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.’

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