Cuban filmmaker, Julio García Espinosa, passed away in Havana leaving a legacy of revolutionary documentaries and feature films.

The director of El Mégano, considered the main antecedent of the new Cuban cinema, and Aventuras de Juan Quinquín (Adventures of Juan Quinquín) had the honor of founding the Cuban Film Art and Industry Institute –ICAIC-, was the institution’s president from 1983 to 1991 and presented with the National Film Award in 2004.

García Espinosa also wrote the script for Cuban movies, such as Lucía by Humberto Solás or La primera carga al machete (The first machete charge) by Manuel Octavio Gómez. He is also the author of more than 30 theoretical texts, such as Una imagen recorre el mundo (An image travels the world) from 1975, El día en que el pensamiento se detuvo (The day that thinking stopped) from 2003 and Fin de la historia (The end of history) from 2004.

García Espinosa studied in Rome’s Experimental Film Center along with Cuban filmmaker, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, known as Titón, where they received a strong influence from Italian neorealism which had an impact on their first documentaries and films.