Skip to main content
How can socialist films reach audiences?
ANGUS REID speaks to Tania Delgado, the director of Havana Film Festival, as Screen Cuba film festival kicks off in London
SOCIALIST CINEMA: Stills from Supergal, directed by Ernesto Pina (2022) and Azul Pandora, directed by Alan Gonzalez (2022)

TANIA DELGADO was, until last year, vice president of ICAIC, the Cuban film Institute, and she is justifiably proud of its history. Founded on March 24 1959, in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, it was the first cultural organisation created in the new state, demonstrating the high esteem in which the medium of cinema was held by the new regime. Before then cinema had been a marginal activity on the island, but “after ‘59,” she says, “came the boom!” 

The festival Screen Cuba has been designed to give the UK audience a taste of the whole period with classics from the 1960s by the recognised masters of early Cuban film-making, the so-called “Third Cinema,” Tomas Alea and Sarah Gomez, featuring alongside contemporary films that extend the remarkable tradition of socialist cinema, films that extend the work of the revolution through social critique.

Tomas Alea’s interrogation of “machismo,” the film Hasta Un Cierto Punto, famously played to one third of the island’s entire population in 1983, and the recent animation Supergal (2022), written by Ernesto Pina and Hugo Rivalta, extends that process in a playful way, telling the story of a female Chemistry teacher whose superpower is the capacity to transform violent men by clarifying their thoughts.

Take out shares in the People's Press
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
CONFRONTING HOMOPHOBIA: (L) FCB Cadell, The Boxer, c.1924; (
Exhibition review / 21 March 2025
21 March 2025
While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID
BLOOD ON THE TRACKS: Xilun Sun as the mysterious interloper
Film of the Week: / 20 March 2025
20 March 2025
ANGUS REID recommends an exquisite drama about the disturbing impact of the one child policy in contemporary China
Short Story / 7 February 2025
7 February 2025
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
Frantz Fanon at a press conference during a writers' confere
BenchMarx / 28 January 2025
28 January 2025
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
Similar stories
BATTLE OF IDEAS: (L) Tomas Alea's Memories of Underdevelopme
ScreenCuba Film Festival / 13 March 2025
13 March 2025
Festival Coordinators TRISH MEEHAN and DODIE WEPPLER introduce some of the highlights of Screen Cuba Film Festival 2025
UNMISSABLE: Conducta (Behaviour, 2014), a thought-provoking
ScreenCuba Film Festival 2025 / 4 March 2025
4 March 2025
Helen Colley introduces this year’s ScreenCuba film festival with an exclusive offer to Morning Star readers
Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in Queer
Cinema / 12 December 2024
12 December 2024
Hallucinogenic homosexuality, a quantum thriller, airport shenanigans and feminist Tolkein: MARIA DUARTE reviews Queer, The Universal Theory, Carry On and Lord of the Rings: The War of The Rohirrim
Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel in Megalopolis (2024)
Cinema / 5 May 2024
5 May 2024
RITA DI SANTO looks at what is on offer