Set in the early days of Castro’s Cuba, the film pokes fun at red tape and communist bureaucracy and is as laugh-out-loud funny today as it was fifty years ago. When a model worker dies accidentally, as a badge of honor, he is buried with his labor card. Hilarious antics ensue when his widow realizes she needs the labor card to claim her pension. Since it is against regulations to exhume the body, the widow robs the grave. But she can't rebury the body since there's no record of the exhumation in the first place. And where can the family keep the body while they are unraveling the red tape? This masterful comedy was one of Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s earliest successes, and alludes to the work of comedy greats Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy.

Los Angeles: June 14 at the Palace Theatre. Followed by a bilingual Q&A.