Being an independent producer in Cuba means having to negotiate at least three main obstacles: the State’s monopoly over institutional spaces, the ever-present and surreptitious threat of censorship and the general lack of faith in the viability of self-management.
Read MoreOld Havana’s Center for the Development of the Visual Arts hosted an interesting exhibition titled Drapetomania: A Homage to Cuba’s Grupo Antillano. When I told a friend I wanted to go see the exhibition, I was surprised by her reply: “Yes, more of the same. I’m a little bit tired of African culture, to be honest.” (19 photos)
Read MoreAfter undergoing reparations in August, Cuba’s Cinemateca has a host of films ready for the month of September. The main theater, the Charles Chaplin, will feature Russian cinema from Sept. 1-7; an Italian comedy retrospective from Sept. 8-15 and 17-21, a one night showing of the Cuban film Siglo las luces on Sept. 16, and Mexican cinema of the 1990s from Sept. 22-30.
Read MoreIn Michael Hanecke’s Amour, a couple in their eighties, former piano teachers, lead a comfortable life, enjoying their twilight years together, until a terrible incident changes their lives: the wife becomes paralyzed and gradually begins to deteriorate physically. Watching this film, I began to think about my parents here in Cuba.
Read MoreNew generations of Cuban filmmakers are shooting shorts and features with very low production budgets and even setting up their own production houses, skirting the monopoly of the Cuban Film Art and Industry Institute.
Read MoreI believe rap is sincere and real, I think it’s a poetic way to write down and express the truth, of telling the truth about the reality we live in. It is a means of getting ideas out there without intermediaries, of speaking directly to people. This is why we chose it, or, better, why it chose us.
Read MoreIt has been said that the pieces written and performed by Cuba’s Duo G.Lo music band are a kind of “poetry in music.” Those who have had the opportunity to catch a performance by this duo, created by Lazaro Valladares Mederos and Jorge Luis Torres Morejon in the town of Regla, La Habana, can attest to the truth of this statement.
Read MoreDe lo sublime a lo erotico (“From the Sublime to the Erotic”) featuring self-taught artist Rody Enriquez Alonso, opened last weekend at Havana’s Fayad Jamis gallery – in spite of the bad weather. The pieces of two guest artists, Mileidy Moran and Raimundo Lopez Silva, are also on display at the gallery. (7 photos)
Read MoreThe circumstances in which creation happens in the photographic milieu on the island and artistic interests based on the search for another Havana, these are the revelations of Cuban photographer Yunior Yanes. “I try to pay homage to daily life, to all common things.”
Read More“Fatima or the Fraternity Park” is the working title of the new film by renowned Cuban actor and filmmaker Jorge Perugorría, now being filmed on location in Havana. The film is inspired in a story by Cuban writer Miguel Barnet.
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