One of the most famous filmmaker in the entire history of the Latin American and Cuban cinema. He starts on movie around 1948, filming humorist short-length movies. He was founder of the cultural society Nuestro Tiempo, which gathered intellectuals from the left side in 1950. In 1951 he graduated as journalist and travelled to Roma to study Cinema Direction at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografía.

In 1955, he collaborated with Julio García Espinosa in the direction of documentary El Mégano, narrating the life of the coal workers at la Ciénaga de Zapata and it is considered by experts as the best of the Cuban creation made in that epoch.

Although he was devoted to the fiction full-length movie, he returned from time to time to the documentary work like in Esta tierra nuestra (1959) and El arte del Tabaco (1974), without ignoring his collaboration with Santiago Alvarez in Muerte al invasor (1961). Around the 60`s, such films as Las doce sillas, La muerte de un burócrata and the classical Memorias del subdesarrollo evinced his cinematographic talent. He later on made other excellent materials: Los sobrevivientes (1978),  La última cena (1976) and Fresa y Chocolate (1993), the latter, was nominated for the Oscar Awards and he worked here together with Juan Carlos Tabío.

He made his last film in 1995 together with Tabío, Guántanamera. In an interview during the filming of Fresa y Chocolate, Alea admitted: For me the cinema is still a valuale instrument to penetrate the reality (...) The movie is not about a simple photo of reality. Movie is to manipulate. It gives you the possibility of manipulating the diverse aspects of the reality, create new meanings and it is this game where we learn about the world''.
He organizes in 1959, together with some other directors, the movie section from Dirección de Cultura del Ejército Rebelde, where he starts the filmation of Esta tierra nuestra, first documentary after the Triumph of the Revolution.
He participates in the foundation of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).
He was founder member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). In 1960, he jumpstarts the first full-length fiction movie of the ICAIC, Historias de la Revolución, with which he begins a work that made him famous around the entire world as one of the greatest men of the Latin American cinematography.

Diverse cities al worlwide screen his films. He offered conferences andd seminars at cultural and academic centers at different countries. In 1989, he served as assesor at the filming workshops of the Sundance Institute, in USA.

He received diverse distinctions, among them, the Order for the National Culture and the Félix Varela order of first grade, conferred by the Council State and in 1988, he was conceded the academic category of Titular Associated Professor in the Superior Institute of Art (ISA).

He also wrote essays and articles published in national and international magazines and newspapers. He published in 1980 his essay Dialéctica del espectador. His films have received diverse prizes and distinctions around the entire world. He died in Havana, on April 16, 1996.

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