Take in two of Gutiérrez Alea’s best in this double feature: a humorous takedown of unending bureaucracy and a masterful portrait of a disaffected intellectual.
In the biting satire Death of a Bureaucrat, a worker—a true proletarian—has died and is honored by friends and family at the cemetery, buried with his party card in hand. When his family applies for his worker’s pension, however, they learn that they need his card to collect the benefits—and to dig up the body to get the card. Made with funds from Castro’s postrevolution Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos, the film is nonetheless a hilarious critique of bureaucracy’s endless red tape. In Spanish with English subtitles. (85 mins., 4K DCP)
Sergio is a wealthy writer who decides to remain in Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, even as his wife and family flee to Miami. Scornful of both his bourgeois family and the country’s devoted Marxists, he fills his free time by chasing women. His outlook begins to change, however, when confronted with the new reality of living in a communist bureaucracy. Arguably the most revered film in the history of Cuban cinema, Memories of Underdevelopment is a stylistic tour de force. In Spanish with English subtitles. (97 mins., 4K DCP)
See the entire Tomás Gutiérrez Alea lineup.
To purchase tickets, please visit the Wexner Center page.
$7 members and adults 55 and over
$9 general public
$5 students
