Don’t Say “Che”: The Revolutionary Subtext of Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti’s Viva Cuba
doi.org/10.31641/IQZO2459
Erin Hilda Redmond
Brock UniversityPublication
Abstract
Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti’s 2005 film, Viva Cuba, is widely recognized as marking a turning point in Cuban revolutionary film from the 1960s through the 1990s, both as a feature film produced within Cuba but outside of the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), and as a digital production whose director insists upon the film’s distance from revolutionary politics. Indeed, the Revolution might seem to be at most a hushed background to what is frequently understood as Viva Cuba’s universally human story of two children about to be separated by emigration. Nevertheless, Viva Cuba reminds viewers of the Revolution’s achievements and renders the nation’s postmillennial hardships and socioeconomic inequities as poignantly as it does the child protagonists’ potential losses. This article analyzes the ways in which Cuba’s revolutionary ideals of egalitarianism, solidarity, and anti-imperialism, particularly as conceived by Che Guevara, constitute a powerful subtext to Viva Cuba’s personal drama. Although in many respects it represents a clear divergence from the tradition of ICAIC-produced films of the 1990s, Viva Cuba is also a reframing of its predecessors’ preoccupations, one that revives what are both 1960s revolutionary and twenty-first-century socialist ideals more urgently needed than ever in Cuba and beyond.
Keywords
Revolution, film, Cuba, Cremata, Guevara, Viva Cuba
