Cuban Filmmaker Sergio Giral Dies in Miami

March 14, 2024

Starting in 1961, Giral developed commendable work as a documentalist and filmmaker exploring the role of African roots in Cuban culture. As a filmmaker, Giral was a pioneer in exploring our most marginalized cultural narratives thanks to his ancestral African origins.

Cuban filmmaker Sergio Giral died this Tuesday in Miami, according to family sources, at the age of 87. The cause of his death has not been disclosed so far.

Born in 1937, Giral completed his primary and secondary education in the United States since his mother was American. Upon returning to Cuba, he began studying Agronomy, but abandoned it to dedicate himself entirely to cinema.

As a member of the founding generation of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic), starting in 1961 Giral developed commendable work as a documentalist and filmmaker exploring the role of African roots in Cuban culture.

His work as a director is reflected in films such as El otro Francisco (1974), Rancheador (1976), Maluala (1977), Plácido (1986), and María Antonia (1990), the latter based on the homonymous theatrical work by Eugenio Hernández Espinosa.

He also directed documentaries such as Cimarrón (1967) and Qué bueno canta usted (1973).

His film Techo de vidrio (1982) was censored in Cuba until its release at the end of the 1980s.

He had resided in Miami since the 1990s, where he remained active as part of the Cuban artistic community in exile, according to the Cuban Filmmakers Assembly (ACC).

Sergio Giral's María Antonia, interpreted by Alina Rodríguez in the homonymous 1990 film with which the director brilliantly closed his filmography in Cuba, shortly before returning to the United States.

As a filmmaker, Giral was a pioneer in exploring our most marginalized cultural narratives thanks to his ancestral African origins. Along with Sara Gómez and Nicolás Guillén Landrián, he became one of the most respected Black directors making cinema at an institution like ICAIC.

Although the plot, based on a theatrical work, dates back to the 1950s, María Antonia is a kind of "new woman." In the final sequence, the film takes an unexpected and extraordinary turn when the "sinner" gets out of a modern car in a sensual battle outfit as if returning from the arena of the world's oldest profession. Alina Rodríguez's character could be the first "jinetera" on the big screen.

With María Antonia, Sergio Giral was again speculating with the indiscretion that caused so much trouble with Techo de vidrio in 1980.

The screenwriter of Techo de vidrio, which deals with a case of embezzlement and corruption, pale in comparison with later real events, was novelist Manuel Cofiño.

In 1995 Giral released his revealing documentary La imagen rota, where he managed to bring together numerous Cuban exiled artists connected to cinema. These are impeccable testimonies about the ordeals they had to suffer when they thought that with the creation of ICAIC in 1959, a path of prosperity and freedom for cinematography on the Island would open.

There are personalities already deceased such as Alberto Roldán, Mario García Joya, Roberto Fandiño, and Ramón Suárez, and true living classics among which are Orlando Jiménez Leal, Fausto Canel, Miñuca and Fernando Villaverde, as well as Eduardo Palmer, among others, with valuable testimonies expressing the impossibility of making cinema without democracy.

His death is a sensitive loss for Cuban culture, and has prompted messages of grief over his passing and condolences to his family and loved ones.