Titon, de la Habana a Guantanamera (Mirta Ibarra, 2008): Cuba

Reviewed by William Conlin. Viewed at The Santa Barbara Film Festival.

For most Americans, Cuba is a looked at as a mystery wrapped in a riddle, locked in an enigma. In the tumultuous years following the fall of Batista and the rise of Fidel Castro, Cuba experienced both a social and a cultural revolution. At the forefront of this cultural revolution stood filmmaker Tomas Gutierrez Alea, nicknamed “Titon”.

In Titon, de la Habana a Guantanamera Mirta Ibarra, the widow of Titon, crafts the story of his life through interviews with family and friends, footage from his films and home movies shot by Titon and Ibarra themselves. From his childhood struggles with his father to his meteoric rise to the top of his country’s film industry, the film details the life of Cuba’s greatest filmmaker.

I found it quite interesting to see the progression of Titon’s filmmaking style over his nearly half a century of filmmaking. He is widely considered to be Cuba’s equivalent to Sergei Eisenstein or D.W. Griffith. When Castro came to power he approached the Communist Party and asked them to create a Film Bureau. After he was granted funding, Titon began creating films that glorified the revolution. His popularity reached the point that Che Guevera consulted him on how to make his stories historically accurate.

Because of Cuba’s isolation, most of its film technology was behind the times. A sizable amount of the film’s footage was shot on videotape, which can at times be hard to watch. It’s hard to look at Titon’s films that were shot on videotape, purely because you wish it had been shot it on 35mm. No filmmaker of Titon’s quality should have to work with substandard equipment.

Towards the end of his career, Titon began to receive world recognition. In 1993, his film Strawberry and Chocolate, which tackled the controversial issue of homosexuality in Cuba, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, this first Cuban film to receive the honor. He was later invited to co-direct Havana with Sidney Pollack. Although Titon lived to be 68, I feel as though he still had films to make. His wife’s recollection of his death is quite a dramatic moment.

Even though I have never seen a film made by Titon, this film kept me interested from beginning to end. When I left the film, I felt like renting Titon’s film collection and having a marathon. If you are interested in seeing a well crafted, well edited retrospective, Titon is the film for you.