In the summer of 1994, a team of public television reporters filmed and interviewed seven Cubans a few days before their risky venture of setting out to sea in homemade rafts to reach the coast of the United States. Six made it far enough to be picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard. When these balseros (rafters) were finally allowed to go to the United States, the film crew went with them to a string of several cities. Seven years later, the film crew visits them again, to discover that their destiny has been in the United States. Theirs is a true story about some of the authentic survivors of our times, the human adventure of people who are shipwrecked between two worlds.
In 1672 Cuban revolutionaries launch an uprising against the Spanish who are occupying the country. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2017.
A Haitian son returns from fifteen years in Cuba to find his home village afflicted with the double plague of drought and strife. A Cuban production from the director of Memories of Underdevelopment. In Spanish.
The notion of a Cuban civil society is often misrepresented in the U.S. mainstream media. According to most sources, Cuban civil society is limited to the opposition, which has little impact on the Cuban political scenario. Regardless, yearly, the U.S. government allocates tens of millions of taxpayer money to empower dissidents in the island. By doing so, it overlooks genuine expressions of pluralism, reform and contestation which are shaping the Cuban public sphere, sometimes in autonomous ways, sometimes within State-run institutions. Through in-depth interviews to members of Cuban Civil society, this documentary explores the complexities associated to these processes, following the itinerary of the debate about the concept of civil society generated in Cuba, since the 90s to the present.
A documentary on the origins of Changüí.
A documentary on the origins of Cuban Son.
Nobody has an easy time of it in the costume actioner Shark River. Wanted for murder, Clay Webley (Warren Stevens) and his wounded cellmate Curtis Parker (Robert Cunningham) hack their way through the Florida swampland. With the help of Clay's brother Dan (Steve Cochran), Clay is able to elude the authorities, but Parker dies of a snakebite. Subsisting on alligator meat, Dan and Clay make their way to the tiny cabin inhabited by widowed Jane Daughterty (Carole Mathews), her mother-in-law, and her son Johnny (Spencer Fox). The brothers rest here awhile, formulating plans to cross the Gulf of Mexico and head for Cuba.
Entretenimiento
During the revolution, a high-stakes gambler arrives in Cuba seeking to win big in poker games. Along the way, he meets and falls in love with the wife of a Communist revolutionary.
When backpacker millennials Benjamin, Judith and Katharina travel to Cuba to find Katharina’s missing brother Wanja, they become more and more entrapped within a maze of delusions, sincere feelings and sexual desires: It begins as an exciting adventure and turns into a passionate love triangle.
Jim Wormold is an expatriate Englishman living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his teenage daughter Milly. He owns a vacuum cleaner shop but isn’t very successful so he accepts an offer from Hawthorne of the British Secret Service to recruit a network of agents in Cuba.
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.
1896. Cuba is at a critical juncture. Following the death of Antonio Maceo, one of its independence leaders, the island is torn between two positions: continuing the fight for independence or annexation to the United States. Spain, through its energetic generals, seeks to maintain its hegemony on the island. A difficult period in which, however, strange love stories also occur.
Simon and Samuel are two Cuban kids who will experience the defeat of the Spanish Army in their country and the ensuing US occupation in 1898 as an intense period of their lives.
La Singular Historia de Juan sin Nada
Fidel Castro employed a vast spy network that helped him remain in power.
In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.
A sound system plays Commander Ernesto Guevara's speech, delivered on October 20, 1962, during the Second Anniversary of the Young Communist League, along with a series of archival images of the revolutionary leader visiting factories and meeting with workers.
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.
In 1979 Cuba, flamboyant gay artist Diego attempts to seduce straitlaced David, an idealistic young communist, and fails dismally. But David conspires to be "friends" with Diego so he can monitor the artist's subversive life for the state. As Diego and David discuss politics, individuality and personal expression in Castro's Cuba, a genuine friendship develops between the two.