IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 9 ENGLISH | Page 102

As young teenager from Santiago de
Cuba, she joined the Cuban Institute of
Cinematographic Art and Industry
(ICAIC), a universe of men with solid
intellectual formation. She made her
way by dint of talent, perseverance and,
above all, a deep human and artistic
sensibility that she cultivated alongside
renowned artists as Tomas Gutierrez
Alea, Jorge Fraga and Julio Garcia
Espinosa. She also had the opportunity
to accompany the prestigious French
film director Agnès Varda in her tour
across Cuba and collaborate with her in
the documentary Salut les cubains
(1963).
Sara worked as assistant director in the
films Cumbite (1964) and El robo
(1965), while starting her very
interesting and still virtually unknown
documentary work, in which she
sought, with astonishing naturalness and
simplicity, the roots, essences, and
traditions of the poorest Cubans.
Her work did not reproduce the
uplifting and complacent visions of epic
heroism on which both the national

history and the reality were focused at
that time. With masterful ability for
scrutinizing and expressing, she knew
how to enter —in a natural, unidealized,
and sensible manner— in the deepest
socio-psychological twists and turns of
a human conglomerate shaken by
profound structural changes and
advancing from sacrifice and hope
towards a new life horizon.
Nevertheless, she still managed herself
to capture personal and collective
traumas generated by the historical and
political situation. It will suffice a brief
analysis of some of her works to
appreciate the height and depth of her
aesthetic and conceptual quest.
In the documentary The other Island
(1968), Sara penetrated —through
interviews and testimonies— in the
concerns,
desires,
motivations,
expectations and frustrations of young
people who, in the late sixties and early
seventies, undertook agricultural and
productive tasks in Isle of Pines. Here
they faced the rigors of the historical
moment and the harsh life and work

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