| The Life of Juanita Castro | |
|---|---|
 Movie poster | |
| Directed by | Andy Warhol |
| Written by | Ronald Tavel |
| Starring | Marie Menken Ultra Violet Mercedes Ospina Ronald Tavel |
| Distributed by | Andy Warhol Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 66 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Life of Juanita Castro is a 1965 American underground film directed by Andy Warhol, filmed in March 1965 based on the absurdist theater play by Ronald Tavel by the same name.
A playwright (Ronald Tavel) taunts a number of actresses into improvising a play on Fidel Castro and his family, at a time when the revolution was bringing back disquieting stories of executions and imprisonments and, particularly, virulent hatred and torture of homosexuals in Cuba.
Several of the play's male characters (Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, and Che Guevara) are played by women. The actresses face a camera they believe is filming them, while in fact they are being filmed by another camera placed off to one side. At times they are directed by Tavel to perform pointless acts in unison.
According to New York Times drama reviewer Tom Vick, the film "rewrites history as a high-camp farce," poking fun at machismo and totalitarianism. [1]
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a Cuban retired politician and general who served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most senior position in the one-party communist state, from 2011 to 2021, and President of Cuba between 2008 and 2018, succeeding his brother Fidel Castro.
Granma is a yacht that was used to transport 82 fighters of the Cuban Revolution from Mexico to Cuba in November 1956 to overthrow the regime of Fulgencio Batista. The 60-foot diesel-powered vessel was built in 1943 by Wheeler Shipbuilding of Brooklyn, New York, as a light armored target practice boat, US Navy C-1994, and modified postwar to accommodate 12 people. "Granma", in English, is an affectionate term for a grandmother; the yacht is said to have been named for the previous owner's grandmother.
Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, better known as Alberto Korda or simply Korda, was a Cuban photographer, remembered for his famous image Guerrillero Heroico of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.
Fidel is a 2002 mini-series by David Attwood that describes the Cuban revolution and political career of Fidel Castro. The total duration of the film is 200 minutes, but the video-version is shorter. Gael García Bernal would later reprise his role as Che Guevara in the film The Motorcycle Diaries.
Che! is a 1969 American biographical film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Omar Sharif as Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. It follows Guevara from when he first landed in Cuba in 1956 to his death in Bolivia in 1967, although the film does not portray the formative pre-Cuban revolution sections of Che's life as described in the autobiographical book The Motorcycle Diaries (1993).
Chelsea Girls is a 1966 American experimental underground film directed by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey. The film was Warhol's first major commercial success after a long line of avant-garde art films. It was shot at the Hotel Chelsea and other locations in New York City, and follows the lives of several of the young women living there, and stars many of Warhol's superstars. The film is presented in a split screen, accompanied by alternating soundtracks attached to each scene and an alternation between black-and-white and color photography. The original cut runs at just over three hours long.
The Lost City is a 2005 American drama film directed by Andy García. It stars García, Dustin Hoffman, Inés Sastre and Bill Murray.
The Cuban Revolution was the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's regime by the 26th of July Movement and the establishment of a new Cuban government led by Fidel Castro in 1959.
Ronald Tavel was an American gay screenwriter, director, novelist, poet and actor, best known for his work with Andy Warhol and The Factory and The Theatre of the Ridiculous. Tavel was the founder, with the director John Vaccaro, of the Playhouse of the Ridiculous. He received the Obie Award for Outstanding Contribution to Theater in 1969 for the musical drama Boy On the Straight-Back Chair. He also wrote a novel about the pederastic experiences of an expatriate in Tangier Morocco called Street of Stairs published by Olympia Press in 1968.
Lisa Howard was an American journalist, writer, and television news anchor who previously had a career as an off-Broadway and soap opera actress. In the early 1960s, she became ABC News's first woman reporter, and was the first woman to have her own national network television news show. Howard developed a relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, whom she met to interview, and was a go-between for a time between Castro and the American White House. Her network career ended when she became openly involved in the 1964 United States Senate election in New York. In 1965, Howard suffered a miscarriage and depression, dying of an overdose of painkillers.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.
Johnny Dodd was an off-off-Broadway lighting designer for theater, dance and music concerts in the downtown art scene in Lower Manhattan during the latter half of the 20th century. He designed lighting for Judson Poets Theater, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the Theater for the New City and the glam rock band New York Dolls. He also acted in underground art films and plays and in 1973 directed the Anthony Clarvoe play City of Light based on the City of Light novel by Lauren Belfer.
Fidel Castro proclaimed himself to be "a socialist, and Marxist–Leninist". As a Marxist–Leninist, Castro believed strongly in converting Cuba, and the wider world, from a capitalist system in which individuals own the means of production into a socialist system in which the means of production are owned by the workers. In the former, there is a class divide between the wealthy classes who control the means of production and the poorer working classes who labor on them, whilst in the latter, there is a decreasing class divide as the government redistributes the means of production leading to communism. Castro used Leninist thought as a model upon which to convert the Cuban state and society into a socialist form.
Che'r Cycle (2009) is a Bangladeshi Bengali-language stage drama written by Mamunur Rashid, who himself played the main character, directed by Faiz Zahir staged by Bangla Theatre from Dhaka as a tribute to Che Guevara.
Kitchen is a 1966 feature-length underground film directed by Andy Warhol and Ronald Tavel, and starring Edie Sedgwick, Rene Ricard, Tavel, Roger Trudeau, David McCabe, Donald Lyons, and Electrah. The entire film takes place in the New York City kitchen of Bud Wirtschafter, the sound man.
Harlot is a 1964 American underground film directed by Andy Warhol, written by Ronald Tavel, and featuring Mario Montez lounging on a sofa, eating bananas, with Gerard Malanga in a tuxedo, and with Tavel, Billy Name, and Harry Fainlight having an off-screen discussion. This was Warhol's first sync-sound movie, filmed in December 1964 with his new Auricon camera.
Space (1965) is an underground film directed by Andy Warhol, written by Ronald Tavel, and starring Edie Sedgwick, Gino Piserchio, Dorothy Dean, Ed Hennessey, singer-songwriter Eric Andersen, and Norman Levine. Unlike many of Warhol's other films made at The Factory, this film involved a moving camera, moving around the actors as they stood still.
Aníbal Escalante Dellundé was a Cuban communist and political organizer. An early leader within the Popular Socialist Party (PSP), he briefly held national office in Cuba following the Cuban revolution but was purged due, in part, to his "old-line" Marxist orthodoxy. He was later imprisoned over allegations he was plotting with the Soviet Union to orchestrate the overthrow of the Fidel Castro-led Cuban government.
The consolidation of the Cuban Revolution is a period in Cuban history typically defined as starting in the aftermath of the revolution in 1959 and ending in the first congress of the Communist Party of Cuba 1975, which signified the final political solidification of the Cuban revolutionaries' new government. The period encompasses early domestic reforms, human rights violations continuing under the new regime, growing international tensions, and politically climaxed with the failure of the 1970 sugar harvest.
The Huber Matos affair was a political scandal in Cuba when on October 20, 1959, army commander Huber Matos resigned and accused Fidel Castro of "burying the revolution". Fifteen of Matos' officers resigned with him. Immediately after the resignation, Castro critiqued Matos and accused him of disloyalty, then sent Camilo Cienfuegos to arrest Matos and his accompanying officers. Matos and the officers were taken to Havana and imprisoned in La Cabaña. Cuban communists later claimed Matos was helping plan a counter-revolution organized by the American Central Intelligence Agency and other Castro opponents, an operation that became the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
 | This article related to an American film of the 1960s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
