Happy Birthday, Humberto Solás! Born today in 1941, this Cuban film director's cinematic style borrows from Italian screenwriter and opera, theatre and cinema director Luchino Visconti's mise-en-scène and is permeated by sometimes heavy melodrama.
Solás was born in Havana to a middle-class Havana family of very modest means amid economically disadvantageous circumstances.
Years later, he joined the insurrectionary movement against the Batista dictatorship at the age of fourteen.
Solás had initially planned to study architecture, but these plans came to naught in 1959.
This was when the government shut down the country's universities in light of the then-nascent Castro revolution sweeping through the country. Because of this, Solás aggressively fought in the revolution.
When the Castro government became triumphant, Solás accepted an offer from the Cuban film board. This was the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC).
That same year, at seventeen, he joined its ranks on the basis of an exciting short film he had made. Thus, a new filmmaker was born.
Solás started making shorts at a very young age. He even directed his first medium length film in the late 1960s. This was the forty-one-minute 1966 Cuban black and white drama short film 'Manuela'.
Thereafter, Solás moved into documentary work for a time, embarking on one of his first major projects at the tender age of nineteen.
Six features followed, capped off by two seminal and still influential masterworks. one of them being the film of which he is best known for co-writing and directing two years after 'Manuela'.
This was the 1968 Cuban black and white drama film 'Lucía', the opus that finally catapulted Solás to international acclaim.
With a runtime of almost three hours, the film is told in three parts.
The first is titled Part 1: Cuban War of Independence. The second part is titled Part 2: the 1930s. The third part is titled Part 3: the 1960s.
During Cuba's war for independence from Spain, Lucía (Raquel Revuelta), a single woman from a wealthy family, betrays her brother, a Cuban revolutionary, when she inadvertently leads her lover to his secret hideout.
In the 1930s, an idealistic young pregnant woman, also named Lucía (Eslinda Núñez), leaves her family and gets involved with an activist group.
Finally, in the 1960s, a newly married woman named Lucía (Adela Legrá) fights with her husband Tomas (Adolfo Llauradó) over her own freedom.
This tripartite feature blends revolutionary fervor, sociopolitical insight, and feminist politics, telling the fictionalized tale of three women (each coincidentally named 'Lucía').
Each of the women are placed at different points in Cuban history (1895, 1933 and the early 1960s, respectively), experiencing political and personal revolution.
Solás' genius lay not merely in melding all of the said ideological concerns into engrossing narratives, but in identifying a unique revolutionary visual style to drive each of the segments.
'Lucía' is also remarkable for the dialectical complexity of its narratives and the virtuosity of its three different visual styles.
A formally dazzling landmark of Cuban cinema by Solás, the operatic epic 'Lucía' recounts the history of a changing country through the eyes of three eponymous women.
Shot in an array of distinct, evocative visual styles, Solás’ sprawling triptych is a vital document of radical progress.
The following year, 'Lucía' was the winner of the Golden Prize and the Prix FIPRESCI. This occurred at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival in July 1969.
In 1977, Solás was a member of the jury at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. Afterwards, he was a member of the jury at the 10th Moscow International Film Festival.
In the late 1980s, Solás wrote and directed the 1986 Cuban drama film 'Un hombre de exito' ('A Successful Man').
Portraying three decades in the life of an affluent Cuban, the film follows two aristocratic brothers in how each reacts differently to events in pre-revolutionary Cuba.
Two years later, 'A Successful Man' was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 40th Cannes Film Festival in May 1987.
Afterwards, it was later entered into the 15th Moscow International Film Festival in July.
In the late 1990s, Solás served on the jury at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival in February 1997.
In 2003, Solás founded Gibara's Poor Cinema Festival, "open to filmmakers with limited funds".
The festival champions the cinema that is made with the soul rather than the wallet, showing thus that it is possible make meaningful cinema with few financial resources.
Five years later, Solás passed from cancer in Havana, Cuba on September 18, 2008. He was 66.
Whoever has attended to this festival knows that there are not many like this kind in the world, with a very particular film philosophy, and the inspiring master Solás.
Throughout his career, Solás has won thirteen awards for filmmaking. He has also been nominated for an additional nine.
In 2017, 'Lucia' was digitally restored by the Cineteca di Bologna with funding from World Cinema Project and Turner Classic Movies.
It was later screened at the Cannes Classics section of the 70th Cannes Film Festival in May of that same year.
Alongside Tomás Gutiérrez Alea ('Memories of Underdevelopment'), and Cuban filmmaker Santiago Álvarez Román, Solás ranks as one of the three most esteemed and influential Cuban filmmakers of the 20th century.
Like Álvarez, Solás sought to unify art and revolutionary leftwing politics through innovative aestheticizing techniques.
Unlike Álvarez, however, Solás chiefly pursued these goals within the frameworks of fictional narratives in lieu of stylized documentary.
His cinematic style borrows from Visconti's mise-en-scène and is permeated by sometimes heavy melodrama.
As a Cuban director, Solás had helped spearhead his country's film renaissance via his extensive involvement with the ICAIC.
Solás had been active from 1959-2008.
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