Herman Puig (born German Puig Paredes; 25 February 1928 in Sagua La Grande – 25 January 2021 in Barcelona) was the founder of the first Cinemateca de Cuba and pioneer of male nude photography. Born in Havana, Cuba, where he began his early work, his ascendance comes from Catalonia. He rose to fame in France. Biography Early years He studied painting and sculpture in Cuba and filmed his first short "Sarna" before leaving for Paris at the age of 20 where he studied Audio Visual Techniques. In 1950 he worked for Henri Langlois director and co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française. This association lead to the foundation of the original Cinemateca de Cuba, officialised as an institution in 1948, and founded by Herman Puig and Ricardo Vigón, which would later be reborn in 1961 with the initiative of Alfredo Guevara and the then newly formed ICAIC as today's Cuba Cinemateca. Puig, along with a group that included Carlos Franqui, the future ICAIC cameraman Ramón F. Suárez, and the writers Edmundo Desnoes and Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Tres tristes tigres) made a number of short films. Herman Puig, together with Carlos Franqui, made a short film (Carta de una madre, Letter to a mother). Puig and Edmundo Desnoes also made a short, Sarna (1952), which was produced and edited by cinematographer Ramón F. Suárez. Cinema to Male Nude Photography In October 1950 Herman Puig travelled to Paris where he met with Henri Langlois, the director of the Cinémathèque Française. Their first encounter was brief but decisive as Henri Langlois agreed to supply him with French films for their Cinema Club of Havana (the early Cinemateca de Cuba) but on the condition that their small Cinema Club became an official institution as the Cinémathèque Française could only legally exchange films with a similar institution. Unforeseen political elements resulted in the closure of the Cinemateca a few months later and it would not open again until 1961, but Herman's love affair with France was cemented, along with his place in Cuban Cinema history. From the 60s to the 70s Puig worked in advertising as a photographer and publicity filmmaker in Spain. It was in Madrid that he first started experimenting with male nudes but was arrested in an alleged drugs affair and charged as a pornographer under the climate of the socialist government. It was at this point that he moved to Paris in an