Weekend Classics

   

After the Revolution: Cuba on Screen a three-month survey of films from and about Cuba, unspools at the IFC Center weekends, January 9-April 5 as part of the theater’s ongoing “Weekend Classics” program. Marking both the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution that ushered in the longest-reigning Marxist government in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the release of Parts One and Two of CHE, Steven Soderbergh’s acclaimed biopic of one of the Revolution’s military leaders and perhaps its greatest icon, the series presents eleven films dating from the early 1960s to 2005. Among the program’s selections are five films from Tomas Gutierrez Alea, the most noted of the island’s directors, including his landmark drama MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT, a high-water mark in the political filmmaking movement known as “Third Cinema;” the early comedies DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT and THE TWELVE CHAIRS, and two late films he co-directed with Juan Carlos Tabio, the Oscar-nominated STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE and his final film, GUANTANAMERA. Other features in the series include Sara Gomez’s ground-breaking ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, a documentary-drama hybrid exploring the sexual and racial politics of an ostensibly liberated country; two historical dramas by Humberto Solas, CECILIA and AMADA; I AM CUBA, the delirious ode to the island’s revolutionary roots by Soviet master Mikhail Kalatozov (Cranes Are Flying), and Vicente Ferraz’s documentary about its production and reception, THE SIBERIAN MAMMOTH; and Julian Schnabel’s Venice Film Festival-winner BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, a ferocious adaptation of the autobiographical work of fiercely anti-Castro exiled Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, starring Javier Bardem in an Oscar-nominated role.