Santiago Alvarez – He Who Hits First, Hits Twice

The 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, Alvarez 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 Praise 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. 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 Praise 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.