Cine Libre – Cinema and Graphics in the Cuban Revolution

Cuba, March 24th, 1959. Fidel Castro founds the ICAIC (the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry): it’s the beginning of a new cinema. The Hollywood movies are banned from Cuba, the Revolution calls for art films: Eisenstein, Chaplin, Fellini, Kurosawa, Truffaut…in this context the carteles de cine are created. The official movie posters are shunned in their totality. The new cartel de cine loses all its publicity connotations and becomes a conceptual interpretation of the film. ICAIC organizes its own printing lab and invites young and promising graphic artists to work there: Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Rafael Morante, René Azcuy, Ñiko just to mention a few. In the following decades they give life to a school of graphics now recognized all over the world.Today the ICAIC reopens  the printing lab and calls a group of graphic designers of the latest generation. Will the heirs of that tradition be able to revive the spirit and demonstrate its strength and timeliness?