Tomás Gutiérrez Alea… A Restoration Double Bill

15 TBC

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was one of the key figures of the "Third Cinema" which continues to have an important influence political cinemas around the world.

Alea’s Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968) about an affluent writer in post-revolutionary Cuba continues to be one of the key works of this period. It was ranked 169th in the 2022 Sight and Sound "Greatest Films of All Time" poll and, perhaps more importantly, is one of the most mentioned films in the collective Mapa de Cine Latinoamericano y el Caribe which polled over 235 film critics, programmers, filmmakers, researchers, and scholars from across Latin America.

Presented by Libertad Gills as part of our Hyde Park Film School strand, this half-day long programme will consist of:

1.15pm - Introduction to Alea and to The Twelve Chairs (1962)

1.45pm - The Twelve Chairs (1962)

3:20pm - Break

3:35pm - Introduction to The Last Supper (1976)

3:45pm - The Last Supper (1976)

5:45pm - Discussion

6:00pm - Event end

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The day includes Alea’s film adaptation of a comic novel from the early years of the USSR, The Twelve Chairs (1962), and the powerful drama about slavery and freedom set in 1790s Cuba, The Last Supper (1976), for which Nelson Villagra won Best Actor at the 1978 Biarritz Film Festival. Presented at this critical moment in Cuba’s decades-long struggle for political and economic sovereignty from US and European imperialism, these films will offer much to reflect upon and discuss regarding cinema’s role in the formation of critical and free spectators, with a special attention to the revolutionary forms of humour and satire.

To explore Alea’s work further, there will also be a follow up screening of another of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s films, Death of a Bureaucrat (1966) on Sunday 10 May 2026 at Hyde Park Picture House.

Libertad Gills is a filmmaker, film critic, and now Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Leeds. She researches experimental film practices, archival cinema, and videographic criticism. Libertad has contributed as programmer for Berlin Critics Week, Emami Art Experimental Film Festival, Fresh Festival (Switzerland), and Colombia’s National Cinemateca, and delivered a keynote on film collectives for Winterthur International Short Film Festival. She has published a book of interviews with film critics from Latin America (La crítica es una escuela, 2022) and another one on analogue and experimental film practices in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Guayaquil en ruinas, 2023). The 2025 Marienbad International Film Festival dedicated a programme to her videographic work titled “Echoes and Revolutions”.