Cuban cinema and Latin American films communicate many different meanings, messages, and focuses. Cuban film director Julio García Espinosa was well known in the 1960s for his contributions to cinematography and culture. He was a founder of the ICAIC and the President of the Section of Cinema of the Cultural Society. The main objectives of Cuban cinema were production, distribution, and screening films that recorded the ongoing revolutionary process from the perspectives of ordinary people.

According to Davies, the films that were shot on location and featured local people were shown free of charge across the country in city cinemas and on makeshift village screens to spectators who were encouraged to participate actively in the films' reception and interpretation.

In 1968–88, the most common and desired form of film used in Cuba was Imperfect Cinema.

It can be acknowledged that Imperfect Cinema was creative, innovative and possessed a distinctive style that is typically a very thought provoking original work of art, Oscar Quirós concluded.

Imperfect films captured the viewer's attention because the relevance of the story line matched what the audiences were experiencing in their own lives. Imperfect Cinema is a form or theme found through audiences that have struggled in life and are aware of the hard times the people were going through. Only in the person who suffers people perceive elegance, gravity, even beauty; only in him people recognize the possibility of authenticity, seriousness, and sincerity. Not only does imperfect cinema represent the struggles of the people it also reveals the process which has generated the problem.

The subjective element is the selection of the problem, conditioned as it is by the interest of the audience-which is the subject. The objective element is showing the process-which is the object.

Imperfect Cinema uses the audience as the subject to show the process of the problem as the object.

Aside from indicating the demonstrative, communicative and inquisitive qualities, these characteristics also convey an implicit utilitarian quality. In other words, Imperfect Cinema possesses utilitarian features because it must perform a particular political function within society.

Cubans felt included by the films which gave them a sense of importance and pride. Cuban and Latin American films were successful in the international market even though they did not always fit the hegemonic models or use mainstream film languages. Imperfect Cinema is a great example of film that is accepted internationally even though it does not fit into the Hollywood genre or codes of representation.

Style for Imperfect Cinema is thus defined by the specific techniques and qualities contextualized in orthodox Marxism's aesthetics of content over form, such as the use of 'type' characters, harsh imagery made by scratches, under/over exposure, high contrast, excessive movements of the camera, presentation of historical events and the wide use of hand-held cameras.

This form of film was very popular among the revolutionary people because the films were portrayed in a manner that was very easy to relate to and shared a common feeling and interest among the people that were experiencing similar situations that were occurring in Cuba at the time. The revolution provided alternatives, supplied an entirely new response, enabled the country to do away with elitist concepts and practices in art, and was the highest expression of culture because it abolished artistic culture as a fragmentary human activity.

Imperfect Cinema was responsible for making a reputation for Cuban film, but by the mid-1970s, Cuban filmmakers were purposely making a different style of cinema.[18] Chanan, for example, concludes that by the late 1970s Imperfect Cinema had just about disappeared. He believes that since then Cuban cinema has given up the challenge of creating its own style in favor of imitating Hollywood.

For Garcia Espinosa and many of his fellow Latin American filmmakers, Imperfect Cinema was the answer to the need of creating a form of art that demonstrates the process of the problems ... not a cinema to beautifully illustrate concepts and ideas they already know. The purpose of this revolutionary form of film was derived from the revolution itself.

By 1989, Cuban cinema had the formal sophistication to carry any revolutionary message, or none at all, Quirós indicated.

Imperfect cinema was no longer interested in quality or technique. It can be created equally well with a Mitchell or with an 8mm camera, in a studio or in a guerrilla camp in the middle of the jungle.

Since all of these critical operations require new approaches to film directing, they cannot expect flawless results every time. Films built on the consecrated conventions of traditional cinematography are more likely to attain technical "perfection" than those necessarily "imperfect" attempts to challenge established conventions and search out new approaches.

The opposite of imperfect cinema is "perfect" cinema which is basically described as films that are portrayed as perfect, flawless, and contain beautiful scenery. The majority of scenes that are shot in a "perfect" film are in a beautiful place, typically the film is not produced to make the viewer think, and they're usually more aesthetically pleasing rather than meaningful. They maintain that imperfect cinema must above all show the process which generates the problems. It is thus the opposite of a cinema principally dedicated to celebrating results, the opposite of a self-sufficient and contemplative cinema, the opposite of a cinema which "beautifully illustrates" ideas or concepts which already possess.

However, the aesthetic changes that were better perceived after the mid-1970s were a reflexion of the social underlying changes in the ideological Marxist fabric away from Orthodox Marxism and more in tune with the Marxian ideal of emancipation. The new Perfect Cinema is not a cinema to move away from the social, political, and economic issues of Cuban society, but it is a move forward to better illustrate the Cuban social whole.

These aesthetic changes that characterize Perfect Cinema predate the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the Cold War underlying the significance of this new Cuban style of cinema as both as manifestation of social changes and a leader of such a change.

Modern authorship is established and valued mostly as a matter of output and public success. "Perfect" films are valued by critics, awards, and merchandise that are produced because of the film.

Compared to "perfect" films, imperfect films focus on the art, sending a message, and creating substance. Most Latin American films can only achieve success in the international market if they emulate hegemonic models and borrow from mainstream film languages.

The "perfect" films are difficult for Latin American and Cuban film makers to compete with because most viewers are interested in watching films that are visually attractive and don't require a lot of thought while watching. It stands to reason that today's changing circumstances of film production and consumption determine that genres cannot exist by mere repetition and recycling of past models but have to engage with difference and change.

Art will not disappear into nothingness; it will disappear into everything.

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