Ambrosio Fornet Frutos

Essayist, editorial advisor, professor and film screenwriter.

Native of Veguitas de Bayamo, current province of Granma.

Between 1957 and 1959 he took literature courses at New York University and at the Central University of Madrid.

For twenty years (1960-1980) he was linked to the Cuban editorial movement, serving successively as editor of the Ministry of Education, the National Editorial of Cuba and the magazine Universidad de La Habana.

He directed the Editorial Arte y Literatura between 1964 and 1971. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Universidad de La Habana. In addition to his work as a literary critic, he made essential contributions to two cultural topics: Cuban cinema and the history of the book on the Island.

His interest in the subject is reflected in the monograph El libro en Cuba (1994), a study of the Cuban editorial movement in the colonial era.

Between 1973 and 1976 he wrote and directed educational documentaries on literature topics for the Ministry of Education (Cecilia Valdés, La poesía de Nicolás Guillén, ¡Viva Cuba Libre!), and from 1979 until his retirement in 1992, he worked as a literary advisor and screenwriting professor at ICAIC, where he also worked as a screenwriter.

He taught screenwriting workshops for students in Quito, Caracas and Bogotá, as well as lectures at Universities in Latin America, the United States and Europe.

In collaboration with Susan Willis, he taught a course on Cuban cinema at Duke University of the University of North Carolina (USA) in 1999.

When founded in 1986, the International School of Film and Television (EICTV) of San Antonio de los Baños, he inaugurated the regular courses in Screenwriting and Dramaturgy and was editor of the magazine Mirada, as well as of several texts intended for teaching.

He has been an advisor and jury member for unpublished screenplays at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema (Havana) and of the Carmen Toscano Foundation (Mexico).

He is Associate Full Professor of the Superior Institute of Art (ISA) and member of the Cuban Academy of the Language.

Among his texts related to cinema stand out the compilations Cine, literatura, sociedad (1982), Alea: Una retrospectiva crítica (1987, definitive edition 1998) and El guionista y su oficio (1987).

He also prepared the volume Proyecciones: Apuntes sobre cine y sociedad (2008). His literary criticism and essays are collected in volumes such as Las máscaras del tiempo (1995) and Carpentier o la ética de la escritura (2006).

For his life's work he received the National Prize for Literature. He was a Numerary Member of the Cuban Academy of the Language, in which he directed the first research of its history, in addition to supporting various literary promotion and editorial projects. In recent years, due to his delicate health condition, he became an Academic

He was also recognized with the National Prize for Publishing. The distinctions Por la Cultura Nacional, Alejo Carpentier, Raúl Gómez García, Ciudad de Bayamo and José María Heredia.

Filmography
Screenplay
Mambí (1998)
A young Spanish man joins the forces fighting against the Cuban Liberating Army in the War of Independence. He meets a young Cuban patriot and falls in love, but she uses him for the benefit of the insurrection's interests. ...

Aquella larga noche (1979)
Aspects of the lives of revolutionary combatants Lidia Doce and Clodomira Acosta, provisioners and messengers of the guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra, until their capture, torture and death. ...

Retrato de Teresa (1979)
A textile worker, union delegate, becomes a cultural promoter. Her machista husband believes that these tasks take time away from her household duties and accuses her of negligence, but she reacts in defense of her emancipation. ...

Habanera (1984)
A psychiatrist, married with children, faces a marital crisis with an unconventional attitude that predicts new forms of coexistence. ...