Banal Nationalism in Contemporary Cuban Cinema

This paper takes a number of Cuban films from 1968-2012 and looks at how specific locations help illustrate certain issues concerning gender relations that emerge from them. From Diego’s apartment in Fresa y chocolate to the Castillo de los Tres Reyes Magos del Morro, Cuba’s distinctive spaces have been used as locations that emphasise notions of gender in a nation with a patriarchal history. It becomes obvious when looking at these examples that the spaces illustrative of male heterosexual dominance are the more public spaces while the spaces of the female and of homosexuality are the more private spaces.