Dr. Enrique González-Conty, Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures published his article "Memories of Overdevelopment: Subverting the Cuban Revolutionary Filmic Archive" in Black Camera by Indiana University Press. His article is part of the Close-Up section on Contemporary Cuban Cinema published in volume 14, No. 1, this Fall 2022. For more information please read the abstract and visit the link below.
Abstract:
Founded in 1959, the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) supported the birth of a new Cuban Cinema, enabling local filmmakers to thrive and establishing the Cuban Revolution’s official filmic archive. With the rise of external funding sources and the advances of new technologies, contemporary filmmakers in Cuba began to challenge these official narratives. In their work, digital technology serves as the medium to subvert the official cinematic discourse. Miguel Coyula’s Memories of Overdevelopment (2010) questions the images of Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara as heroes of the revolution and replaces them with images of the traumatic past such as the 1980 Mariel exodus and the 1989 Ochoa Scandal. In doing so, independent filmmaker Coyula challenges how the Revolution has been documented in film by bringing to the foreground what has been censored by the Cuban state. This article argues that Coyula subverts ICAIC’s discourse by altering images of the archive in postproduction to reimagine Cuba’s past and create his own counter-narrative of the Cuban Revolution.