Los sobrevivientes
Cuba
, 116 min
Shown in 1979
CREDITS
- dir
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Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
- scr
-
Antonio Benítez, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
- cam
-
Mario García Joya
- cast
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Enrique Santisteban, Reinaldo Miravalles, German Pinelli, Ana Vinas, Vicente Revuelta
- prod co
-
ICAIC
- source
-
ICAIC
-
COMMENTS
Tomás Gutiérrez AleaTomás Gutiérrez Alea in person; subject of a tribute.
OTHER
This black comedy, new from the director of Memories of Underdevelopment, is dedicated to Luis Bunuel and inspired in particular by his classic, The Exterminating Angel. The story focuses on an aristocratic family just after Castro’s rise to power—they doubt that the Revolution will succeed, so they hole up in their house and refuse to be affected by what’s happening outside. They try by all means to maintain their traditional ways, but the built-in decadence of the upper-class lifestyle leads to a progressive breakdown of their social systems. A very funny metaphor for what happened to the bourgeoisie in 1959, The Survivors marks the welcome return of Cuban cinema to this Festival.
—Mark Chase
FACTOID #208
Before the showing of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest at the 40th SFIFF, Bay Area editor Walter Murch (who selected the film to screen in the Indelible Images series), passed out fortune cookies to the crowd with Bresson’s musings on making films.
