[In the 1960s] we find a group of short fictional films clearly influenced by the nouvelle vague, by a clutch of apprentice directors who were subsequently to be internationally acclaimed for their very differently styled feature films, including Humberto Solás, Manuel Octavio Gómez, Manuel Pérez, and Sergio Giral … Solás, who was barely 20 years old when he shot Minerva traduce el mar with Oscar Valdés as co-director, laughs at it now as a naive experiment. A year later, he and Valdés made another mysterious short, El retrato (The Portrait) … Then, in 1965, this time by himself, Solás directed El acoso (The Pursuit). This time the subject is less obscure. An escaped mercenary from the defeated invasion of the Bay of Pigs kills a man in the countryside, takes his clothes, finds a cabin and rapes the woman he finds alone inside, then finally wanders lost and helpless across endless mudflats. The film is primarily a stylistic exercise, but this time by a student who has gained self-confidence in the handling of his craft. Refusing the technique of crosscutting that constitutes the conventional chase movie, and with an almost static camera, Solás nevertheless creates an atmosphere of tension and menace, especially inside the cabin after the rape.