This scathing black comedy from Cuban satirist Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is a dish that’s bitter to taste and hard to stomach. It’s an intricate and uncompromising fable that alarmingly boasts an authentic historical model.

In the 18th century, the wealthy owner of a sprawling Havana sugar plantation gives in to a misguided whim. As Holy Week approaches, he decides to host his own Last Supper, appointing himself as Christ and a dozen downtrodden slaves as the apostles. Held on Maundy Thursday, his re-enactment is a precarious proposition from the outset. At first, it offers Alea ample opportunity for comedy, as the pompous master cleans and flinchingly kisses the feet of the bemused slaves before taking to the table.

During the lavish meal itself the master shamelessly dishes out self-righteous rhetoric while his slaves throw themselves upon their food. Facing their intermittent recriminations, he resorts to nonsensical logic to explain the social structure of the plantation.

The majority of Alea’s picture takes place at the dinner table. As such, The Last Supper is predominantly a conversation piece. However, the impact of the meal reverberates on Good Friday when the slaves rebel, holding their demonic overseer hostage. The revolt incurs the wrath of their master, who unleashes the dogs and orders his ‘apostles’ beheaded. Alea’s hitherto measured pace here swiftly escalates towards a chilling, violent denouement played out to a cacophony of crazed drumbeats and impassioned chants.

The spirit of Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel hangs in the air throughout this multifaceted allegory, as Alea sets up and swiftly shoots down a number of targets. Boasting distinctive performances across the board, The Last Supper offers a thought-provoking meditation on masterhood and servitude, freedom and bondage.

The film’s title sequence, in which Alea picks out various details of an impressive canvas, pre-empts the director’s painterly framings and his palette of delicate colours.

La.ultima.cena.1976.Tomas.Gutierrez.Alea.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 52mn
Size:	2.80 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	920x576
Aspect ratio:	16:10
Frame rate:	24.000 fps
Bit rate:	3 310 kb/s
Audio
Spanish 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/93F49C2F98DEE2D/La.ultima.cena.1976.Tomas.Gutierrez.Alea.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English, French

The post Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – La última cena AKA The Last Supper (1976) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

When her country is taken over by socialist revolutionaries, a wealthy woman can’t bear to give up all of her wealth and possessions to the new government, so she hides all of her treasures in the 12 chairs of a dining-room set. After her death her nephew finds out what she had done and, since the chairs had been “nationalized” and are now in the possession of a dozen different people, he sets out to track them down and get the treasures he believes rightfully belong to him.

From epicentregallery:
This film represents a great moment in Cuban cinema. My impression was of an Ealing Comedy directed by Ken Loach or even what ‘Dogma’ were trying to get back to. Las Doce Sillas is filmed ‘on the hoof’, on location in early ’60s Cuba. Like many films of this period from Cuba it gives an insight into the early days of the revolution. Real crowd scenes are utilized and everyday life and people form the backdrop.

The film is adapted from a Russian farce by Iliya Arnoldovich. The tale has been made into film many times. Firstly in Yugolavia (1927) and perhaps most famously a version was made by Mel Brooks in 1970 (his second stab at directing).

The.Twelve.Chairs.1962.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 33 min
Size: 	1.44 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	708x384 ~> 708x442
Aspect ratio:  	16:10
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.294
Audio
#1:  	Spanish 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/848067907E6B4D5/The.Twelve.Chairs.1962.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

The post Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – Las doce sillas AKA The Twelve Chairs (1962) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s gutsy Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) is a difficult work of political activism. This stirring blend of narrative fiction, still photography and rare documentary footage catalogs the many intricacies and contradictions of a bourgeois Cuban intellectual’s loyalty to Castro’s revolution. Though Alea himself was devoted to the cause, his films forever scrutinized the self-devouring nature of Castro’s Cuba. (Alea died in 1996 shortly after the one-two success of the Oscar-nominated Strawberry and Chocolate and Guantanamera.) If Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba championed the need for revolution in the country, Memories contemplates the failure of the new government to recognize and negotiate the lingering bourgeois threat left in the wake of Fulgencio Batista’s fall.

When his wife and parents leave for the United States shortly after the Bay of Pigs invasion, 38-year-old playboy Sergio (Sergio Corrieri) resigns himself to a ritual of neurotic self-analysis. From his apartment, he observes the threat of foreign invasion that haunts the hazy, not-so-distant horizon. Bored and unemployed (he owns the apartment building he lives in), he chases after women all over Havana before finally meeting and bedding 16-year-old Elena (Daisy Granados), who he seemingly attempts to mold after his ex-wife by giving the young girl the woman’s hand-me-downs. If Alea deliberately likens the virginal Elena to a country that welcomes its own defilement, Sergio’s acquittal by the courts (he’s accused to raping the girl by her parents) is no doubt indicative of the man’s obsession with Cuba’s own defilement of its Marxist loyalties.

Underdevelopment refers both to Cuba’s political stagnation and Sergio’s own sense of false enlightenment. The way Alea pieces together the film must count as its own act of political resistance: documentary footage calls attention to a complex individual-group dialectic tearing up the country from the inside while a series of self-referential, surrealist interruptions are alive with better-than-here hopefulness. “She makes me feel underdevelopment everywhere,” says Sergio of Elena before visiting the home of Ernest Hemingway, who according to Sergio killed animals and mounted them on his walls so he wouldn’t have to kill himself. One of Alea’s most jarring framing devices situates Elena as an exotic specimen (“a beautiful Cuban señorita”) trapped beneath the lens of American imperialism. Like Hemingway and Elena herself, it’s only a matter of time before Cuba itself would self-destruct.

