BY MIKE TABER

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Cuba's best-known film director (nicknamed "Ti-tón"), died in Havana on April 16. The July-August issue of La Gaceta de Cuba features a series of articles on his life and contributions by some of his closest collaborators.

Gutiérrez Alea's internationally recognized films include Memories of Underdevelopment, Death of a Bureaucrat, The Last Supper, Up to a Certain Point, Strawberry and Chocolate, and Guantanamera.

Published in Havana by the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), La Gaceta de Cuba is a leading forum for discussion on culture, politics, and the challenges facing the Cuban revolution today.

The issue leads off with an article by Roberto Fernández Retamar, director of the journal Casa de las Américas and a friend of Gutiérrez Alea's since their years at the University of Havana. He describes Gutiérrez Alea's days as an aspiring artist and musician during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Together they participated in activities opposed to the U.S.- backed regimes of Carlos Prío and Fulgencio Batista, and were part of a left-wing group called the Nuestro Tiempo [Our Times] Cultural Society.

During the early 1950s, Gutiérrez Alea went to Italy to study filmmaking. His first feature film, Stories of the Revolution, was made shortly after the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959.

Fernández Retamar describes Gutiérrez Alea as "the great rebel creator," and cites the filmmaker's last interview before his death, where he stated: "I continue to believe what I have believed all my life."

Of special interest in this issue of La Gaceta is an interview with Juan Carlos Tabío, who collaborated in Gutiérrez Alea's two last films, Strawberry and Chocolate and Guantanamera. Tabío describes working with him for several years in the Creativity Groups. These groups were organized on a voluntary basis by leading Cuban directors. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was an enthusiastic champion of them.

"The groups had two reasons for existing," Tabío states. "First was as a workshop where the members submitted all their ideas. The group offered only ideas, suggestions, opinions, without impositions of any type, and never a veto....

"The other main function of the groups was that of counteracting overcentralized decisions on the part of the state body. In all film production in the world there is a final decision maker, the producer. He is the one who decides which movie is made and which movie isn't made. This of course also has to be the case with the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC)."

"But ICAIC is a socialist producer, not a capitalist one. The operating premises are not commercial ones; on the contrary, film is treated more as a cultural phenomenon. The Creativity Groups signified a collective participation in these decisions."

At one point, Tabío explains, a proposal was raised to dissolve ICAIC into a larger body that would have responsibility for both television and film. The Creativity Groups opposed this move, arguing that cinematography and television serve different cultural ends. Gutiérrez Alea was particularly active in defending the film institute, and the idea of dissolving it was abandoned.

In another article, writer Reynaldo González characterizes Gutiérrez Alea as a "citizen-artist." He writes: "Only those who live within the conflict-ridden days of a social process that aimed to change destiny can understand the interrelationship of two extremes: discipline and questioning. Titón understood this and practiced it in an exemplary manner."

Tributes to Gutiérrez Alea by Senel Paz (author of Strawberry and Chocolate), Ambrosio Fornet, and several others are also included. Previously unpublished drawings by Gutiérrez Alea himself illustrate the pages.

This issue of La Gaceta also includes an interview with Ernesto Sábato, one of Argentina's best-known novelists; and a collection of contemporary poetry from Holguín in eastern Cuba.

An article by Luisa Campuzano discusses the challenges facing Cuban women in the arts, as reflected in literature and the cinema. She focuses particularly on the progress made since 1984.

Included too, as a regular feature of La Gaceta, is a review section on books, music, drama, and the visual arts.

La Gaceta de Cuba, published in Spanish six times a year, is available through Pathfinder, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014.  
 
 
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