The Future of an Illusion

Three juxtaposing stories taking place in Portugal, Austria and Cuba create an intimate and poetic portrait of the daily lives and struggles of the elderly in an unstable world, seen through the eyes of their grandchildren.

Will Cubans be able to safeguard their heritage of pristine Nature and preserved ecological treasures under this new era, as they are facing the combined pressure of money and tourism? What policies can be implemented to maintain the island’s spectacular wilderness?

Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.

In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.

Merce

Dawn breaks in La Habana, and as the day advances we follow the simple lives of ten ordinary Cubans, with only sounds and images accompanied by music.

A rampant, street level story of mentorship and everyday heroism in tough circumstances. An inner city coach's son, estranged in his youth from his father, spends five years on ball fields in inner city Oakland and Havana, following the lives of two extraordinary youth baseball coaches, Roscoe in Oakland and Nicolas in Havana. The coaches meet on videotape and two years of red tape later, Coach Roscoe and nine Oakland players travel to Havana to play Coach Nicolas' team. For one week, the players and coaches eat, dance, swim, argue and play baseball together. But when the parent of an Oakland player is murdered back home, it brings back the inescapable reality and challenges of life in an American inner city.

Shot in Havana and processed at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm, Marcel Beltrán Fernández's Casa de la noche explores those same histories from the point of view of an insider, as a lived experience that is evocatively mirrored through ripped and torn celluloid.

As the walls of Cuba's ageing infrastructure continue to crumble, a burgeoning street art scene is born in Havana. Murals of hand-painted masked character – Supermalo – with the tag “2+2=5?” have begun to appear in seemingly every corner of the heavily foot trafficked city.

I Like to Dream: The True Story of Felipe Cardeña (Short film), shot by the artist Desiderio, shows us Felipe, as a mime walking through the streets of Havana, through the cross-over testimonies of many people who knew or heard of him: street mimes like him, but also bartenders, street vendors, street people, as well as the famous Cuban writer Yoss, author of an essay on the artist. A hybrid film, halfway between the journalistic documentary and the dreamlike and symbolic reconstruction of the work of Cardeña, the film reconstructs Felipe’s passage through the streets of Havana, through witnesses, but also through Felipe’s performances (such as the large floral poster, with Che’s face, still hanging in a street in Old Havana), the suggestions of his works, his dreamlike atmospheres and colors.

Mari is a woman trapped in a man’s body. She tells us about life as a transsexual in Cuba and all the pain that comes with it: parental rejection, the men she’s loved who hurt her deeply, unscrupulous doctors… But she continues to fight, trying to make her life just a little better every day.

Television plays an important role in the life of the people of Havana. Despite there being only one program - the daily broadcast of the Telenovela is a most welcome distraction from the boring everyday life in the capital of Cuba. The movie watches enthusiastic and less enthusiastic viewers, and the almost holy people who are repairing the precious, mostly Russian devices.

Santeros

Alain Jean-Marie, impressions cubaines

In the middle of La Habana, three friends meet on the rooftop day after day to discuss their dreams and aspirations. Though they lack the proper resources, they decide to start their own business, a decision that pushes them towards maturity, although at an unforeseen cost.

Two golddiggers go fishing for millionaires in Havana.

Raul, Camilo and Armando are three friends who, forced by the crisis, plan to kill a neighbor’s cat to eat meat in the “Periodo Especial” in Cuba (1989).

The historic concert appearance of the British band in Cuba on March 25th, 2016. The "Concert for Amity" was and played at the Ciudad Deportiva Stadium - the bands first show in Cuba and the finale of their South America Tour.

A talented baseball player discovers he can only sing beautifully when he has a cold, leading a nightclub manager to hilariously attempt to keep him sick while featuring a host of musical performances.

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.