the fact of the revolution, as borne out by his speeches, his writings, and above all his films over a period of more than thirty-five years.

Alea is on record saying: “I have had great periods of contradiction and divergence with the system. There were times when I was marginalised and unable to travel abroad … But in the end, they (meaning the authorities) have always had the maturity to respect me and my work.”

This ability to look beyond the immediate present and move ahead, ignoring temporary setbacks, occasional black moods, and an exhaustion of the spirit that is bound to occur when relentlessly fighting the richest and most vindictive military power in the world, perhaps explains best why the Cuban social structure still holds and provides an alternative model for human growth and existence. Where other former socialist societies have made such devastating compromises in the past four decades or so as to have seemingly wiped the past out of their collective memory, Cuban artists and intellectuals have provided an effective shield against the erosion of the socio-economic gains of the 1959 popular upheaval.

In this connection, Alea’s words commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the revolution may be profitably recalled: “A perfectly just society in which all human beings can fully realise themselves is not within our immediate reach. A communist society, a paradise on earth, will be inhabited by better men and women than we in every sense. But it’s we, here and now, with all our defects; it’s us who are slowly building that more just society. There are no shortcuts in history. We are conscious that we have a long road to travel, a prolonged period of struggle against a powerful enemy and the traitors it shelters and nourishes … I can’t help feeling a certain sadness over those who left, those who abandoned the struggle because they lacked faith in our own resources for transforming this country, those who let themselves be seduced by the wealth and comfort that the old master offered with open arms. Perhaps, Almendros and people like him have not realised that their tired anti-communist rhetoric is not going to afford them the moral alibi they need.”

The Spanish poet Antonio Machado may be quoted here in support of the dynamics of social change and development advocated by Alea, who held the deeds and lessons of the revolution close to his heart, his intellect, and conscience, like a precious lamp which ran the risk of going out in the struggle against hostile winds. Machado wrote: “Walker, there is no road. / Roads are made by walking.”

The enduring embargo

US political circles and the Western media have their own reasons to never cease talking about “the absence of freedom of expression” in Cuba. So it is fitting that an impartial observer should want to know what Alea thought on the subject. Reynaldo Escobar, a well-known critic, once asked Alea: “The government produces all your films. Haven’t you ever been told to make a certain film or work on a specific theme?”

In other words, Escobar was trying to find out whether the director had the freedom to work as he wished; whether he was his own boss when it came to making films, or there were people dictating things to him from above. To this, Alea replied: “No, the ideas and the themes are my own. I get the ideas and then ICAIC [Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos], the government film agency, approves them. They have never turned down an idea of mine, but if they did, I would not see anything special in it.”

Alea’s method of working was closer to that of Godard, who “exerted an inescapable influence” on him as indeed on many others of his generation, especially in the latter’s role as a “brilliant destroyer of the cinema”, rather than say someone like Ray or Kurosawa or the Italian auteurs of the sixties, even though he felt a certain affection or even affinity for the last-mentioned.

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It is common knowledge that the screenplay is the very soul of a film. Different directors have different approaches to filmmaking, especially insofar as the screenplay is concerned. Godard was known to work without one, while someone like Ray would have everything neatly thought out and put on paper before commencement of shooting. Alea was once asked whether he changed his screenplays a lot during filming.

His reply was characteristically candid: “Some directors feel secure with an iron-clad screenplay that includes each and every shot, complete with drawings to prevent mistakes in placing the camera. The method does have the advantage of providing ‘crutches’ that guide the production very exactly so that you don’t need to think a great deal during the filming (so long as the director is very sure about the screenplay). But it has the disadvantage that unforeseen situations might crop up that the director wouldn’t be able to handle because if they were included, they’d disturb the already existing balance and force him or her to modify other parts of the film … Some directors find this situation so upsetting that they’d leave out any accidental richness. I work quite the opposite way. I’ll never go near a screenplay that’s all written down with drawings. In fact, I don’t even outline the shots. I leave it open and do my best not to impair my appreciation, so that the ultimate solution of a scene can emerge under the pressure that it suggests itself. Naturally, you do have to foresee all production problems to avoid losing time, but on the basis of a willingness to take advantage of all that arise from circumstances once filming begins.”

Alea then cited an example of the “accidental richness” that he had mentioned earlier. “When I was making A Cuban Battle against the Demons, a drunk came along the street talking aloud to his dog about eternal salvation and the heavenly father. He was a drunk with metaphysical and theological problems. I remember he said to the dog in a threatening tone: ‘Those who refuse to understand salvation will be made to understand it.’ That encounter was completely fortuitous, and yet it contributed a great deal to our planned scene.”

