Humberto López y Guerra (H.L. Guerra) began his film career 1960 producing and directing a series of documentary films for the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinema, ICAIC. In 1963 he was given through election a scholarship to study film directing at the Cinema Superior School at Babelsberg Berlin, Germany. After graduating from Babelsberg he returned to Cuba where he directed his film Juventud 67 (Youth, 67). However, he went back to Europe in 1968 and he moved to Sweden.
Filmography
Beny Moré, A Last Farewell (1963). A collage of images from the funeral procession through Cuba of a beloved Cuban musician interspersed with his performances over the years. The film was made by Humberto Lopez y Guerra as a feature for the Cuban film journal shortly before he left to East Germany.
As part of his studies at the Cinema Superior School at Babelsberg, he made the films 90 Meter Liebe and Carlos. In his last year at the film school, he studied dramaturgy and acting direction at the Berliner Ensemble where he worked as a director’s assistant for Uta Birnbaum’s staging of Mann ist Mann by Berthold Brecht.
After graduating from Babelsberg he returned to Cuba where he directed his film Juventud 67 (Youth, 67).
The documentary that describes the massive recruitment of young Cubans to go to work in agricultural work on the Isla de Pinos, which had been renamed “Isla de la Juventud” was banned by the ICAIC censorship. Until a few years ago, in the ICAIC archive there was a copy of the film that had a sign that it could only be removed from the archive with the permission of the director of Alfredo Guevara or his deputy Julio García Espinosa, both already deceased.
1969 Humberto Lopez y Guerra made his first film in Sweden Choose your Hero, produced by Lennart Palmqvist, Indra Film (Stockholm) and represent Sweden in the same year at the film festival in Pesaro, Italy.
1976 he directed his film Federico Garcia Lorca: Death in Granada produced by the Swedish Television. In October 1980 the New York Times described the transmission of the film by Spanish Television in June that same year as attracting “one of the largest audiences in the history of Spanish Television.
In 1977 he directed Poetry became my rescue, (Poesin blev min räddning) a documentary about Vicente Aleixandre, Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1977. The film was produced by Göran Bengtson for SVT.
(Swedish Television)
In 1978, he filmed for SVT Två år efter Franco, the first documentary series in Sweden about Spain after Franco’s death in 1975.
(Swedish Television)
1981 H.L. Guerra directs Arrabal, a film about the well-known Spanish playwriter Fernando Arrabal produced by Swedish television and was selected for the Prix Italia and participated in various international festivals, such as the 22nd Barcelona International Film Week.
(Swedish Television)
1980 he directed for Swedish Television Det Långa Straffet (The Sentence), about Huber Matos. The Sentence represented Sweden in Emmy Awards in New York, 1981.
(Swedish Television)
1986 he wrote and directed Ondskans år a TV film in three parts about Nazism in Sweden during the second world war. The film was very successful in Sweden and received in 1989 the Nordvision award for best television series of the Nordic countries.
(Swedish Television)
1987 he directed the TV series Vinnaren performed and written by Kent Andersson (Swedish Television)
1987 he directed the TV series Daghemmet Lyckan with Gunnel Fred, Jan Blomberg, Claire Wikholm, Maria Johansson. Written by Marianne Goldman
(Swedish Television)
1989 Humberto wrote and directed “Castro’s Cuba“, a TV series in three parts, which was exhibited in the United States, Latin America and Australia. The most complete TV series about Cuba that was done in those years.