The Burchfield-Penney Art Center and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center present a Cuban Film Series 2005 in conjunction with the exhibition Art on the Hyphen: Cuban-American Artists of WNY State. the exhibition is on view at the Burchfield-Penney from January 15 - April 3, 2005.
For more information, visit www.hallwalls.org or contact Joanna Raczynska, Media Arts Program Director, Hallwalls
(716) 854 1694, Joanna@hallwalls.org
All films will be shown Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. at the
Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main St., Buffalo
Cost: $8 General Admission, $6 Burchfield-Penney and Hallwalls Members (with valid membership card), $5.50 Seniors and Students
February 2
MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT (1968, 110 mins.)
Directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea
As the first film from post-revolutionary Cuba to be released in the U.S., this had a widespread impact unequalled in the history of Third World cinema. Set in the early 1960s, the film centers on a Europeanized Cuban intellectual, too idealistic to leave for Miami, but too decadent to fit into the new society.
February 9
DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT (1966, 87 mins.)
Directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea
Alea’s first major film is an entertaining, blackly hilarious attack on galloping bureaucracy, audaciously mixing slapstick farce, paranoid nightmare, and plenty of allusions to classic film comedy. The story tells of a young man’s attempts to disinter and rebury his uncle – a move that lands him at odds with official regulations.
February 16
THE LAST SUPPER (1977, 110 mins.)
Directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea
A dazzling moral tale of a pious 18th-century slaveholder who decides to instruct his slaves in the glories of Christianity by inviting twelve of them to participate in a reenactment of the Last Supper. The film’s centerpiece is a sardonic tour de force that combines the blasphemous ironies of Bunuel with an ominous undercurrent of imminent political reckoning.
February 23
GUANTANAMERA (1997, 104 mins.)
Directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabio
Alea’s final film is a graceful, comic-romantic road movie about a group of friends accompanying the body of a famous diva on a journey across Cuba to her final resting place in Havana. Deceptively fluid and easygoing, Guantanamera is also a remarkably bold overview of contemporary Cuba: a last testament from Cuba’s greatest filmmaker.
March 2
VIVA LA REPUBLICA (1973, 92 mins.)
Directed by Pastor Vega
Fascinating documentary reconstructing the history of the Cuban "pseudo-republic" from the late 19th-century to 1958.
March 9
WITH THE CUBAN WOMEN (1975, 48 mins.)
Directed by Octavio Cortazar
Inspiring, high-spirited and often humorous tribute to the Cuban women’s movement – the "revolution within a revolution."
SELECTED FILMWORKS: ANA MENDIETA
(1972-1981, 33 mins. total)
Untitled (Chicken Piece, shot #2), 1972, 2:57 min., silent
Body Tracks (Blood Sign #2), 1974, 1 min., sound
Laberinth Silueta, Silueta Series (Laberinth Blood Imprint), 1974, 3:06 min., silent
Untitled (Glass Breathing), 1975, 3:08 min., silent
Burial of the Nanigo, (Woman Candle Silueta #2), 1976, 3:11 min., silent
Candle Ixchell, Black Ixchell Series, 1979, 3:51 min., silent
Volcan de Arena, Silueta Series, 1978, 2:08 min., silent
Untitled Silueta Series, 1980, 3:07 min., silent
Isla, 1981, 2:16 min., silent
Untitled (Figura que parece Egypta), 1981, 5:41 min., silent
Untitled (Figura, Gunpowder en los cracks), 1981, 3:09 min., silent
Mendieta's work expresses the pain and rupture of cultural displacement, and resonates with visceral metaphors of death, rebirth, and spiritual transformation. In her ritualistic performances and haunting earth works, she immerses or inscribes her own body within nature. Blood, fire, water, and other natural elements are essential to her emblematic, often mystical female iconography. Burial and regeneration are recurrent themes. Whether painting her body with blood, or burning, carving and inscribing female into the landscape, as in her Silueta series, Mendieta's work is infused with enormous power and poetry.
March 16
I AM CUBA (1964, 141 mins.)
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov
In Spanish and Russian with English subtitles.
Filmed by great Russian director Kalatozov (THE CRANES ARE FLYING), I AM CUBA is an epic poem to Communist kitsch—a whirling, feverish dance through the sensuous decadence of Battista's Havana and the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people.
About the Burchfield-Penney Art Center
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is a museum dedicated to the art and vision of Charles E. Burchfield and distinguished artists of Buffalo-Niagara and Western New York State. Through its affiliation with Buffalo State College, the museum encourages learning and celebrates our richly creative and diverse community.
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is supported in part with public funds from Erie County and the New Yok Council on the Arts. Additional support is provided by Elizabeth Elser Doolittle Trust, the Mary A. H. Rumsey Foundation, and Burchfield-Penney members and visitors.
Art on the Hyphen was made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts-Challenge America Grant, Rite Aid Pharmacy, New York State Council on the Arts, Buffalo State College Office of Equity and Diversity, Buffalo State College Auxiliary Services Grant Allocation Committee, Niagara Mohawk, A National Grid Company, Rotary Club-Buffalo Sunrise, Goya Foods, TOPS Markets Mark Goldman, Hyatt's-All Things Creative and Julio and Amy Alvarez.