One Way or Another (De Cierta Manera)

One Way or Another (De Cierta Manera)

feminist, Latin/x, Cuban, revolutionary, Third Cinema, fake documentary, woman director, Social Realism

I love to teach this film in feminist documentary because of its groudbreaking integration of documetary and fiction as well as for Gomez's important role as a woman and feminist and radical filmmaker within Third and Cuban cinema.

Tricontinental Film Center

1974

Stars Yolanda Cuéllar, Mario Balmaseda, Mario Limonta

“Sara Gómez’s Revolutionary Cuba” film collection on the Criterion Channel. (Requires subscription.)

VHS

Spanish dialogue, with English documentary voice over and subtitles.

The only feature from the radical Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez—who also worked as an assistant director with Agnès Varda and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea before her untimely death at age thirty-one—is an extraordinary portrait of post-revolution Cuba. Blending invaluable documentary footage with a loose narrative about the budding relationship between an outspoken schoolteacher (Yolanda Cuellar) and a young worker (Mario Balmaseda) facing a moral crisis, One Way or Another depicts revolution as an ongoing process that takes place at the level of community—among friends, lovers, coworkers, teachers, students, and parents, all of whom must work together to negotiate a new social order. Above all, Gómez offers a trenchant intersectional critique of the lingering sexism and machismo that, she argues, must be cleared away in order to create a truly just society. -Janus Films

De Cierta Manera

"In Miraflores, Cuba, the growing romance between Mario, a factory worker, and Yolanda, a schoolteacher, throws into relief the differences in their perspectives and values in Revolutionary Cuba." (IMDB)

1977 (filmed in 1974 but not released till 1977, following Gómez’s death)

Original spanish language audio/text version

74 minutes

Reframing Revolution: The Cinema of Sara Gómez, edited by Susan Lord and María Daridad Cumaná 

The Brief and Brilliant Career of Sara Gómez, by Richard Brody published January 31st 2025 in the New Yorker

35 mm

74 minutes

Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos

Sara Gómez

https://brooklyn-cuny.yuja.com/V/Video?v=11712673&node=51518987&a=186594729