In From Havana to Hollywood, Philip Kaisary delivers a rigorous and politically incisive comparative study of how slave resistance is portrayed in Cuban and American cinema. Focusing on the representation—or erasure—of Black agency, he argues that Hollywood films tend to marginalize the active resistance and historical world-making of enslaved people. By contrast, Cuban cinema of the 1970s, grounded in the aesthetics and politics of “Third Cinema,” foregrounds these elements, seeking to reclaim revolutionary potential and challenge dominant historical narratives.
At the core of Kaisary’s argument lies a stark contrast: Hollywood often portrays slavery through sentimental or liberal-progressive frameworks that sidestep the structural power of Black revolt and resistance. Cuban filmmakers such as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Sergio Giral, in contrast, center rebellion and autonomy, creating films that function as both historical reclamation and political intervention.
Kaisary builds his comparative framework around six films—Burn! (1969) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) from the Hollywood canon, and La última cena (1976), El otro Francisco (1974), Maluala (1979), and Rancheador (1979) from Cuban cinema. This selective approach facilitates in-depth analysis but also narrows the book’s scope. Notably absent are key American films, such as Django Unchained, Glory, The Birth of a Nation, and Roots, that depict or complicate narratives of slave resistance. These omissions raise concerns about the breadth of the Hollywood critique and may lead some readers to question whether the comparison is sufficiently comprehensive.
Nonetheless, Kaisary’s analytical sophistication is evident throughout. Drawing on Edward Said’s call for “worldly” criticism, he adopts an emancipatory humanist lens that seeks to transcend identitarian constraints. His chapters on the films of Alea and Giral offer nuanced readings of aesthetic form, political ambition, and historical consciousness. In La última cena, the plantation count’s reenactment of the Last Supper becomes a searing indictment of colonial hypocrisy. The enslaved figure, Sebastián, who rebels and becomes a martyr, embodies both religious and revolutionary sacrifice, capturing the radical aims of Third Cinema.
Giral’s trilogy—El otro Francisco, Rancheador, and Maluala—pushes these themes further, framing slavery as a foundational element of capitalist modernity. El otro Francisco disrupts the sentimental narrative of romantic suffering, giving voice to Crispin, a revolutionary figure whose resistance is violently suppressed. Rancheador and Maluala explore maroon societies, women’s leadership in uprisings, and the entanglements of race and class. They argue that true liberation necessitates the dismantling of the economic and ideological systems underpinning slavery.
Kaisary’s most polemical claim is that only anticapitalist and postcolonial frameworks—such as those advanced by 1970s Cuban filmmakers—can adequately capture the complexity of Black resistance. He contends that Hollywood, shaped by commercial imperatives and a legacy of racist storytelling, remains structurally incapable of this task. An exception is Burn!, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, which he views as a rare Hollywood production that embodies the revolutionary spirit of the Black revolt. Its protagonist, Dolores, symbolizes global anticolonial resistance, positioning the film as a bridge between First (commercial), Second (auteur), and Third (revolutionary) cinema traditions. For Kaisary, Burn! comes closest to capturing the spirit of the Haitian Revolution on screen.
Kaisary’s critique of 12 Years a Slave is perhaps his most controversial. While acknowledging the film’s progressive aspirations, he argues that its emphasis on trauma and individual suffering flattens the political dimensions of Solomon Northup’s memoir. The film, he contends, prioritizes moral spectacle over systemic critique. While this reading is compelling, it might benefit from deeper contextualization. As a Black British filmmaker, Steve McQueen’s oeuvre has widely explored state violence and human agency. While Kaisary references his earlier video projects, situating 12 Years a Slave within McQueen’s body of major films might have offered a more layered interpretation.
Additionally, the critique could have been enriched by engaging more fully with the wave of Hollywood films from the 2010s that addressed slavery and resistance, such as Freedom (2014), The Birth of a Nation (2016), and Harriet (2019). Kaisary references these films, but ultimately only provides an in-depth focus on McQueen’s work, thus restricting the analysis and limiting its overall impact. Finally, Kaisary notes, but does not thoroughly explore, the structural barriers to making films such as these in Hollywood. This includes efforts by Danny Glover to develop a movie about the Haitian Revolution. A closer look at such production barriers would strengthen his claims about institutional limitations.
The book’s greatest strengths lie in its theoretical clarity and passionate defense of underrecognized cinematic traditions. Kaisary’s engagement with Third Cinema is particularly timely amid ongoing global reckonings with colonial and racial histories. Still, the comparative approach feels uneven at times; Cuban cinema receives deeper analysis and more sympathetic treatment than its Hollywood counterparts. This imbalance, combined with the omission of key US films, may leave some readers unconvinced by the book’s broader indictment of Hollywood.
That said, From Havana to Hollywood is a significant and provocative contribution to the study of slavery, cinema, and Black resistance. It poses urgent questions about historical memory, cinematic form, and the politics of representation. While Kaisary’s critique of Hollywood is forceful, it is his celebration of revolutionary film traditions that gives the book its most radical and enduring edge.
