Actors from "Strawberry and Chocolate" celebrate 30 years of the iconic film at La Guarida

December 16, 2023

The meeting place was one of the film's locations, which has become one of the most renowned restaurants in Havana. Members of the production team also participated in the celebration.

Actors from the cast of Strawberry and Chocolate, one of the iconic films of Cuban cinema, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the film directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Titón) and Juan Carlos Tabío.

The meeting place was La Guarida, one of the film's locations that has become one of the most renowned restaurants in Havana. There, "the cultural importance of the film" and "its impact on Cuban society" were recalled, according to the CubaActores website.

Vladimir Cruz (David), one of the film's protagonists alongside Jorge Perugorría (Diego), celebrated three decades of the film with Mirtha Ibarra (Nancy) and Joel Angelino (Germán).

The report notes that among those in attendance were members of the production team, as well as family members of the cast and filmmakers.

The main music of Strawberry and Chocolate came to life once again at the hands of pianist José María Vitier. Additionally, the documentary Silencio… se filma Fresa y Chocolate by filmmaker Rebeca Chávez was screened, an audiovisual that reveals behind-the-scenes secrets and production anecdotes.

La Guarida also served as a space for the staging of El velorio de Rocco, directed and starring Patricia Rodda. It is her adaptation of the original text Good bye, Rocco, by Jorge Perugorría and Juan Carlos Tabío.

Strawberry and Chocolate is born from the short story El Lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo by Senel Paz, for which he won the Juan Rulfo prize. In this piece, the writer—and later screenwriter of the film—delves into one of the dark pages of the island's recent history, marked by exclusion and intolerance.

The film, which brought to the big screen the discrimination suffered by homosexuals in the first decades of the Cuban Revolution, received a nomination for the coveted Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Its directors later won important awards in Berlin, New York, Madrid, Havana, and Gramado.

Story of two men and a long tradition

With a body of work dedicated in large part to the history of Cuba, Titón transcended internationally, not only because of his committed theoretical ideology, but also because of works considered today "classics" within Cuban and Latin American cinema such as Memories of Underdevelopment, The Survivors, and The Last Supper, among others.

For critic and researcher Juan Antonio García Borrero, the cinema of Gutiérrez Alea, who died in Havana in 1996, spoke of a utopia, dreamed of seeing the utopia realized, "and also had time to admit that a utopia will never go beyond articulating, in a very precarious way and always with a provisional character, what Chantal Mouffe calls conflictual consensus".