The Last Supper
Spanish with English subtitles.
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
During the late 18th century in Cuba, a Spanish count and owner of a sugar mill decides to hold a dinner during Holy Week with twelve of his slaves as an allegory of Jesus with his twelve apostles at the Last Supper. When racial inferiority is predicated as “God’s will” and exploitation exceeds what the human soul can bare, a slave uprising threatens the fate of the sugar plantation.
With this fictional story, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, one of Cuba’s most renowned directors, presents how religion and politics naturalized the crimes and abuses inherent in slavery.
“…a fine, cool, almost detached political parable told entirely in religious terms. (…) The Last Supper is about death resurrection, not only about the death and resurrection of freedom, but also of repression.” (Vincent Canby, The New York Times, 1978)
