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From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.movies,net.politics,net.motss
Subject: Almendros' IMPROPER CONDUCT
Message-ID: <1279@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 22-Jan-85 00:21:38 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1279
Posted: Tue Jan 22 00:21:38 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 04:44:21 EST
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
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Xref: watmath net.movies:5498 net.politics:7016 net.motss:1434

Nestor Almendros is best known as a cinematographer, much sought-after by
directors to give their films his beautiful but effortless patina.  Thus,
it is rather surprising to see his film, IMPROPER CONDUCT, directed along
with Orlando Jiminez Leal, a conventional documentary of "talking heads",
newsreels and voice-overs, looking deliberately rough-cut and without
the professional gloss of his Hollywood work, perhaps to let the power
of his subject speak for itself.

The phrase, "improper conduct", covers a multitude of vices in Castro's
Cuba, including that ultimate affront to machismo, homosexuality.
The film is a series of interviews with Cuban emigres detailing their
experiences of repression under the Castro regime.  At first, it seems
to concentrate on the plight of gay people since the revolution, describing
the capricious behavior of the police, the prisons and the notorious
reeducation camps.  But Almendros uses the particulars of one minority's
oppression as a mirror for the entire society: this is more than a
gay-rights tract (though it is a very effective one), for it presents
the issues of conformity, individualism and oppression in the most
universal way.  It is a very depressing film to watch, filled as it is
with wrenching testimonies of lives disrupted and destroyed.  The film
offers no answers, only the anger and despair of the two emigre
directors and their subjects.

IMPROPER CONDUCT has become an event of sorts in New York circles,
with debates about its accuracy and honesty flying back and forth
in the Village Voice and American Film magazine, New York being
one center for the unreconstructed Left.  I know little about this
meta-discussion, though I intend to hunt through my library to
follow it--it should provide entertaining reading.  But it all
seems rather irrelevant to the essentially personal (and strangely
non-political) testimony given by those interviewed in the film.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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