Many people in Cuba have heard the surnames Ruiz Urquiola by now. The mystery that surrounds both Ariel and Omara has become an obsession for me, both of whom are excellent in their fields of work.
I just spoke with Cuban theater director Adonis Milan. He was detained incommunicado until early Monday morning when he was released under a heavy downpour.
While watching the images of the latest wave of repression to befall independent Cuban artists , one word kept popping into my head: Shame. Arbitrary arrests, stopping people from walking down certain streets or entering certain homes reveal a lack of respect that not only exists with artists, but with citizens on the whole.
The sound of a sledgehammer banging on the walls, the ceiling of a house adjoined to my building, located at No. 851 13th Street between 4th and 6th streets, in Vedado, has been eating away at my nerves for some weeks now.
Reprisals and acts of terror continue to be directed at Cuban artists. Adonis Milan, a talented and young theater director, has received a subpoena from the Interior Ministry, which has no grounds as he hasn’t committed any crime other than exercise his: “right to freedom of association.”
In Cuba, those who were born during this tumultuous period in our History, called “Special”, were known as the “Transition Generation”, and maybe the tragedy of these young people lies in the fact that this change, which began to take root in Cuba after the Berlin Wall came down and the Socialist Bloc collapsed as a result, still hasn’t ended.
Why is that in Miami, a city in a rich country, businesses began to close down since Wednesday so that people could get ready for the intense and dangerous hurricane and things carried on in Havana like nothing was happening?
Friendly, affectionate, but also direct and straight to the point, we found Ybis Caises along the main corridor of the International School of Film and Television. Her job since 1986 consists of connecting students and employees at this center with the outside world.
The exhibition Blind Spot took place between June 3rd and 9th at the gallery belonging to the Superior Art Institute (ISA)’s Visual Arts Department, which had been organized by some students from this department.
The young filmmaker Eliecer Jimenez shines a light on the different aspects and complexities of the current political landscape here in Cuba. The opposition, breakaway groups, leaders and their disagreements, in a precise editing sequence, where everything has its place.