Groundbreaking and hugely celebrated for numerous reasons Cuba's greatest director Thomas Guiterrez Alea's (Memories Of Underdevlopment) Strawberry And Chocolate (Fresa Y Chocolate) was the first Cuban film ever to receive an Academy Award nomination thanks to its revelatory plot masterful direction and phenomenally crafted performances. Diego a cultivated apolitical sceptical young artist living in Havana initiates a friendship with fiercely communist homophobe David with the intention of seducing him. David knowing this allows the relationship to build so he can... spy on a person he sees as aberrant and dangerous to the communist cause. Despite their conflicting sexualities and political ideologies the two slowly build a relationship out of their differences proving that camaraderie and friendship can overcome the most divisive superficialities. An exploration into the seduction of the mind Strawberry And Chocolate shows how politics can shape lives opinions and relationships. Hugely controversial in Cuba even now the film was the first to feature a gay man as the hero while openly criticising the Government and its widespread intolerance. It was this picture that started the dialogue that has only last year allowed Brokeback Mountain to be shown in Havana. Charming nuanced groundbreaking and thought provoking Strawberry And Chocolate is a clear-cut declaration that even in spite of politics love for your fellow man will always triumph if allowed to. [show more]
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The first film from Cuba with a gay perspective and critical of the Castro regime. This is a heart-warming story about solidarity between two very different people. David (Vladimir Cruz) is an uptight macho communist student at Havana University, who shortly after splitting from his girlfriend meets Diego (Jorge Perugorría), an extravagant gay artist with an irreverent attitude to Castro. Appalled by Diego's disrespectful attitude, David decides that it is his duty to convert him, and a friendship is born. Using attitudes towards homosexuality as an example of intolerance and bigotry, the film aims to encourage an understanding of the conflicts which emerge from a politically changing nation.
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