Nothing else Matters if I Love you. Fresa y Chocolate: a Brief Introduction to the Gay Duty

Abstract

The essay is an analysis about the process to adapt a short story to the cinema.  Strawberry and Chocolate  is a Cuban  film directed by  Tomás Gutiérrez Alea  and  Juan Carlos Tabío, based on the short story  El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo, written by Senel Paz in 1990, whom also wrote the screenplay for the film. The story takes place in  Havana. David is a university student who meets Diego, a gay  intellectual unhappy with the  communist  regime's attitude toward the  LGBT community as well as the censored conceptualization of culture. Diego, for his part, initiates the friendship with sexual intentions. Strawberry and Chocolate was notable for being the first Cuban film with an overtly gay character, but the ideas  it raises about sexualities both gay and straight seem to me just as relevant and fresh right now.
Keywords: Cuban cinema, short story, History, Senel Paz.