He studied in the United States but in the mid1940s returned to Cuba where he worked as a music archivist in a television station and participated in Communist Party activities1 After the Cuban Revolution he became a founding member of the Cuban Film Institute ICAIC and directed its weekly Latin American Newsreel2 One of his most famous works the short Now 1964 about racial discrimination in the US mixed news photographs and musical clips featuring singeractress Lena Horne Other wellknown works included the antiimperialist satire LBJ 1968 and 79 Springs 1969 a poetic tribute to Ho Chi Minh In 1968 he collaborated with Octavio Getino and Fernando E Solanas members of Grupo Cine Liberación on the fourhour documentary Hora de los hornos about foreign imperialism in South America Among the other subjects he explored in his films were the musical and cultural scene in Latin America and the dictatorships which gripped the region The second chapter of French director JeanLuc Godards Histoires du cinéma is dedicated to Álvarez amongst others3 He died of Parkinsons disease in Havana on May 20 1998 and was buried there in the Colon Cemetery
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