Cuban New Wave

Aftermath: a row along Cuba in the wake of a hurricane

Ben Meissner Kevin G.

Be it denial or alarm, the issue of climate change has cemented itself in our 21st century vocabulary. Beneath the deluge of popular media and attention-grabbing headlines, there are many living quiet and purposeful lives as the world around them changes drastically. In 'Aftermath', a Cuban fisherman rows along the coast he calls home following Hurricane Irma, reflecting on youth, learning, and change.

Tundra

José Luis Aparicio

Walfrido Larduet, a lonely electrical inspector, dreams of the Red Woman, whose image persists and becomes an obsession. Something tells him she is near. Over the course of a day, Walfrido will follow her trail as he travels through the suburbs of an infested city.

Los perros de Amundsen (Amundsen's Dogs)

Rafael Ramírez

A broken narrative, a cinematic translation from the Acephale Trilogy by José Luis Serrano, where the dogs of the explorer Amundsen, a Cuban poet inspector who investigates industrial accidents and H.P. Lovecraft cross their paths.

Exilio (2019)

Maria Espinoza Stransky

Exploration between the characters and the filmmaker. A quest into a universal existential problem, how to inhabit the world. Members of a family leave their home and in the middle of the Cuban Sierra Maestra struggle to find a new one. During this process, they inhabit scenes of routine life in the middle of nature, outside of a closed space between four walls, place and concept they long and project. It concludes with the departure of the patriarch and the already palpable absence of a father with a dark gaze who dreams of going far away from his country in the pursuit of something different, becomes a reality. Contemplative meditation of internal torment.

El Proyecto (The Project)

Alejandro Alonso Estrella

We are roaming around a futuristic, geometric construction whose structure emerges in a milky white. But a matter eroded by time is what now appears, lit up by torchlight, like the remains of a lost civilisation that these men dressed in yellow suits are collecting, beneath the gaze of a child concealed behind the vegetation. It is down to the "citrus tristeza virus"— a disease leading to the decline of trees — which struck the families living in this region of Cuba, who survive, now, in the virtual ruins of a former agronomy school inhabited by "New Men" familiar with the latest orange-growing techniques.
A filmmaker is banned from filming at an old school turned into dwellings. Over the years, he decides to remake The Project. Exploring into his memory, he puts together a movie about denial, the image impossibility and the breakup of a social, artistic and personal project.

Dialogo con mi abuela (Dialog with My Grandmother)

Gloria Rolando

A beautifully constructed love letter transforming a 1993 interview conducted by the Cuban filmmaker with her grandmother, into a celebration of not only her grandmother's legacy but also a tribute to the larger history, struggle and tenacity of Black Cubans and Black Cuban women in particular.

Una Noche

Lucy Mulloy

Trapped in the desperate slums of Havana, young Raul dreams of escaping to Miami. After he is accused of assault, his only option to save himself is to flee the country. He begs his best friend Elio to abandon his life in Cuba and help him reach the forbidden land 90 miles across the ocean. But Elio is torn between helping Raul escape and protecting his twin sister Lila, and soon the trio's commitment to their homeland and their desire of starting life anew in America is put to the test. Brimming with the nervous energy of Havana's restless youth, UNA NOCHE follows one sweltering day in the crumbling sun-bleached capital, a day full of hope and fraught with tension that burns to a shocking climax.

I am Cuba (Soy Cuba)

Mikhail Kalatozov

A study in contrasts set in and around Havana that explores Cuba's 1959 revolution. A young woman's fascination with the excess of an American-owned casino leads to her downfall in the eyes of her street vendor boyfriend. A tenant farmer revolts the only way he knows how, attacking the land he works. University students gain first-hand knowledge of political upheaval. And, in the hills outside the city, the members of a poor peasant family are patriotically swept up into the burgeoning revolt.

Before Night Falls

Julian Schnabel

A richly imagined journey into the life and writings of brilliant Cuban author and exile Reinaldo Arenas. It spans the whole of Arenas' life, from his rural childhood and his early embrace of the Revolution to the persecution he would later experience as a writer and homosexual in Castro's Cuba; from his departure from Cuba in the Mariel Harbor exodus of 1980 to his exile and death in the United States.

Memories of Underdevelopment (Memorias del subdesarrollo)

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Sergio looks back through his life following the departure of his wife, parents and friends in the wake of the Bay of Pigs incident. Alone in a brave new world, Sergio observes the constant threat of foreign invasion while chasing young women all over Havana before finally meeting Elena, a young virgin girl he seeks to mould into the image of his ex-wife, but at what cost to himself?

Strawberry and Chocolate (Fresa y chocolate)

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea Juan Carlos Tabio

In 1979 Cuba, flamboyant gay artist Diego (Jorge Perugorría) attempts to seduce the straight and strait-laced David (Vladimir Cruz), 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. Can it last in such an oppressive environment?

Buena Vista Social Club

Win Wenders

Buena Vista Social Club is an ensemble of Cuban musicians established in 1996 to revive the music of pre-revolutionary Cuba. The project was organized by World Circuit executive Nick Gold, produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder and directed by Juan de Marcos González

The Salt of the Earth

Juliano Ribeiro Salgado Wim Wenders

The life and work of photographer Sebastião Salgado, who has spent forty years documenting deprived societies in hidden corners of the world.

