The young American Pablo Menéndez came to Cuba to study Music at the National School of Art. Here he formed a family and became one more Cuban. Member of the Sound Experimentation Group of ICAIC and promoter of the teaching of the electric guitar in Cuba, he is, together with his group Mezcla, one of our most original musicians.
Documentary about the history of the bateyes, informal settlements surrounding the mills to house workers. Throughout the film, Sara Gómez recovers the political and cultural relevance of black migrants.
A documentary on the origins of Cuban Son.
A documentary on the origins of Changüí.
A son seeking to fulfill his late father’s dream takes his band from the storied city of New Orleans to the shores of Cuba, where — through the universal language of music — dark and ancient connections between their peoples reveal the roots of jazz.
Dos Islas is a poetic story about old age, family and the bond between a granddaughter and a grandmother. The woman, who just turned 102, tells stories about her past and childhood. In a literary and visual way she describes the most minute details. The film dazzles the viewer with love and optimism, the time passes slowly between the two islands, which might be real people, real places or the products of the main character’s imagination.
Over the past hundred years, dramatic social upheavals have taken place in the name of Karl Marx's theories. In Western Europe, the student movement of 1968 and the Eurocommunists were inspired. And in recent times, the thinker has experienced a renaissance.
Two shocking documentaries where the neighbors of Cuba 111 and the passengers of a taxi traveling on the Malecón speak without fear and say what they think of the government.
Lázaro Escarze, an 87 years old revolutionary Cuban man, lives in a small village and will have his phone installed for the first time in his life. To whom will he call?
Twenty years after Che’s death, in 1987, Pierre Richard and his journalist friend Jean Cormier set out to follow in his footsteps in Cuba. Through a series of encounters, their journey brings the revolutionary guerrilla back to life through numerous firsthand accounts.
In a culture where cremation is unusual, cemeteries fill up rapidly. In Latin America and in some other places, to solve the problem, remains are frequently exhumed. In Cuba, two year after interment. Relatives are invited to observe the little ritual. The music of the film is drawn from requiems from different periods. Twelve pieces by seven different composers are quoted. Together, they make up a traditional requiem, although only a few passages from the "dies irae" have been included, and other sections are slightly abbreviated.
Cuba Jazz
"Gold of Cuba" is a documentary by Argentine filmmaker Alejandro Saderman that shows the development of Cuba through the promotion of its main industry: sugar. From the discovery of America to the figure of Reinaldo Castro, National Hero of Labor as a sugarcane cutter, the film discusses the introduction of mechanical harvesters, including the African slave labor that would later be replaced, with the abolition of slavery, by Chinese sugarcane cutters.
Meet Andrew Lindy: a man with a camera and sex on his mind. Andrew is a New Yorker who travels the world to capture beauty for various freelance jobs. Andrew chases beauty but he longs for a connection. On an assignment for ELLE magazine, Andrew travels to Cuba and brings his camera and appetite for women with him. This is a look at the lack of sexual taboo in Cuba, as well as the financial difficulties that lead to prostitution in some Cubans, for the purpose of survival.
Documentary on the German luxury liner St. Louis that sailed from Hamburg to Cuba in 1939 carrying 937 German Jews. For 30 excruciating days the ship wandered the seas and was refused haven by every country in the Americas.
In her feature documentary Seguridad, Newfoundland-based filmmaker Tamara Segura—once named “Cuba’s youngest soldier” in a militia publicity stunt—portrays her troubled relationship with her father in the context of the Cuban Revolution. When Segura accepts a scholarship to study film in Canada, the move offers crucial distance from her alcoholic father. After four years, she returns to Cuba hoping to make amends. But her father’s sudden death just days after her arrival forces Segura to explore his troubled past and the role Cuba’s highly militarized system played in his downfall. Through a series of deeply personal on-camera interviews with her immediate family, Segura unearths long-held secrets that ultimately tell a story of resilience and profound love between family members. Seguridad artfully weaves a lifetime’s worth of still photographs into its intimate narrative, which offers a rare glimpse into the inner lives of Cubans in the post-revolutionary era.
Daimara y el Baile Zombie
Repainting Cuba takes a critical look at communist Cuba, where both the facades and the aging regime were given a coating of colorful paint in connection with the 50 year anniversary of the revolution. Two young Cubans under house arrest talk about being imprisoned for dealing with foreign tourists in a society where gossip and backstabbing is endemic, and where the heavy varnish can’t conceal the cracks.
Acclaimed Florida novelist Randy Wayne White travels to Cuba with former pitchers Bill "Spaceman" Lee (Boston Red Sox) and Jon Warden (Detroit Tigers), and a band of baseball enthusiasts to find and revive the children's baseball league founded by American writer Ernest Hemingway in the days before Fidel Castro came to power.
A documentary that explores the myth behind the truth. Different people around the globe reinterpret the legend of Che Guevara at will: from the rebel living in Hong Kong fighting Chinese domination, to the German neonazi preaching revolution and the Castro-hating Cuban. Their testimonies prove that the Argentinian revolutionary's historical impact reverberates still. But like with all legends, each sees what he will, in often contradictory perspectives.