The Other Christopher

El otro Cristóbal

When Findel Castro invited Armand Gatti to Cuba for the shooting of a movie, the director introduced himself to the “welcoming committee” as someone who came “to win the war against Spain with his camera.” Defying all expectations and challenging the limits of unconditional freedom, Gatti submitted a surreal criticism towards the prevailing regime, with the hero being a convict who organizes a small uprising and eventually confronts a dictator. In an irony of History, the movie was filmed during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Armand Gatti
Script: Armand Gatti, Adam Ulrych
Cinematography: Henri Alekan
Editing: Julio Montelogo
Music: Gilbert Valdes
Production: I.C.A.I.C. (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematograficos)
Sets: Hubert Monloup
Format: 35mm
Color: B&W
Production Country: Cuba
Production Year: 1963
Duration: 115'
Contact: Jean-Jacques Hocquard (La Parole errante)
Awards/Distinctions: Prix de la Société des écrivains de cinéma et de télévision, 1963

Armand Gatti

One of the most acclaimed theater writer/directors of the 20th century, Gatti was originally a member of the informal Left Bank group of filmmakers that included Alain Resnais, Chris Marker and Agnès Varda, but remains an elusive figure for many cinephiles. He was born in 1924 in a shantytown in Monaco to Auguste Rainier an Italian anarchist from Piedmont, who escaped murder in a Chicago slaughterhouse because of his political activities and fled Benito Mussolini’s regime and to Letizia Lusona a maid. During World War II, Gatti joined a small French resistance maquis. Captured, tortured, and sentenced to a concentration camp in Hamburg where he was forced to work in a diving bell at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, he eventually escaped and joined a British Special Air Service special forces team. After the war, he worked as an award-winning journalist for many years until he traveled with Marker, published his first plays, and directed his first film, Enclosure (L'Enclos, 1961). He was awarded the French Legion of Honour in 1999, the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004 and the Grand prix du théâtre from the Académie française in 2013. He died on April 6, 2017.

Filmography

1961 L’ enclos | The Enclosure
1963 El otro Cristóbal | The Other Christopher
1969 Der Übergang über den Ebro | The Ebro Crossing
1983 Nous étions tous des noms d'arbres | The Writing on the Wall