Sergio Giral

Sergio Giral is a film director.

Between 1953 and 1959 he studied primary and secondary levels in the United States, where he simultaneously studied painting at the Art Students League. He is the son of an American woman.

In 1959 he returns to Cuba and begins engineering studies which he abandons to dedicate himself to cinema. Two years later he already works at ICAIC as an assistant director and editing director.

He makes his fiction debut in 1964 with the short film La jaula, a dramatization of a real case of schizophrenia.

His entry into feature films takes place ten years later with El otro Francisco, which is inspired by the Cuban anti-slavery novel written by Anselmo Suárez y Romero. With this film he begins his repeated forays into the history of slavery in Cuba, which includes fiction feature films such as Rancheador (1977), Maluala (1979), through to Plácido, in 1986.

In El otro Francisco he uses Brechtian methods to distance himself from the original text and impose a didacticism distinct from what the novel proposes. The trilogy formed by El otro Francisco, Rancheador and Maluala "is concerned with showing the development of consciousness from the singular to the collective, from individual resistance to collective struggle, from suicide to battle," according to the opinion of British film specialist Michael Chanan.

In 1982, with Techo de vidrio, Giral momentarily abandons historical films (he would return with Plácido) to address a controversial theme: the privileges of bureaucrats, social differences, and the complicated issue of State resource diversion.

His sixth feature film, and last film made in Cuba, was María Antonia, inspired by the homonymous theatrical work by Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, and which uses the republican past as a pretext to reflect sharply on the condition of women, the material deterioration of life in Cuba, prostitution, and the issue of race.

In 1990 he leaves Cuba and returns to live in the United States, where he founds the production company Giralmedia with which he makes fundamentally documentaries: The Broken Image (1995), Chronicle of an Ordinance (2000), The Way of the Orishas (2004), among others.

He has been a member of the jury at several film festivals, such as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in La Habana, the Damascus Film Festival in Syria and the Amiens Film Festival in France. His films have received several awards at different film festivals, both in Cuba and abroad.

Filmography
Heno y ensilaje (1962) – Documentary, 19 minutes
La jaula (1964) – Documentary, 18 minutes
Nuevo canto (1965) – Documentary, 13 minutes
Cimarrón (1967) – Documentary, 16 minutes
La muerte de Joe J. Jones (1967) – Documentary, 12 minutes
Anatomía de un accidente (1970) – Documentary, 23 minutes
Por accidente (1971) – Documentary, 23 minutes
Querer y poder (1973) – Documentary, 16 minutes
[Qué bueno canta usted (1973) – Documentary, 30 minutes
El otro Francisco (1974) – Fiction, 100 minutes
Rancheador (1976) – Fiction, 95 minutes
Maluala (1977) – Fiction, 75 minutes
Techo de vidrio (1982) – Fiction, 91 minutes
Plácido (1986) – Fiction
María Antonia (1990) – Fiction, 111 minutes
Dos Veces Ana (2010) - Fiction, 100 minutes