Humberto Solás

The story of Cecilia is a story of the society that dominated 19th-century Cuba, a society divided between whites, blacks, and those who were mixed, the mulattos. (Since the Spanish conquistadors killed off the Indian population in Cuba not long after they took over the island, there are no mestizos, or those of mixed-Indian blood in Cuba as in other Caribbean nations.) At any rate, the drama about the life and loves of Cecilia (Daisy Granados) takes place against the backdrop of graphically violent mistreatment of slaves and the rumors of a slave rebellion after the Cubans hear of slaves turning against their captors in Haiti.

Traces episodes in the lives of three Cuban women, each named Lucía, from three different historical periods: the 1890s, the 1930s, and the 1960s.

Over several years, we follow three households and their emotions in a barrio of Havana. Magalis is a nurse, rarely happy. An older man, Ignacio, professes his love for her; her father and her brother quarrel over her brother's sexual orientation; she thinks about leaving Cuba. Santo's wife Maria is expecting their first child. Tragedy strikes and Santo leaves, drowning sorrows in alcohol and crime while his son grows up in the care of an aunt wondering where dad is. Vivian and Chino are in love, passionate, but childless. The pressures of a society that demands grandchildren strain their relationship.

Director Humberto Solás, along with the leading ladies Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Núñez and Adela Legrá, recall important moments of this classic of Latin American cinema, 'Lucía' (1968).

SIMPARELE is history interpreted through people's art. The film synthesizes the primary forms through which the Haitian people have expressed themselves in the centuries since the island's colonization by the French and the massive importation of African slaves to fuel its plantation economy. It is a composite of dance, theatrical tableaux, poetry, song, folk painting, legend and religious ritual. SIMPARELE acknowledges the powerful role which Afro-Haitian culture has played in these people's political struggle as both repository for people's history and the raw material from which that history can be reconstructed and transformed.

It is the story of a young man named Esteban, who was totally devoted to the cause of the Revolution against Fulgencio Batista. One day, Esteban is diagnosed with a cerebral aneurism, which causes him to take stock of his life as a revolutionary and to reconsider his relationships to his family--to his mother and brother, particularly--and his friends.

Javier Argüelles, an opportunistic young man from Cuban middle class, survives all kind of political changes in Havana, from 1932 to 1959, while his brother Darío is persecuted and killed because of his leftist ideas.

During the last days of the struggle against dictator Fulgencio Batista, a young peasant woman joins the guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra.