Santiago Alvarez
26 min
Cuba 1969

‘I am a product of accelerated underdevelopment... the Cuban Revolution made me a film director. I learnt the job fondly handling millions of feet of film’. Santiago Alvarez

In 1969, Alvarez was invited by to Hanoi by the Communist government of North Vietnam to film the funeral of Ho Chi Minh. 79 Springtimes is a tribute to the revered leader of the Viet Min independence movement who had defeated French Indochina and founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It’s title refers to Minh’s age at the time of his death. The justly celebrated 12 minute sequence in which newsreel footage of soldiers is destroyed exemplifies Alvarez’s declaration that ‘my style is the style of hatred for Imperialism.’

Santiago Álvarez
(1919–98) Cuba

Santiago Álvarez Román was a Cuban filmmaker. From 1965 onwards, as the director of the short films division of the state financed ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinemato gráficos) in Havana, Alvarez directed a series of essay-films that used music in the place of direct sound or narration; his principle of musical montage which counterpointed aural and visual rhythms effectively rejuvenated the tradition of Eisensteinian montage and influenced militant cinema throughout America, Europe and India.

(1) Photo of Santiago Álvarez in ICAIC office © courtesy of Anthology Film Archives
(2) Cuban poster for 79 Primaveras