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Twelve Chairs
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea | Cuba | 1962 | 91 min.

Adapted from the comic novel by Russian authors Ilf and Petrov, Twelve Chairs follows a greedy merchant, an artful revolutionary and a shifty priest in their madcap attempts to find an English chair in which a wealthy old woman hid her jewels shortly before her death. Set immediately after the Revolution in Cuba, the film is pure burlesque in its treatment of revolutionaries, counterrevolutionaries and how greed affects them both.

New York Premiere, 1995 Human Rights Watch Festival. Distributed by Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC) Calle 23 No. 1155, Vedado, La Habana, Cuba, Tel: (53 7) 3 90 13 Fax: (53 7) 33 30 78.

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea


(Second from left) The foremost director in Cuba today, Gutiérrez Alea is known for his satirical critiques of government bureaucracy from "inside" the Revolution. Unwavering in his commitment to Cuba's Marxist Revolution, Gutiérrez Alea has been criticized abroad for being apolitical and for not taking on Castro's policies more fully. Gutiérrez Alea states that he agrees "with the Revolution. I'm not going to question it because I'm not interested in doing that. Now, within the Revolution there are things that I know can be improved, that are not right, and I'm interested in revealing these things."

It is the struggle within the Revolution that gives Gutiérrez Alea the inspiration for his films.

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