Che Guevara: The making of an icon (2014)
Genre : Documentary, History
Runtime : 52M
Director : Jean-Hugues Berrou
Synopsis
How does a politician – assassinated more than 50 years ago – gradually become a public figure? An extremely vibrant image which shows up where you least expect it. It served as figurehead for the Arab Spring revolutions, from Rabat to Sanaa, whereas we had thought it had been relegated to t-shirts and cigarette lighters. Why has this image become so universal that we are no longer surprised to find it in drawings, graffiti, tattoos and prints on all types of media in all sorts of contexts the world over? How can this image be used to advertise luxury automobiles and also be brandished angrily by indignant agitators? What is the formula that made this figure go viral? This documentary is a journey to investigate and decode a piece of iconography.
In pre-revolution Cuba, Katey Miller is about to defy everyone's expectations. Instead of a parent-approved suitor, Katey is drawn to the sexy waiter, Javier, who spends his nights dancing in Havana's nightclubs. As she secretly learns to dance with Javier, she learns the meanings of love, sensuality and independence.
The Argentine, begins as Che and a band of Cuban exiles (led by Fidel Castro) reach the Cuban shore from Mexico in 1956. Within two years, they mobilized popular support and an army and toppled the U.S.-friendly regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Based on the journals of Che Guevara, leader of the Cuban Revolution. In his memoirs, Guevara recounts adventures he and best friend Alberto Granado had while crossing South America by motorcycle in the early 1950s.
Spanning several decades, this powerful biopic offers a glimpse into the life of famed Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas, an artist who was vilified for his homosexuality in Fidel Castro's Cuba.
After the Cuban Revolution, Che is at the height of his fame and power. Then he disappears, re-emerging incognito in Bolivia, where he organizes a small group of Cuban comrades and Bolivian recruits to start the great Latin American Revolution. Through this story, we come to understand how Che remains a symbol of idealism and heroism that lives in the hearts of people around the world.
In Havana, Cuba in the late 1950's, a wealthy family, one of whose sons is a prominent nightclub owner, is caught in the violent transition from the oppressive regime of Batista to the Marxist government of Fidel Castro. Castro's regime ultimately leads the nightclub owner to flee to New York.
An American professional gambler named Jack Weil decides to visit Havana, Cuba to gamble. On the boat to Havana, he meets Roberta Duran, the wife of a revolutionary, Arturo. Shortly after their arrival, Arturo is taken away by the secret police, and Roberta is captured and tortured. Jack frees her, but she continues to support the revolution.
Copenhagen, Denmark, 1962. When a high-ranking Soviet official decides to change sides, a French intelligence agent is caught up in a cold, silent and bloody spy war in which his own family will play a decisive role.
Four vignettes about the lives of the Cuban people set during the pre-revolutionary era.
A British mercenary arrives in pre-Revolution Cuba to help train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas while he also romances a former lover now married to an unscrupulous plantation owner.
Documentary on the director's meeting with Castro.
A photo montage of Cubans filmed by Agnès Varda during her visit to Cuba in 1963, four years after Fidel Castro came to power. This black & white documentary explores their socialist culture and society while making use of 1500 pictures (out of 4000!) the filmmaker took while on the island.
The friendship between two children is threatened by their parents’ differences. Malú is from a family that was upper-class before the Revolution and remains well-to-do through remittances from relatives overseas, and her single mother (Larisa Vega Alamar) does not want her to play with Jorgito, as she thinks his background coarse and commonplace. Jorgito’s mother (Luisa María Jiménez Rodríguez),
Documentary about Fidel Castro, covering 40 years of Cuban Revolution. Rare Fidel Castro footage: he appears swimming with a bodyguard, visiting his childhood home and school, playing with his friend Nelson Mandela, meeting kid Elián Gonzalez, and celebrating his birthday with the Buena Vista Social Club group.
Fidel Castro rises to power in Cuba.
In Cienfuegos in the 1980s, a poetic young girl tries to make sense of her parents' volatile separation while keenly observing the reality of Cuba's dilemmas.
Two American gun runners at odds with each other and looking to sell guns to the rebels during the Cuban War of Independence navigate a boat to Cuba. Along for the ride is a beautiful Cuban rebel in who both men are interested.
A bourgeois Cuban family of aristocratic origin locks itself into its mansion when the Cuban Revolution comes to power, waiting for the new regime to be overthrown. As time passes, they regress to older and older systems of policital order, from capitalism to feudalism to "primitive savagery."
There was a time in Argentina, not so long ago, when the army wasn't only one, official, but many and made up by civilians. In those times of courageous youths determined to fight to the death for that cause upheld around Peronism as wll as some left-wing postulates, revolutionary Cubas was a beacon of hope in the world scheme -a Montonero nation. "A House in Cuba" seeks to recover the curious adventure of a couple of Montonero parents and their small children, who were lovingly sent into exile in order for their parents to take up arms.
'Bill Gaede: El Crazy Che' is a documentary about the most amazing case of industrial espionage: the incredible story of an argentine engineer born in Lanús, programmer, and cold war spy who worked at AMD and Intel. While at AMD, he provided the Cuban Government with technical information from the semiconductor industry which the Cubans passed on to the Soviet bloc, primarily to the Soviet Union and East Germany.
