Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Death of a Bureaucrat (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1966)

By: börek - June 4th, 2024  Filed under: Filmavond

Sunday 9 June 2024, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Death of a Bureaucrat (La muerte de un burócrata) * by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea * 1966 * 85 minutes * In Cuban Spanish with English subtitles * free screening * doors open at 8.30 * intro and film start at 9:00.

A key black comedy in Cuban film history, directed by one of its maverick filmmakers Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Memories of Underdevelopment, Strawberry and Chocolate) who chose to stay in post-revolutionary Cuba and supported its socialist cause but never thought twice about criticizing the regime’s shortcomings.

In this film director Alea lampoons the stuffy and insane world of bureaucratic red tape. The journey begins when a widow realizes there was an important document in the pocket of her deceased husband who has already been buried, and needs an official permit to have the body exhumed. This starts an absurd chain of events with a razor-sharp Buñuelian sense of black humor.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

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Movie night: The Last Supper (1976)

By: börek - October 1st, 2016  Filed under: Filmavond

The_Last_SupperSunday October 23rd 2016, The Last Supper. Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1976. 120 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. Film starts at 21:00. Free admission

The past might have a way to help make sense about understanding the present and the future. The Last Supper is a film that does this. If you want to understand why total insurrection against prison society, industrialism and the state is not to be seen in the immediate future, this film can provide some anecdotal understandings. Likewise, a close and inquisitive eye might see affinity between a slave plantation and society/state, even locate yourself or how you want to be on the plantation, which might mean reflecting on your everyday choices. Besides highly recommending this film to all to see, even if it might not be for you, the one hint I give the viewer is to watch and listen closely to the conversations and dialogues at the dinner table.
The film tells the story of a pious plantation owner during Cuba’s Spanish colonial period. The plantation owner decides to recreate the Biblical Last Supper using twelve of the slaves working in his sugarcane fields, hoping to thus teach the slaves about Christianity. […Lees verder]

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