Death of a Bureaucrat

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (1928-1996) is a world-renowned Cuban filmmaker. Gutiérrez's work is representative of a cinematic movement occurring in the 1960s and 1970s known collectively as the New Latin American Cinema. This collective movement, also referred to by various writers by specific names such as “Third Cinema”, “Cine Libre”, and “Imperfect Cinema,” was concerned largely with the problems of neocolonialism and cultural identity. The movement's main goal was to create films in which the viewer became an active, self-aware participant in the discourse of the film. Viewers were presented with an analysis of a current problem within society that as of that time had no clear solution, hoping to make the audience aware of the problem and to leave the theater willing to become actors of social change.

Gutiérrez was an unapologetic social critic and this short video clip from his first feature film Death of a Bureaucrat (1966) - widely understood to be an homage to cinematic comedy - depicts an assembly line delivering busts of Martí to an insatiable marketplace for representations of the Apostle. Perhaps questioning whether Martí, now divorced from his life and self, has become simply a useful decorative element for sale.

Examples of heroes who endure solely as icons abound all over the world. How many homes in the U.S. and elsewhere contain photos or prints with the image of John F. Kennedy, without the inhabitants actually knowing much about him or his ideas.

In this clip and the images that follow, we can see some of the many ways in which the image of Martí has infiltrated the culture-at-large.