Humberto Solás

The story of Cecilia is a story of the society that dominated 19th-century Cuba, a society divided between whites, blacks, and those who were mixed, the mulattos. (Since the Spanish conquistadors killed off the Indian population in Cuba not long after they took over the island, there are no mestizos, or those of mixed-Indian blood in Cuba as in other Caribbean nations.) At any rate, the drama about the life and loves of Cecilia (Daisy Granados) takes place against the backdrop of graphically violent mistreatment of slaves and the rumors of a slave rebellion after the Cubans hear of slaves turning against their captors in Haiti.

Traces episodes in the lives of three Cuban women, each named Lucía, from three different historical periods: the 1890s, the 1930s, and the 1960s.

A look at the life and work of Cuban filmmaker Tomas Gutierrez Alea.

A mercenary from the Bay of Pigs invasion escapes in search of protection and is taken in by a peasant woman who ignores his identity.

Follows the story of three privileged Creole orphans from Havana, as they meet French adventurer Victor Hugues and get involved in the revolutionary turmoil that shook the Atlantic World at the end of the eighteenth century. The main characters are all members of one family: two siblings, Carlos and Sofia, and their cousin Esteban.

During the last days of the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista, a young peasant woman joins the guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra.

The story of the Santa María School massacre of miners in 1907.

Javier Argüelles, an opportunistic young man from Cuban middle class, survives all kind of political changes in Havana, from 1932 to 1959, while his brother Darío is persecuted and killed because of his leftist ideas.

It is the story of a young man named Esteban, who was totally devoted to the cause of the Revolution against Fulgencio Batista. One day, Esteban is diagnosed with a cerebral aneurism, which causes him to take stock of his life as a revolutionary and to reconsider his relationships to his family--to his mother and brother, particularly--and his friends.

When his father dies, a Cuban man who was raised in the United States, learns that he was not abandoned by his mother but illegally taken out of Cuba. He goes back to the island and is helped in his search by a cousin and a taxi driver.

Over several years, we follow three households and their emotions in a barrio of Havana. Magalis is a nurse, rarely happy. An older man, Ignacio, professes his love for her; her father and her brother quarrel over her brother's sexual orientation; she thinks about leaving Cuba. Santo's wife Maria is expecting their first child. Tragedy strikes and Santo leaves, drowning sorrows in alcohol and crime while his son grows up in the care of an aunt wondering where dad is. Vivian and Chino are in love, passionate, but childless. The pressures of a society that demands grandchildren strain their relationship.

In 1914, during World Ward I, Amada, a bourgeois wife, falls in love with her cousin Marcial, a young idealist who is fighting against the Cuban regime in power.

A documentary about the 1968 film Lucía, featuring its director, Humberto Solás, and members of his cast and crew.

Documentary in four parts on Latin American cinema. Fourth episode: in Cuba, the ICAIC, created in the aftermath of the Castro revolution, is at once a film school, a production company and a state cultural branch. Cuban filmmakers testify to the situation and themes specific to their national cinema.

Documentary about the relationship between filmmaker Glauber Rocha and Cuba.

A painter in search of inspiration pursues an imaginary woman whose portrait he finds in an abandoned house.

Director Humberto Solás, along with the leading ladies Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Núñez and Adela Legrá, recall important moments of this classic of Latin American cinema, 'Lucía' (1968).

SIMPARELE is history interpreted through people's art. The film synthesizes the primary forms through which the Haitian people have expressed themselves in the centuries since the island's colonization by the French and the massive importation of African slaves to fuel its plantation economy. It is a composite of dance, theatrical tableaux, poetry, song, folk painting, legend and religious ritual. SIMPARELE acknowledges the powerful role which Afro-Haitian culture has played in these people's political struggle as both repository for people's history and the raw material from which that history can be reconstructed and transformed.

A short 1962 black & white gem by Cuban director Humberto Solás, with Hector Veita, about creating the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Schools of Art) during the euphoric period after the victory of the Cuban Revolution. These art schools are the most outstanding architectural achievement of the Cuban Revolution. But for many years, and up to recently, stood abandoned, consumed by the jungle, outside the western suburbs of Havana. For more about the story of the schools see revolutionofforms.com. Solás' remarkable, taut, little film nevertheless captures the spirit of utopian optimism that characterized the early years of the Revolution.

The music band Síntesis recreates the Yoruba music, a key part of Cuban cultural heritage, and fuses it with rock sounds. The result is a new rhythm with a contagious dancing character.