The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) was created on August 6, 1959. Its foundation was not only an administrative act, but a declaration of principles: cinema as a tool for social transformation, education and a weapon of cultural resistance.
Before 1959, cinema in Cuba was dominated by foreign productions (mainly American and Mexican) and few national works with limited reach. The film industry was incipient and commercial, without a defined artistic or political vision.
The Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, understood that cinema was a mass means to build identity and consciousness. ICAIC was born under Law 169, becoming the first cultural institution created by the revolutionary government, even before the Ministry of Culture.
Alfredo Guevara, its first president, was key in shaping ICAIC as a space for artistic avant-garde and social criticism. Under his direction, the institute promoted political and revolutionary cinema with documentaries by illustrious figures such as Santiago Álvarez.
Films such as ‘Memories of Underdevelopment‘ (1968, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea) explored contradictions in post-revolutionary Cuban society. The training of new filmmakers took place in schools and workshops, breaking with the elitism of traditional cinema.
The ICAIC as a cultural trench, in the midst of the Cold War and under the US blockade, became a bastion of anti-imperialist culture. It promoted collaborations with Latin American cinema (such as the Argentinean Fernando Birri or the Bolivian Jorge Sanjinés) and defended a non-commercial, but deeply popular cinema.
Its contribution is indisputable, with more than 1,200 documentaries and 150 feature films in his first decades, festivals such as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema (created in 1979), and figures such as Humberto Solás (‘Lucía’), Sara Gómez (‘De cierta manera’) and Julio García Espinosa (‘Por un cine imperfecto’).
The history of ICAIC allows us to discuss art as an instrument of change, the limits between creation and propaganda, and the role of cinema in collective memory.
Today, in the face of new technological and economic challenges, its legacy continues to be a critical mirror of Cuba, and a way of showing new ways of doing things.
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