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Reboiro, [Antonio Fernandez].

Despegue a las 1800[.] Documental de Santiago Alvarez.

[Havana, Cuba: ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos), 1969]. Color silkscreen, 29” x 19”. Artist’s monogram and date in lower-right margin. Pencil note relating to framing on verso. CONDITION: Very good, two small remnants of cloth tape hinges on verso, very small tear and loss to paper by hinge remnant at upper-right corner, faint ink cracks along a few short creases.

A scarce, dazzling poster for the 1969 film Despegue a las 18:00 by acclaimed Cuban director Santiago Álvarez.

The title of the documentary is spelled out in Art-Nouveau-style lettering across the top of this kaleidoscopically colored poster. Beneath the title, three palm trees rise above an enormous pineapple and a swirling cornucopia of fruits—a banana, a mango, a stalk of sugar cane, etc.—and psychedelic flowers.

Takeoff at 18:00 (1969) by Cuban director Santiago Álvarez (1919–1998) is a forty-one minute, black and white documentary produced by the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC) depicting the “Intensive efforts by workers in the province of Oriente [Cuba] during the Girón Day in 1968 to solve the economic problems of underdevelopment” (“Despegue”). Toronto News praised the film as “one of the finest documentaries ever made, an arrow that hits the target, using all the possible tools of the medium to communicate its revolutionary message.” In 1969, it won First Prize, “Golden Peacock,” at the Fourth International Film Festival in New Delhi, India.

Álvarez, a founding member of ICAIC and director of its weekly Latin American Newsreel, is described by the Austrian Film Museum as “a maker of Pop Art—of Agit Pop Art, to be exact. His films are like posters, loud, exciting, thrilling and disturbing, but above all: clear. With him, the Cuban Revolution found a filmmaker who gave cinematic credibility to its political potential and eroticism” (“Santiago Álvarez”).

Born in Cuba, Antonio Fernández Reboiro (b. 1935)—known simply as “Reboiro”—is a graphic artist. After studying architecture and design at the University of Havana, he began working as a poster designer for the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry in 1964, just five years after it was founded. The ICAIC issued posters for every movie made in Cuba as well as for foreign movies screened there. At the Poster Expo of the Cannes International Film Festival in 1975, Reboiro won the Grand Prix. He has lived in Spain since 1982 and continues to work as a graphic artist in a range of media.

OCLC records just one example at the Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José Martí (the digital record is managed by the University of Florida).

REFERENCES: “Despegue a las 18:00 (1969)” at Enciclopedia Digital Del Audiovisual Cubano online; “Notes from the Preservation Lab: The Antonio Fernandez Reboiro Collection,” Newsletter of the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries (July 2011) at Pregones online; “Santiago Álvarez: Now” at Austrian Film Museum online.

Provenance: Estate of Carol Brightman, author, co-founder of the leftist periodicals Viet-Report and Leviathan, and one of the leaders of the Venceremos Brigade.

Item #9228

Price: $350.00

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