Cecilia (1982 film)

Cecilia is a 1982 Cuban drama film directed by Humberto Sols. The film is based on the novel Cecilia Valds by Cirilo Villaverde. It was entered into the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.

Solss 1982 megaproduction, the most expensive project undertaken by ICAIC to date, was released simultaneously as a sixhour miniseries for Spanish television, a fourhour motion picture for Cuban audiences, and a twohour film for international release. According to Michael Chanan, no Cuban film ever prodded a raw nerve more insistently that this one, revealing in the process the dangers of interfering with certain types of cultural icons. Critics were unanimous in their outrage and disgust at Solss versin libre of a canonical work and, yet, Sols consistently spoke of Cecilia as a successful film in personal terms until his death in 2008.Sols erased the most shocking element of the novel that, unbeknownst to them, Cecilia and Leonardo were sister and brother and, thus, incestuous lovers and inserted, instead, a subtext that emphasizes Santera as the force that shapes the destiny of the characters. While the film shares with the novel an abolitionist stance and an abhorrence of the racist practices that permeated colonial Cuban society, it highlights the importance of religious syncretism and transculturation in a way that Villaverdes work could not. ........

Source: Wikipedia