Really fascinating documentary on the life and work of Cuban writer and artist Samuel Feijoo. The film tries to tell Feijoo’s life story in the style of his work, combining live footage interviews with animation in the style of Feijoo’s lively, frenetic, tangled illustrations. It allows the surreal to play with the everyday, with two…
Anti-authoritarian animation from Cuba. Over a cracked and bleak landscape, a city is cut into crust of the earth. From above, rows upon rows of flat, interlocked square rooftops show the rigid and confining nature of life here. The people shuffle out, silent, uniformed, faceless as thumbs. The only voice is that of their ruler,…
Beautiful, colourful, sensual, animated music video. Cool and slick, it contrasts music’s ability to ground us bodily while also being transformative and magical. So pretty.
We close out the Havana Glasgow Film Festival with Queens of the Revolution, and what a closer! Really interesting, really moving, really inspiring. It features the single most powerful drag performance I have ever seen. Queens of the Revolution tells the story of queer liberation in Cuba, through the people of Mejunje, a queer cultural…
A really lovely film about three friends kicking about on their roof. With that aimlessness that follows after leaving high school, it kinda reminds me a little of Ghost World. These pals spend their time talking shit and coming up with ideas of what to do with their future. Victor Jose, nicknamed Vito, goes on…
Los Zafiros: Music from the Edge of Time is a bittersweet documentary about the Cuban band Los Zafiros, meaning The Sapphires. Rising to fame in the 60s, their popularity endures to this day. Los Zafiros starts with very humble beginnings. A bunch of kids in Havana got together to sing and play guitar. There wasn’t…
The last Arturo Sotto film of the festival, this one from 2014. It continues in his depiction of Cuba as full of shagging and domestic chaos. I kinda thought with this one being a more recent film it wouldn’t have the same gapingly problematic nature as stuff from the 90s, especially in its treatment of…
After the pandemonium of the other Arturo Sotto films shown today, Mantis Nest came as a bit of a surprise. A more or less straightforward murder mystery, with a love triangle and a noirish bent. It’s bloody brilliant too. Really compelling, keeps you gripped. Elena has, since childhood, inspired the love of two men, Tomas…
Breton is a Baby is directed by the same guy who did Vertical Love, and seeing the real Cuba in this documentary explains a lot about why that film is so mad. Cuba is weird. The director, Arturo Sotto, takes us on a tour of Cuba, and seeing it with his eyes, you understand why…
This film is *b*o*n*k*e*r*s*. Do you remember films from the 90s that you loved as a kid, and when you rewatch them as an adult, you’re like, this is problematic as fuck? Of course you did, that describes every movie from the 90s. I’m thinking of something like Overboard, which I laughed my head off…