Ediciones Unión - Cuadernos de la Revista UNIÓN (cover designer: Héctor Villaverde, editor: Miguel Barnet, author: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea), "Dialéctica del Espectador," 1982.

This monograph represents a significant contribution to revolutionary film theory from one of Cuba's most important filmmakers. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Dialéctica del Espectador (Dialectics of the Spectator) examines the complex relationship between cinema and audience from a Marxist perspective, confronting the interests of the bourgeoisie with those of the proletariat and analyzing the collision between consumer society and revolutionary society.

Héctor Villaverde's cover design employs bold, condensed typography in cream against a vibrant magenta background, creating maximum visual impact through minimal means. The stacked letterforms of "DIALÉCTICA DEL ESPECTADOR" feature subtle linear details within each letter, adding textural interest to the otherwise flat color field. This stark modernist approach reflects both the theoretical rigor of the content and the revolutionary aesthetic of Cuban graphic design in the 1980s.

Gutiérrez Alea (1928-1996) began his film career in 1947, studied law in 1951, then pursued cinematography at Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. He co-founded the influential Nuestro Tiempo cultural group and in 1957 collaborated with Julio García Espinosa on El mégano. As a founding member of ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos), he directed landmark films including Historias de la Revolución, Las 12 sillas, La muerte de un burócrata, Memorias del subdesarrollo (his masterpiece about a bourgeois intellectual during the revolution), La última cena, and Los sobrevivientes.

This theoretical work seeks truth in cinema, opposing the ideological manipulations employed by both bourgeois ideologues and leftist liberals. Published as number 13 in UNIÓN's Cuadernos series and edited by Miguel Barnet, the essay explores concepts like popular cinema versus "popular" cinema, spectacle versus cinema of ideas, identification and distancing (engaging Aristotle and Brecht), and alienation and de-alienation (engaging Eisenstein and Brecht). The monograph includes an appendix of memories from Memorias and bibliographic references, offering both theoretical framework and practical insights from one of Latin American cinema's most sophisticated artist-intellectuals.