Improper Conduct (Conducta impropia / Mauvaise Conduite)

A black-and-white image of a man and a women sitting close together and talking. There is another man with glasses in the foreground but he is engaged in a separate conversation. — "Mauvaise conduite" (1984, dir. Nestor Almendros & Orlando Jimenez Leal). Courtesy of Les Films du Losanges.

In this 1984 documentary film, Almendros and Jiménez Leal present interviews of Cuban refugees in France to understand the Castro regime’s repression of queer people and political dissidents in the camps of the Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Protección (Military Units to Aid Production). Yet, as scholar David William Foster notes, Conducta impropia is not a simple condemnation of Castro and the Cuban Revolution, focusing its critique on the UMAP camps, not on the entirety of the Cuban government. In that light, though it shares certain resonances with the critique of Castro, the film evades neat classification into a discrete genealogy of anti-Revolution resistance.

The film will be introduced by Cecelia Lawless, Senior Lecturer of Spanish Language and Literature in the Department of Romance Studies.

Free admission! Sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.

Part of our "Imaginaries of Resistance" series. In Spanish, French, & English with English subtitles. Courtesy of Les Films du Losanges.