Still/teaser from "La obra del siglo", courtesy of m-appeal
Activity
Wednesday May 7, 2025
La obra del siglo, by Carlos Quintela
Memory Is a Shattered Landscape: Independent Cuban Film Series
La obra del siglo [The Project of the Century] (2015) explores the ruins of a utopian project, the Juraguá nuclear power station, planned in the eighties and abandoned after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Documentary shots of the unfinished construction of the power station collide with a contemporary fiction set in the city built for its workers. In these ruined dwellings, Carlos Quintela examines the scars on the human and geographical landscape of one of the many lost futures of the Cuban Revolution.Amid a plague of mosquitoes, Leonardo returns to his family home as he copes with the breakup of his relationship. There he has to live with a grandfather who is at war with everything and a father imbued with the melancholy of the unfinished. In a town that at one time aimed to become the centre of the Soviet nuclear project in the Caribbean, the few remaining vestiges of that world weigh heavily on these lonely men who, unlike their pet fish Benjamín, have yet to learn to breathe underwater.
Presentation and Q&A conducted by Carlos Quintela, director of “La obra del siglo” and José Luis Aparicio, curator of the film series.
19:00 – 19:15 h
Introduction by José Luis Aparicio, curator of the cycle Memory is a Shattered Landscape.
19:15 – 20:55 h
Screening of La obra del siglo (The Work of the Century), Carlos Quintela, 2015, Argentina, Cuba, OV, 100’, digital screening.
20:55 – 21:30 h
Post-screening discussion with Carlos Quintela and José Luis Aparicio.
this activity is part of
participants
José Luis Aparicio 
Carlos M. Quintela
artists
2 artists
From May 23, 2025 to January 11, 2026