Alicia in the place of miracles

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Movie
German title Alicia in the place of miracles
Original title Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas
Country of production Cuba
original language Spanish
Publishing year 1991
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Daniel Díaz Torres
script Daniel Díaz Torres,
NOS-Y-OTROS ( Eduardo del Llano , Luis Felipe Calvo , José León , Aldo Busto )
Jesús Díaz
production Humberto Hernández ( ICAIC )
music Frank Delgado
camera Raúl Pérez Ureta
cut Jorge Abello
occupation

Alicia in Wonderland is a Cuban film directed by Daniel Díaz Torres from 1991. The title alludes to Lewis Carroll's story Alice in Wonderland . The film was banned shortly after its Cuban premiere, causing heated controversy. At the 1991 Berlinale , Alicia was awarded the Peace Film Prize in the Place of Miracles .

action

The inexperienced and idealistic graduate of theater studies Alicia comes to the secluded and ominous town of Maravillas de Novera with the assignment to set up an amateur theater group there. She soon learns that the local residents, all of whom are strangely behaving, are not staying there voluntarily, but have been forcibly exiled to Maravillas due to moral misconduct. The place is ruled by the dictatorial director of a large sanatorium, who makes his patients submissive and manipulates them with a forcefully administered, foul-smelling “medicinal water”. Alicia refuses to adapt to the absurd circumstances, tries in vain to organize resistance against the various compulsions and finally takes flight.

Cultural-political controversy in Cuba

The film premiered in February 1991 at the Berlinale, where it found international recognition, and was only shown for a few screenings in Havana in June 1991 before it was withdrawn after just three days by decision of the authorities. In view of its satirically exaggerated references to Cuban social reality, Alicia in the place of miracles was described as "counter-revolutionary" in several reviews that appeared in state-controlled media. The first of several articles that attacked the film and its authors sharply, the later Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla , then editor-in-chief of the newspaper Juventud Rebelde wrote .

The political attacks on the filmmakers sparked a fierce controversy between cultural workers and government officials in Cuba, as a result of which the performance and broadcast of the comedy were banned for a long time. In response to the film, the Cuban government announced its plan to dissolve the state film institute ICAIC , founded in 1959 and which produced the film, as an independent institution. Its activities and staff should be assigned to the broadcasting authority Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT), which is under the direct responsibility of the Department for Revolutionary Orientation (DOR) at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba . There was widespread protest against this plan by Cuban cultural workers and ICAIC director Julio García Espinosa resigned from his post. His predecessor, the ICAIC founding director Alfredo Guevara , was initially called back from his post as UNESCO ambassador in Paris as a mediator , before he again took over the management of the film institute, which he was able to prevent. In December 1991, Guevara arranged for another screening of the film in front of invited spectators at the International Festival of New Latin American Film, which he directed .

criticism

Alicia in the place of miracles by the Cuban political scientist and filmmaker Daniel Díaz Torres is a weird, in many ways provocative satire with rough blows both on a society that has been shown to be wonderful and a repressive, powerful political system as well as on the ambivalent role of the church. Marie Anderson on Kinozeit.de

“ Alicia in the place of miracles is one of the most polemical films that has been made in revolutionary Cuba since the 1960s.” Juan Antonio González in Cinemómetro , Caracas, Venezuela

"This is a feast for lovers of satire and a feast for those who love the absurd." Christopher Harris in The Globe and Mail

"In categories such as conflict, Alicia in the Place of Wonders for Cuban cinema corresponds to what the birth of a nation means for [US] American cinema: The most controversial feature film in the history of the country." Dennis West in Cineaste , Vol. XX, No. 1, USA

“Without a doubt the most commented, discussed and questioned film in contemporary Cuban cinema.” Cinemateca Uruguaya , issue 1993

" Alicia in place of wonder is an inspiring collage social and political commentary." Film Festival Chicago Magazine , 29th. Chicago International Film Fest

"Since PM, no film has sparked such internal strife as this one, which has drawn the biggest crowd at the festival to date ... While Alicia is just the latest wave of recent Cuban comedies, a surrealist style is close to the spirit and intentions of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's black comedy Death of a Bureaucrat . ”Francisco Gonzalez in The San Juan Star , Puerto Rico, 1993

literature

  • Laura Redruello Campos: Algunas reflexiones en torno a la película Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas. In: Cuban Studies , Volume 38, 2007, pp. 82–99 ( summary available online , English / Spanish)
  • Ana M. López: Cuba. In: The Cinema of Small Nations. edited by Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, pp. 179–197 (English)
  • Paulo Antonio Paranaguá: Cuban Cinema's Political Challenges. In: New Latin American Cinema. edited by Michael T. Martin, Wayne State University Press, Detroit 1997, pp. 167–190 (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Alicia in the place of miracles . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2008 (PDF; test number: 113 382 DVD).
  2. ↑ Redruello, p. 92
  3. ^ Paranaguá, p. 190
  4. ^ López, p. 184
  5. ↑ Cuban Controversies Criticism by Marie Anderson ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kino-zeit.de