One Way or Another (Gomez, 1974): Garden Cinema, 4pm
This film is part of the Screen Cuba season at Garden Cinema and will feature an introduction by Tania Delgado, director of the Havana Film Festival.
Chicago Reader review:
This extraordinary film, the first Cuban feature by a woman, has been
celebrated as feminist by some critics, partly for its story but also
for its narrative style. It follows the relationship between
schoolteacher Yolanda (Yolanda Cuellar) and factory worker Mario (Mario
Balmaseda), but instead of imposing a patriarchal authorial voice,
director Sara Gomez provocatively combines fiction sequences with
documentary footage, and her playful use of form is both startling and
purposeful. The film begins abruptly, as if in midscene, with a
documentarylike record of a workers' meeting; the credits are followed
by an actual documentary segment on housing development in the early
60s, complete with didactic voice-over. Sections that seem to be
dramatic are later revealed to be documentary, while other apparently
dramatic scenes are interrupted by discursive sequences. The film's form
questions itself, as do the characters: Mario, torn between machismo
and his growing revolutionary commitment, turns a malingering worker in
to the group, but then worries that doing so was “womanly.” Most
importantly, the editing encourages an active viewing process—when the
lovers meet a man named Guillermo, a title asks “Who is Guillermo?” and
the film then cuts to a slightly closer shot of the same title—just as
the overall film encourages us to seek wider interpretations. Sadly,
Gomez died in 1974 while the film was being edited, and it wasn't
completed until three years later.
Fred Camper
Here (and above) is an extract.
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