Irina Pino’s Diary

When I was young, I would often meet up with my friends to have tea and share stories having to do with the size of men’s penises. It was a way to have fun and share anecdotes.

Documenting the intensity of real life is a way of transforming our experiences through art. There are many ways to achieve an interesting documentary, a genre that, despite being less popular than fiction, has many avid followers, myself included.

Los poemas de Reina María Rodríguez, dejan constancia de una vida plena dentro de la poesía, vista a través de unos ojos que enmarcan un panorama cambiante por décadas en una isla sui géneris.

While at Havana’s Mella Theater, listening to the marvelous songs from Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair and Mamma Mia during Broadway Rox, a show staged by Entertainment Nederlander Worldwide, the history of Cuban musicals – that priceless legacy of our music-loving culture – came to mind.

Over the past few days, I’ve had the opportunity to attend several concerts held as part of the Les Voix Humaines, a festival conceived by Cuban maestro Leo Brouwer in close collaboration with Isabelle Hernandez, who produced and coordinated the event.

Can one dance to classical music? That was the question posed by Maestro Leo Brower, director of the Les Voix Humaines Festival, to promote the Havana Classical Rave performance held at Havana’s Fabrica de Arte Cubano days ago.

Last Sunday, Cuban singer Augusto Enriquez shared the stage with the Canadian jazz band The Back Alley Big Band for a concert titled “Frank Sinatra Meets Benny More”, held at Havana’s Karl Marx Theater. The concert was part of the ongoing Les Voix Humaines festival.

President Raul Castro’s speech during the Global Leaders’ Conference on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women: A Commitment to Action was very well received by participants. I don’t know whether everyone gets a courtesy applause, no matter what they say, but he got quite the ovation.

Seeing Al Pacino in the film The Humbling, from director Barry Levinson, is nothing short of spectacular, where the theatre is his character’s raison d’être; a medium which saw his professional development in his early beginnings, and to which he occasionaly returns to work.

“How poor am I really? How impoverished is my inner world?” These were some of the questions posed by Pope Francis during his homily at the Havana Cathedral, on the afternoon of last Sunday.