Cinema Can Do Living Archive: De cierta manera

If anything connects the films in the Arsenal archive, it is such concepts as resistance, critique, vision and utopia. DE CIERTA MANERA weaves together documentary and fiction in assured fashion to create a portrait of life in post-revolutionary Cuba. An elementary school teacher called Yolanda and worker called Mario get together. While she encounters a lack of understanding for her integrative educational approach, he finds it difficult to move beyond his patriarchal role models. Their contrasting ideas reflect the wider process of transformation happening in society. In 1961, Sara Gómez became the first woman to be admitted to the Cuban Film Institute ICAIC. Going against their ideas, she insisted on filming on a 16mm handheld black-and-white camera. Following her early death, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Julio García Espinosa completed the film. DE CIERTA MANERA celebrated its premiere at the Berlinale Forum in 1977, with the German-subtitled 35mm print we had made entering the Arsenal distribution range. In 2021, the film was rediscovered as part of the “Archive außer sich” project and digitally restored. (stss)

Showing first: Arsenal Filmarchiv 22.12.22 Ute Aurand D 2022 16 mm 3 Min.