The film is haunted by one particular image that appears early on: poet and revolutionary José Martí’s face withering to near obscurity on the wall of a building. Hiroshima Mon Amour is a major point of reference for Alea. In both Resnais’ Hiroshima and Alea’s Havana, human ghosts come to grips with the implications of their past and grapple with the weight of building a new present for themselves. Like Elena, Cuba struggles to “establish links” between its war-torn past and disenchanted present. Memories of Underdevelopment remains a difficult and enigmatic work precisely because Cuba has yet to emerge from a kind of historical and cultural vacuum created by the vise of foreign threats, invasions and embargoes. And like Sergio, the country and its people can only wallow in the unfulfilled promise of its revolutionary consciousness.

Tomas Gutierrez Alea - (1968) Memories of Underdevelopment.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 38 min
Size: 	2.45 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	960x576 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 339 kb/s
BPP: 	0.252
Audio
#1:  	Italian 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E293ED9FE3A7E95/Tomas_Gutierrez_Alea_-_(1968)_Memories_of_Underdevelopment.mkv

Language(s):Spanish, English
Subtitles:English

The post Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – Memorias del subdesarrollo AKA Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This scathing black comedy from Cuban satirist Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is a dish that’s bitter to taste and hard to stomach. It’s an intricate and uncompromising fable that alarmingly boasts an authentic historical model.

In the 18th century, the wealthy owner of a sprawling Havana sugar plantation gives in to a misguided whim. As Holy Week approaches, he decides to host his own Last Supper, appointing himself as Christ and a dozen downtrodden slaves as the apostles. Held on Maundy Thursday, his re-enactment is a precarious proposition from the outset. At first, it offers Alea ample opportunity for comedy, as the pompous master cleans and flinchingly kisses the feet of the bemused slaves before taking to the table.

During the lavish meal itself the master shamelessly dishes out self-righteous rhetoric while his slaves throw themselves upon their food. Facing their intermittent recriminations, he resorts to nonsensical logic to explain the social structure of the plantation.

The majority of Alea’s picture takes place at the dinner table. As such, The Last Supper is predominantly a conversation piece. However, the impact of the meal reverberates on Good Friday when the slaves rebel, holding their demonic overseer hostage. The revolt incurs the wrath of their master, who unleashes the dogs and orders his ‘apostles’ beheaded. Alea’s hitherto measured pace here swiftly escalates towards a chilling, violent denouement played out to a cacophony of crazed drumbeats and impassioned chants.

The spirit of Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel hangs in the air throughout this multifaceted allegory, as Alea sets up and swiftly shoots down a number of targets. Boasting distinctive performances across the board, The Last Supper offers a thought-provoking meditation on masterhood and servitude, freedom and bondage.

The film’s title sequence, in which Alea picks out various details of an impressive canvas, pre-empts the director’s painterly framings and his palette of delicate colours.

1.83GB | 1h 48mn | 710×443 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/AFF82E6AC6AD5EE/The_Last_Supper.mkv
or
https://nitroflare.com/view/7E4F15D001F4691/The_Last_Supper.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/C116092A99BC74D/The_Last_Supper.part2.rar

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

The post Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – La última cena AKA The Last Supper (1976) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Documentary filmmaker Oscar (Oscar Alvarez) is researching machismo in Cuba. He learns that the nation’s chauvinistic men have problems with strong and autonomous females and expectations that fidelity is essential for women, but not for men.
However as the project progresses he begins to fall for his spirited colleague (Mirtha Ibarra), presenting a dilemma.
Should he be honest about his feelings and leave his wife for this new love, and can he make an objective documentary when he is himself entwined in the issues he is studying.

695MB | 1h 09m | 512×384 | avi

https://nitroflare.com/view/B46E70B65D1A261/Cine_Cubano-Hasta_cierto_punto_(Tomás_Gutierrez_Alea,_1983).avi

eng subs:
http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/5645700/hasta-cierto-punto-en

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

The post Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – Hasta cierto punto AKA Up to a Certain Point (1983) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

SYNOPSIS
A worker dies in an accident at his work and is buried with his union card, essential for the widow to receive a pension. To recover it, the family is forced to carry out a clandestine exhumation. The impediments of the bureaucracy make it impossible to bury the corpse again. The absurdity of the situation degenerates into violence.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
It is, as the title suggests, a satire on bureaucracy and red tape, but also on a lot of other sad and mediocre things which we have to put up with at times. However, I have to say that I don’t have much faith in the efficacy of satire as a “driving force of history.” When making the film we thought: we are laughing at the bureaucrats, but then the bureaucrats will come and not only will the film make them laugh, but they will laugh at themselves.

2.42GB | 1h 23m | 1920×1080 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/7C18931807527E9/La.muerte.de.un.burocrata.1966.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles: English, German, Italian

The post Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – La muerte de un burócrata AKA Death of a Bureaucrat (1966) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Matanzas, Cuba, 1913. Two young people who are in love communicate through letters written by penman. When the young man leaves town, to become a pilot, the girl discovers she is really in love with the one who wrote the letters.

986MB | 1 h 24 min | 704×528 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/2A8C123D770078E/Cartas.del.parque.(Letters.from.the.Park).1988.VHSRip.x264-Zog.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English

The post Tomás Gutiérrez Alea – Cartas del parque AKA Letters from the Park (1988) first appeared on Cinema of the World.