“Tracefossilim” of Melodramatic Cuba There has been a resurgence of melodrama in Cuban film since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, two of Cuba’s most prominent and historically significant filmmakers, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Humberto Solás, have produced highly melodramatic films in the almost two decades since the Soviet collapse, a time known in Cuba as the special period. 1 While there are certainly melodramatic tendencies in other post-revolutionary Cuban films, melodrama has…