Film Screening:

Lucia
(Humberto Solás, 1968, 160 min, Cuba, in Spanish w/ English Subtitles, B/W, DVD)

-- Introduced by Prof. Gustavo Furtado (Romance Studies)

Robert Phillip Kolker has called Humberto Solás Lucia "something of an encyclopedia of progressive film in the sixties," and this invigoratingly feminist trilogy is indeed one of the greatest examples of stylistic virtuosity to emerge from any national cinema in recent years. Solás' film depicts three women, all named Lucia, in their gradual acquisition of revolutionary consciousness, as they confront the specific historical dilemmas of their respective epochs--1895, 1932, and the post-revolutionary era of the 1960s. The three Lucias each offer different visions of class.

The director deftly links concern with economic materialism to character growth and change, in the process transforming that often very bourgeois cinematic genre, the family melodrama, into a platform for social investigation. The film is remarkable in its ability to integrate diverse cinematic styles with an almost seamless fluidity.

-- Winner of Golden Prize in Moscow International Film Festival in 1969

"Lucia locates the Cuban struggle in the figure of a woman who is at once politically symbolic and specifically human; in this productive tension, Solás created one of the most important works in the nascent feminist cinema of the period." -- New York State Writers Institute

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: The Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI) and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS).