Suite Tortilla #59: The Celluloid Women

Follows the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy led by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.

Havana, Cuba, 1990. René González, an airplane pilot, unexpectedly flees the country, leaving behind his wife Olga and his daughter Irma, and begins a new life in Miami, where he becomes a member of an anti-Castro organization.

A look at President Richard M. Nixon—a man carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders while battling the self-destructive demands from within—spanning his troubled boyhood in California to the shocking Watergate scandal that would end his Presidency.

In the summer of 1994, a team of public television reporters filmed and interviewed seven Cubans a few days before their risky venture of setting out to sea in homemade rafts to reach the coast of the United States. Six made it far enough to be picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard. When these balseros (rafters) were finally allowed to go to the United States, the film crew went with them to a string of several cities. Seven years later, the film crew visits them again, to discover that their destiny has been in the United States. Theirs is a true story about some of the authentic survivors of our times, the human adventure of people who are shipwrecked between two worlds.

The story of the persecution of homosexuals and intellectuals in Cuba under Fidel Castro's dictatorship, from the beginning of the Cuban Revolution (1953-59) until the early 1980s. Interviews with relevant personalities of Cuban culture who suffered persecution demonstrate that concentration camps for gays existed in Cuba.

Jazz and decolonization are intertwined in a powerful narrative that recounts one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War.

Using archival footage, cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the 85-year-old Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts his life, from working as a WWII whiz-kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company's president, to managing the Vietnam War as defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

Black docu-comedy from the largest pawn shop in Poland. Times are tough, bankruptcy looms, but then the two choleric proprietors get a bright idea. A hilarious, heartwarming film.

Experimental historical film, with documentary elements. A study of the conceptual development of the young hero Julio Antonio Mella, founder of the Communist Party of Cuba, from the process of the Student Reforms to his assassination in Mexico at the age of 25, in the arms of the Italian photographer Tina Modotti.

A documentary vignette explores the life of Revolutionary feminist and filmmaker Magda Gonzalez Grau, capturing a pivotal interview moment that reveals her evolving feminist politics during the Cuban Revolution.

Using archival iPhone footage of both the places my father and I call home and our childhood photos, this work collages time and space, traveling from 1975 to 2022 and from Havana, Cuba to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and in between. His home is my home, and my home is his.

Contemporary film critics regard the epic film I Am Cuba as a modern masterpiece. The 1964 Cuban/Soviet coproduction marked a watershed moment of cultural collaboration between two nations. Yet the film never found a mass audience, languishing for decades until its reintroduction as a "classic" in the 1990s. Vicente Ferraz explores the strange history of this cinematic tour de force, and the deeper meaning for those who participated in its creation.

Xavier Mina accepted the commission to lead a liberating expedition in support of General Morelos. He failed to arrive in Mexico until Morelos had died and the Mexican Congress (which in New Spain faced the absolutism of Fernando VII) was dissolved, but for eight months he directed a series of more or less brilliant military actions, in the face of the harassment of the Viceroy , Who finally got him arrested.

Tirso Fabre, a militiaman and member of the Black River co-operative farm, and Chano Carrillo, a counterrevolutionary hiding behind his front as a Castro sympathizer, receive the news in different ways, in line with their antagonistic ideological positions.

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.

It’s 1948 and the Cold War has arrived in Chile. In the Congress, prominent Communist Senator and popular poet Pablo Neruda accuses the government of betraying the Party and is stripped of his parliamentary immunity by President González Videla. The Chief of Investigative Police instructs inspector Óscar Peluchonneau to arrest the poet. Neruda tries to escape from the country with his wife, the painter Delia del Carril, but they are forced to go underground.

Marina's life is thrown into turmoil following the death of her partner. Mourning the loss of the man she loved, she finds herself under intense scrutiny from those with no regard for her privacy.

A man is obsessed with John Travolta's disco dancing character from "Saturday Night Fever".

A study in contrasts set in and around Havana that explores Cuba's 1959 revolution: a young woman's fascination with the excess of an American-owned casino leads to her downfall in the eyes of her street vendor boyfriend; a tenant farmer revolts the only way he knows how, attacking the land he works; university students gain first-hand knowledge of political upheaval; and, in the hills outside the city, the members of a poor peasant family are patriotically swept up into the burgeoning revolt.

1964, in the Escambray mountains: the area is infested with counter- revolutionary bands which are trying to spread terror among the population and re-establish contact with the US, CIA. The murder of a man led to a reprisal to wipe out the bandits.

Santa, a peasant woman loyal to the Revolution, is sent to guard Andrés, a gay writer who is under house arrest, considered “ untrustworthy” for his ideas and sexuality by the Cuban authorities. Set in a small village in eastern Cuba during the early 1980s, this poignant political drama depicts an encounter between two deeply thoughtful souls on opposite sides of a profound cultural divide. Both have experienced deep loss, and both know the damaging effects of isolation and oppression. Even so, the cavernous ideological divide separating them — the same one that has separated Cuban friends and kin for over 50 years — has until now seemed insurmountable.

Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.

In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende's presidency, an employee at a Morgue's recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.

Brazilian writer Alberto Luppo has lived in Paris for years and does not want to return to his home country. But when a French anthropologist disappears in the interior of Brazil, Alberto is forced to return to his homeland to turn the story into a book. However, during the journey, between fear and enchantment, he surrenders to his destiny. Guided by Bethânea, he discovers in everything he despised, the beauty of his own identity.

Three friends are part of a fascist opposition group in the chaotic Chile of the early 70's and together commit a political crime that changes the history of the country and incidentally involves them in a betrayal that separates them forever.

On the cusp of college graduation and without any clear direction, the unmotivated and misguided Bethany turns to the spiritual to plead for more time, eternal youth.

In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs incident, Sergio chooses to stay behind in Cuba while his wife and family escape to neighboring Miami. Alone in a brave new world, Sergio observes the constant threat of foreign invasion while chasing young women all over Havana. He finally meets Elena, a young girl he seeks to mould into the image of his ex-wife, but at what cost to himself?

Engineer Mario Camargo, originally from Argentina, arrives in Cuba to work on the construction of a new industrial complex. He came from France, where he had lived most of his life. Mario had never thought about what homeland meant to him. He had always lived wherever he felt comfortable. In Cuba, Mario meets architect Marta Alea, a passionate patriot who devotes all her energy and abilities to building a new life. Seeing the enthusiasm of Marta and her friends, their devotion to the ideas of the revolution, Mario realizes that in our days, when the face of the world is changing, one cannot be a man without a homeland.