Culture

Pablo Milanes on the Musical Bridge from Cuba

One of the icons of the Nueva Trova movement, Pablo Milanes is known for maintaining a critical position toward what he considers errors committed by the leadership of the Cuban Revolution, though without ceasing to defend that revolution despite its mistakes.

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Night of a Thousand and One Texts

The legendary Scheherazade has exchanged her enthralling tales of “One Thousand and One Nights” for a compact disc with 1,001 academic articles, essays and books, giving Cubans access to materials that would otherwise be very difficult to obtain.

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Cuba Honors Vindicated Writer Lezama Lima

Cuba’s National Council of Cultural Heritage declared the home of writer José Lezama Lima a National Monument, marking the end of the tributes for the centenary of the birth of that Cuban intellectual, considered one of the major exponents of Spanish-American literature. The ceremony also closed the days of vindication of Lezama (1910-1976), condemned to ostracism by the island’s cultural authorities in the 1970s.

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Cuba Did Not Ban Sicko

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has responded to false claims that his film Sicko, mainly about the US health industry, was banned in Cuba. Moore maintains just the opposite and sites several Cuba news reports to back his assertion that the US government made up the story to try and discredit the film’s information about health care in the US and Cuba.

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Urban Tribes Prowl Havana Nights

A different city emerges on the weekends in Havana. Young people, whose faces are as strange as they are common, take possession of the city and reinvent it. They are the “urban tribes,” a global phenomenon that has made its mark on Cuba.

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Works by Edgar Degas in Cuba

Sculptures by French painter Edgar Degas are being exhibited in the Havana Museum of Fine Arts for the first time in the history of Latin America, in tribute to prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, director of the Cuban National Ballet, who is celebrating her 90th birthday.

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Collective Hypnosis (A CD without Bitterness)

Hip hop, rap and urban music are musical genres in vogue. They are assimilated by many and scorned by others. Damian Rabilero is a professional advocate (a lawyer) but does not advocate his profession. He is a poet basically, a video producer and one of most interesting young people who have remained in the city of Santiago de Cuba.

“It’s said that we live a dizzying time, and that’s why I had the idea of breaking out of an atmosphere of a small audience in which works are read with a certain cadence. It’s also a way to present poetry as a show.”

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Havana Film Festival Awards

During 11 days of retracing their steps through the streets of Havana in search of the best selections — in the drizzle, cold or sun — Cuban movie buffs enjoyed a worldwide panorama on celluloid. The journey was long and interesting throughout this 32nd edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, and this past Sunday, December 12, the awards were officially granted.

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Hollywood CEO Favors of Exchanges with Cuba

The director of Hollywood exhibitions and special events, Ellen Harrington, said she was in favor of “continuing to dialogue and opening up ourselves to art” and expressed her hope that “in the future there be more exchanges” between Cuba and the United States, in statements she made at the Havana Film Festival, that concluded Sunday in the island’s capital.

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Uruguayan Film Wins Top Prize in Havana

The Uruguayan film La vida útil won the first Coral Prize at the 32nd International New Latin American Film Festival, which concluded yesterday in the Cuban capital. The film tells the story of a man laid off due to the economic crisis who finds support in cinema to survive.

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