A Italy and Cuba: a cinematic bonding

Italy and Cuba, the cinema that unites us seeks to comment on and inventory the aspects and elements of Italian cinema that have had the greatest impact on Cuban cinema and on the island’s culture. This is a historical tour of the arrival and de-velopment of the cinematograph in Cuba, the cinematographic consumption and its increase in the 20th century, focusing on the presence of Italian cinema on the island’s screens. It also examines the influence of Italian cinematographic art on the young creators of the new Cuban cinema, who would later found the cinema of the Revolution. It focuses on the Italian artists who collaborated with post-1959 Cuban cinema, such as Mario Gallo, Otello Martelli and especially Cesare Zavattini, who consolidat-ed the Italian neorealist imprint in the first Cuban productions and contributed to the professional training of several Cuban filmmakers in Cinecittà (Tomás, Gutiérrez Alea, Julio García Espinosa, Humberto Solás, Enrique Manet, Tomás Milián).