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Clase Z "Tropical"(Class Z Tropical) is a Cuban short film directed by Miguel Coyula. The film is a parody of Hollywood's action blockbusters using the typical trailer of a B-movie. The director deconstructs action melodrama formulas using the structure of a trailer. The movie contains frantic pacing, use of split screens, and dark humor, and the short gained notable popularity in Cuban Film Festivals where Coyula won several awards. The short is 6 minutes long and has been aired on Cuban TV Shows several times since its release in 2000. Coyula described the film a part of a series of experiments in genre the director made before completing the feature length Red Cockroaches.
Miguel Coyula Aquino is a Cuban filmmaker and writer. At age 17, he made his first short with a VHS camcorder, which led to his admittance to Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba (EICTV). Since then he has won awards in his country with his short films Bailar Sobre Agujas (1999), Buena Onda, (1999), and Clase Z "Tropical" (2000). His work has always been shot on very low budgets, his features taking several years to complete, using heavy digital manipulation in postproduction.
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not an arthouse film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature. Although the U.S. production of movies intended as second features largely ceased by the end of the 1950s, the term B movie continues to be used in its broader sense to this day. In its post-Golden Age usage, there is ambiguity on both sides of the definition: on the one hand, the primary interest of many inexpensive exploitation films is prurient; on the other, many B movies display a high degree of craft and aesthetic ingenuity.
Red Cockroaches is a Cuban film released in 2003. This feature film was the debut production of Miguel Coyula and was the result of a two-year effort on a tiny budget of $2,000. Shot entirely using a portable digital camcorder and edited on a home computer, Red Cockroaches is an example of DIY cinema. In its review, Variety called it a "A triumph of technology in the hands of a visionary with know-how..." It is the first of a planned trilogy which continues with Corazon Azul.
