Learning about film means, in a way, having to learn about tragedy. Since I started Illicit Film Club, I've learned so much about cinema that is mostly absent from regular circulation and missing from the canon. The great thing is that there is always something in this (young!) medium to discover, and experts to give their knowledge. The sad underside is that many of these stories don't get rediscovered, and the canon rarely ever feels like it's shifting. The writer Devika Girish perfectly captured this feeling in a Film Comment piece, upon noticing absences from the Oscars' In Memoriam section: "I confronted the realisation that one person's revolution is barely a blip in another person's canon."
I consider myself lucky enough to have had a few revolutions spark in front of me this year. Kathleen Collins, Ayo Akingbade, Ousmane Sembene, Prem Kapoor — finding out about these filmmakers has changed the way that I've envisioned and imagined cinema, mostly because I have challenged myself to seek out the voices kept from broader recognition. After finding De cierta manera (1977) on Youtube (in appalling condition, FYI) I'm adding Sara Gómez to that list.
For a country that made such a significant impact across the 20th Century, Cuba's cinematic output doesn't come up enough in discussions of world cinema. There are well-known films that come to mind when discussing the Caribbean nation, but they are mostly visions helmed by foreigners — think I Am Cuba (1964, directed by a Georgian) or Buena Vista Social Club (1999, directed by a German). The pre-revolutionary Cuban film industry reaches back to the very start of the medium, with the 1898 short film El Brujo Desaparecido. However, the business was hindered by a reliance on its US and Mexican counterparts. The Cuban Revolution marked a gigantic shift in the country's cinema industry, as the new Communist government founded the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), the first cultural institution formed following the revolution.
And yet. While influential filmmakers arose in that post-ICAIC era, there were no female feature directors until Gómez. Sarita, as she was known to friends, had trained and worked as a musician, journalist and ICAIC assistant director by the time she started directing short documentaries in 1964. They found her honing an aesthetic as a chronicler of Cuba's past and then-present, as well as developing her ease of communication with everyday Cuban citizens. It would come in particularly useful for De cierta manera.
Gómez's film immediately drops you into the bustle of a workers' assembly, as a burly man defends himself from accusations of truancy. He speaks slowly and matter-of-factly about leaving work to visit his dying mother, saying that the nurses at a local hospital can vouch for him. "I know some of you are out to get me," he says, and across the room, a fellow worker explodes, calling the accused man a liar. This opening scene only appears scripted when the screaming starts, and even when that happens, you're unsure whether you're watching fact or fiction.
Shortly afterwards, the opening titles state that the film is "about real people and fictitious ones". After the 0-to-100 drama of the opening scene, this self-aware moment of cheekiness is the first of many swerves Gómez serves up. The film eventually returns to that worker's assembly, but only after we experience post-revolutionary Havana from the eyes of those in the thick of it. The man yelling in the meeting is called Mario (Mario Balmaseda), a factory worker with a macho nature about him. He strikes up a romance with a young teacher named Yolanda (Yolanda Cuéllar), and from there, De cierta manera bounces back and forth over their differing perspectives of life in Havana.
And even within those set perspectives, many more are explored. Yolanda will stare down the lens, sharing her thoughts on what it's like to be a teacher, but you'll also share time with mothers of her students and fellow employees as they worry about their opportunities. Mario will get into an argument with Yolanda, then bump into a musician friend whose life story will take over the film for a few minutes. It isn't often that you feel a road movie's sense of exploration in a single city, but you can feel Gómez's fascination in whatever — and whoever — is around the corner.
Over seventy-two minutes, Gómez formed something that feels truly revolutionary. Today, folding fiction and non-fiction in on themselves can still surprise — take this year's Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets as a recent example. You can only imagine its effect back then in Cuba, despite its delayed release: a Black woman directing, merging the nouvelle vague, social realist tradition and free cinema into something genuinely fresh. And significantly, De cierta manera transforms into a critique of masculinity, as Mario has to consider the limits of his macho behaviour and what revolutionary masculinity could be. Michael Chanan's book Cuban Cinema claims "feminism was not part of [Cuban] revolutionary vocabulary because of overtones of antagonistic confrontation between man and woman" — women's equality being far different from women's rights. Gómez looked at the institutional anti-Blackness and misogyny in Latin American society, even in the context of a supposed revolutionary government — machismo-leninismo, if you will.
The film isn't perfect — at seventy-two minutes, it's simultaneously slight and overstuffed, but I'd rather have too many ideas, too much life, than too little. It's a perfect debut from a young filmmaker that already had a distinct voice. But Gómez never saw the completed film, dying at 31 from asthma complications. Filmmakers Tomas Gutierrez Alea and Julio García Espinosa completed the edit of De cierta manera. And yet, it would not reach cinemas for another two years. Some say that the negative was damaged in a film laboratory, then sent to Sweden for treatment. Others believe that the delayed-release was courtesy of ICAIC, thanks to Gómez recognising the limits of the Cuban revolution.
And, so, this is the tragedy of film: a vital artist in a country's emergent cinematic landscape, taken away before her true peak, her triumphs obscured. It is depressing. But at least it's out there. De cierta manera is currently not in print on DVD or available to stream but restored versions have played Cuban film festivals over the past few years. Academics continue to write about her work and its place in Cuban cinema. And there's her shorts — and one extraordinary feature — available on the world's biggest streaming site, for free! It isn't anywhere near what Sara Gómez deserves or deserved, but at least people can witness her work in some form. That's something.
ELSEWHERE ON YOUTUBE:
Onscreen Spankings: How Films Punished Liberated Women For Decades
This montage, found on the “supposedly feminist website” Jezebel’s YouTube channel, was the first thing I’ve seen in ages that made my jaw literally drop open. I could write an entire dissertation on what it reveals, but let’s just say that the spanking of grown women was an astonishing second-hand device for retaliating against Strong Female Characters, for a very long time, and without any sexual kinks attached. My brain is scrambled. (If you’re reading, what’s up Jawnita!)
This video opens an opportunity for a quick word on Bad Bunny and his recently-dropped album Él Último Tour del Mundo. It’s phenomenal how, across this album and February’s YHLQMDLG, the reggaetonero takes different aspects of his sonic identity and zooms in to an obsessive, microscopic level. On YHLQMDLG, he ran back across the young history of Latin trap and into the early days of reggaeton, where it was morphing from reggae en Español into its own thing entirely. On Él Último Tour, he’s built a large amount of the album on the mall-core rock and indie that has long been part of his music. There’s Osiris-sneaker skate rock, populist drunken singalongs, spacey acoustic trips and a synthpop experiment — y’know, the type every 90s rocker tries on for size. He’s very special, and you honestly owe it to yourself to give him a shot if you haven’t.
Siskel & Ebert Advise Young Movie Critics
A little pleasure of mine has been in watching old reviews from Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s TV show — for instance, are you aware that Speed came out the same week as The Lion King?! But it’s also super cool to notice that this long-running TV show also made space for people to learn about film culture and criticism. Sure, there’s a part where they discuss political correctness being “the fascism of the 90s” or some such bullshit, but there’s some nuggets in there amongst the grouchy old man chat. The one that stuck with me is this: if the film made you feel a certain way, if it made you laugh or cry or be bored, then put that in the writing. Don’t be scared of how you feel.