Oscar E. Quirós

The provisional revolutionary government of Cuba established the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematografica in 1959. Under the centralized umbrella of ICAIC, Cuban cinema began to develop its own aesthetic identity very much in tune with the revolutionary, political and ideological events of the 1960s. Several outstanding feature-length films, and the polemic essay Por un cine imperfecto of Julio Garcia-Espinoza, helped categorize the first 15 years of revolutionary Cuban cinema as the "Imperfect Cinema" era. The Imperfect Cinema aesthetic embraced any unconventional technique that served to distance Cuban film from the elaborate production values of foreign mainstream cinema. After the mid-1970s, Cuban cinema began to show a new aesthetic approach which contrasted with the qualities of Imperfect Cinema. This new style appeared to be very much in tune with the production values of the "Hollywood" style. Because of its contrasted qualities I propose to call this new style "Perfect Cinema." By the late 1970s, scholars and critics began to lament the decline of Cuban cinema. This aesthetic change, however, is closely related to ideological changes in the Marxist tradition, just as Imperfect Cinema responded to the ideological events of the previous decade. Utilyzing a Weberian model of analysis based on the Marxian principle of the interrelating elements of the social whole, it is possible to apply an Orthodox approach to Imperfect Cinema and a Post-Marxist approach to Perfect Cinema. This analysis allows one to investigate the aesthetic qualities of the two distinctive styles based on the specific social matrix of the country and determine that Perfect Cinema, more than Imperfect Cinema, fulfils the Marxian ideal of liberating agent for human emancipation in Cuban society