Regarding Alea’s observation that “there is too much polemicising about Cuba”, it becomes necessary to quote at some length from a letter to this writer dated April 24, 1995, from Víctor Ramírez Peña, the then Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy of Cuba, New Delhi. Thanks to his many visits to Calcutta principally in connection with festivals organised by Cine Central, the then famous film club, Víctor Peña made innumerable friends. He was a career diplomat deeply in love with his country and his people, which coloured his faith in the revolution of 1959.

“Dear Vidyarthy, the thing that attracted my attention most was your judicious analysis of Strawberry and Chocolate, which of course does not surprise me at all coming from yourself. As a matter of fact, I find your incisive comment more valuable because, as you are aware, the film is getting all praise from every nook and corner of the world. But it is also a fact, and I speak now as Víctor the person, that the highest praise is coming from the enemy, and even if there is a lot of praise for it in Cuba too, and even if it was made by Alea whose revolutionary credentials I don’t doubt at all, I apply to the analysis of the film the same criterion as I apply when I indulge in a discussion on Stalin. I don’t know about Stalin enough to sustain a long conversation, but I defend the good in his work on the basis of principle because: Why has the enemy attacked him so ferociously for 45 years? Comparing him with such a humankind’s enemy called Hitler. I think after 20 years in politics I have learnt enough about the dirty tricks of the media, or the empires that sustain that media and I have learnt enough about all the dirty things that imperial powers, specially the most powerful of them, are capable of doing in the pursuit of their appetite to continue dominating us all, today as much as 500 years back .. I have just seen Strawberry. I agree with your observation about the counter-position between the homosexual and the communist young man. This is one of the things that strike many of us most. On the other hand, the film in my opinion constitutes Alea’s attempt to criticise the government for something that happened in Cuba at the end of the 60’s. Up to here I think he has got a point because as David says ‘you do with your sexual organ what you deem fit as I have the right to like other men’ … In the Cuba of today, homosexuals are indeed disliked probably because of our Latino macho credentials. But it is also true that there has been recently a festival of transvestites in one of the main theatres of Havana … I’m sorry I cannot talk about this in person as I would like to because as you know I’m always against time. If this happens to be my last letter to you — I’m leaving in a couple of months — receive my best greetings and a Cuban embrace.”

On February 7, 1962, the United States imposed a trade and economic embargo on Cuba which continues to this day. Deeply offended at the existence of the “Communist menace” just ninety miles off the coast of Florida, the US thought up the embargo, hoping it would crush the small island nation. As a result of the embargo, Cuba has had to suffer shortages of practically everything—from food and medicines to heavy vehicles and machinery of many kinds. But it has refused to go down on its knees.

What has added to Cuba’s resolve to not give in is the international opposition to the blockade. As a British commentator has put it: “Every autumn, like clockwork, the vast majority of nations overwhelmingly back a resolution condemning the embargo. In November 2011, 186 countries opposed the embargo, with only Israel joining the USA.”

Each time the world shows the thumbs-down to the US’s ceaseless efforts to destabilise the Cuban polity—which began with the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and were pursued even more vigorously by John F. Kennedy—the gesture is read by Cubans as a vindication of the vision of the native-born 19th century poet-hero, José Martí, who died in the battle for Cuban independence from Spain in 1895. It was Martí’s home-grown vision of wresting sovereignty and achieving self-sufficiency at any cost which led to the triumph of the revolution on New Year’s Day, 1959, when Fulgencio Batista, “a dictator armed and honoured by the West, fled with suitcases of banknotes and valuables.”

To understand better the close connections between politics and cinema in Cuba, one could perhaps go back to what Fidel Castro had told his people many years ago: “For us, a revolutionary people in a revolutionary process, the value of artistic and cultural relations is determined by their usefulness for the people, by what they contribute to man, by what they contribute to the liberation and happiness of man … Our standards are political. There cannot be aesthetic value without human content or in opposition to man, justice, welfare, liberation and the happiness of man.”

The films of Humberto Solás, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Julio García Espinosa, Santiago Álvarez, Sergio Giral, Pastor Vega, Jesús Díaz, and so many other Cuban artists and visionaries are a vindication of that exalted attempt to connect art with life, and men and women of courage and imagination with extended moments of inspired truth.

Vidyarthy Chatterjee writes on cinema, society and politics. He is the author of the award-winning book, Calcutta Films: A Joshy Joseph Trilogy.