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He Who Hits First, Hits Twice
Santiago Alvarez/Travis Wilkerson
2:27:00 + 1:04:00The films of Cuban Director Santiago Alvarez exist as a kind of fractured mirror on the last 40 years of American history – a subversive alternate history. In a film career that began only with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and continued until his death in 1998, Alverez created 700 films.
Lacking formal training of any sort, Alvarez was appointed head of the fledgling Cuban Film Institute now legendary newsreel division, Noticerio ICAIC. Under his command for the next thirty years, the banal and utilitarian newsreel was transformed into a veritable laboratory of radical innovation.
The first disc in this Double-DVD set includes eight incredible films from Alvarez, including his legendary “Now!”, “79 Springtimes”, and “LBJ”. The second disc is Travis Wilkerson’s (An Injury to One) acclaimed documentary on Santiago Alvarez, “Accelerated Under-Development”, an unashamedly didactic, partisan portrait in its subject's own style: brash intertitles, involving music, stark images.“…still vibrant masterpieces of agit-cinema…"
--Rotterdam Film Festival“Working directly and quickly and with equipment filmmakers would now reject as totally inadequate, he made a series of films in the 60s and early 70s that have yet to be beaten either as propaganda, as newsreels or as pieces of brilliantly improvised cinema. Why have we forgotten him?"-- Derek Malcolm, Guardian UK
“Propagandist extraordinaire and one of the finest documentary filmmakers to have ever held a camera in his hands. Santiago Alvarez has made films that are kinetically exciting, formally innovative, intellectually rigorous, and emotionally satisfying.”
-- Toronto Festival of Festivals
"Urgent" is the word -- this collection of howling shorts showcases the revolutionary, D.I.Y. found-footage creation of Alvarez, who in addition to making hundreds of ephemeral reports as the head of Communist Cuba's newsreel company, made his own pioneering political statements on film, often using no more than a scrap of footage, a few magazine pages and a rumba record. Here are scalding montage assaults on American power that make most political filmmakers since look limp-wristed. Although in various circles, and in Cuba, Alvarez is kinda legendary, he's unknown generally; still, he is the "reappropriationist" outsider-mentor to Baldwin ("Tribulation 99") and an entire generation of radical "bricolage" artists to come after.--Michael Atkinson, IFCPraise for Travis Wilkerson’s “Accelerated Under-Development”
“Wilkerson himself is a filmmaker of the American left and his passion for Alvarez’ work as a living example is powerfully felt. His film sweeps us into the director’s world, not held back for one moment by a production disaster that would have devastated other filmmakers.”
-- Rotterdam Film Festival
“A manifesto of ingenious do-it-yourself… A profession of faith in film as a public resource… It is an agitated, noisy film, but its hustle and bustle and its din are just the echo of the rumbling of worlds that are exploited, enslaved, and silenced.”
-- Marseilles Film Festival
Disc One
• 8 incredible films from Santiago Alavarez:Now | Cerro Pelado | Hanoi Martes 13 | Hasta la Victoria Siempre | L.B.J. | 79 Primeraveras | El Sueno del Pongo | El Tigre Salto y Mato…Morira…Morira
Disc Two
• Travis Wilkerson’s “Accerlerated Under-Development”
• A special photo gallery of Santiago Alvarez, from childhood up to the late 1980s
• An abbreviated filmographyThis DVD set is NTSC, Region 0 (playable worldwide). For commercial exhibition rates, please contact info@othercinemaDVD.com
Links
Article on the films of Santiago Alvarez
IMDB entry on Santiago Alvarez
Reviews
IFC review best film to go direct to DVD in 2009
By Michael Atkinson
A Prolific Filmmaker's Inventive Newsreel Agitprop
By Tom Charity (Village Voice)
He Who Hits First...
By Michael Connor (Austin Chronicle)home • about OCD • DVD titles • contact • store • Other Cinema Calendar
