Cuban producer Camilo Vives died yesterday in Havana at the age of 70 (he was turning 71 this same week). Born March 14, 1942, he started working at the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográfica (ICAIC) at the age of 20, where he eventually was named Director of Production in the mid 70s and working with numerous filmmakers including Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Humberto Solás, Julio García Espinosa, Fernando Pérez, Juan Carlos Tabío and Juan Carlos Cremata, among others.
Vives produced over 60 titles including Lucía (Solás, 1968); La última cena / The Last Supper (Gutiérrez Alea, 1976), Fresa y chocolate / Strawberry and Chocolate (Gutiérrez Alea and Tabío, 1993, pictured), Águila no cazan moscas / Eagles Don't Hunt Flies (Sergio Cabrera, 1995), Suite Habana (Fernando Pérez, 2003), Habana Blues (Benito Zambrano, 2005), El edificio de los chilenos / The Chilean Building (Macarena Aguiló, 2010).
His last credit as producer was in the Cuban-Venezuelan co-production film La piscina / The Swimming Pool, the debut feature film by Carlos Machado Quintela, which was just awareded the Best Ibero-American Opera Prima prize last Saturday at the Miami Film Festival.