Lucia

Humberto Solás

During Cuba's war for independence from Spain, Lucia (Raquel Revuelta), a single woman from a wealthy family, betrays her brother, a Cuban revolutionary, when she inadvertently leads her lover to his secret hideout. In the 1930s, an idealistic young pregnant woman, also named Lucia (Eslinda Núñez), leaves her family and gets involved with an activist group. Finally, in the 1960s, a newly married woman named Lucia (Adela Legrá) fights with her husband (Adolfo Llauradó) over her own freedom.

One Way or Another (De cierta manera)

Sara Gómez Tomás González Pérez Julio García Espinosa Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

De cierta manera is a 1974 Cuban romantic drama film. Directed by Sara Gómez, the film mixes documentary-style footage with a fictional story that looks at the poor neighborhoods of Havana shortly after the Cuban Revolution of 1959

For the First Time (Por primera vez)

Octavio Cortázar

For the First Time is a 1967 Cuban documentary short film. It chronicles the events of April 12, 1967 in the village of Los Munos, in the Baracoa municipality of Cuba, where a mobile cinema truck shows the villagers moving pictures for the first time

Omara

Hugo Perez

For eight decades, Afro-Cuban music icon, Omara Portuondo, has been an unstoppable force - a single mother surviving racism, misogyny, revolution and now ageism. Transcending borders and the controversy for her affiliation with the Castro regime, Omara has used her music to connect with fans around the world and celebrate the soul of her beloved Cuba. As a woman of color, Omara expresses her life experiences in a way that has inspired generations of musicians and women.

Armeggeddon 2

Corey Hughes

The internet in Cuba is very slow. Movies, television, and information are exchanged through a black market system of media distribution via external hard drives known as "el paquete semanal.
Shot over the course of a day in the town of San Antonio de los Baños, the film combines narrative, documentary, and experimental elements to create, like the paquete itself, new images and new connections between distant and unseen forces. A meditation on the flow of data and the search for human connection in a groundless world.

Yo Quisiera Ser Animal

Alexis Gambis

An exploration of what animals the people of Havana want to be in another life. Inspired by Nicolas Guillen El Gran Zoo.

Terranova

Alejandro Pérez Serrano Alejandro Alonso Estrella

Cities do not repeat themselves; they transmute. Some cities are created by philosophical ideas. The lively city portrayed in Terranova is made of reflections, memories of other cities, and visions of the future. It has a certain solemnity in its soundscape, without losing those strong sounds that make it unique. This particular universe that has been brought together contains many magical scenes that are filmed through a camera obscura.

Metatrón (2018)

Alejandro Alonso Estrella

Confronted with the evidence that the Earth is not eternal, Ernesto is inspired by the Metatron´s shape to design his own alternative universe. Obsessed by how he and his project will be recorded, he has the certainty that only the ideas and not the creator should transcend.

Marea (Tide) (2019)

Vania Quevedo

On the shores of a desolate beach, the tide cycles through. A shark hunter, through the fishing ritual, experiences the harshest symptoms of his condition and nature.

¡Cuba Sí!

Chris Marker

The hour long documentary by the master of the essay film examines the country of Cuba under the dictatorship of Batista and then the seizure of power in a revolution by Castro.

Lazaro and The Shark: Cuba Under the Surface

William Sabourin O'Reilly

In Santiago de Cuba, rival conga bands scour the sparse marketplace for materials to create show-stopping numbers for the annual Carnival competition. O'Reilly's film follows young, innovative Lázaro, who is determined to beat "the Shark," his older and more establishment-favored competitor. Tensions build and tempers flare as the government restrictions and scarcity of present-day Cuba come to bear on one of the world's poorest Carnivals.

I'm Going to Santiago (Iré a Santiago)

Sara Gómez

With a vibrant musical soundtrack, Gómez portrays the city of Santiago de Cuba, connecting contemporary men and women to a past of slavery and resistance.
The title was taken from a poem by Federico García Lorca. The film is photographed by Mario Garcia Joya. It portraits Santiago de Cuba and its people gently and yet its informal voice-over commentary also makes this film striking at that time. In IRÉ A SANTIAGO, Sara Gomez explores the feelings of the people of Santiago de Cuba. Mulato is a frame of mind, the film says, and that also becomes a way of shooting and editing.

Agosto (August)

Armando Capó Ramos

In Cuba during the summer of 1994, a carefree teen begins to recognize that his world is starting to turn upside down.

Homenaje

Damián Sainz Edwards

Two women and a dead man. One of them was his wife for 30 years; the other was his colleague and lover. The threesome lived together for a long time. However, the man's absence unleashes a silent battle between the two women, who fight to take control of the memory of the man who separates and connects them.

Batería

Damián Sainz Edwards

A former military fortress in Havana, Cuba, is now a clandestine cruissing spot for hidden gay men. They look for sex, but most of all for a shelter.

Heroe de Culto

Ernesto Sánchez Valdés

In Cuba a custom is to honor with busts and sculpture José Martí. Today many of his busts are made of plastic, through a complex industrial process. Due to this production system, Martì becomes tedious and invisible.

Salut les Cubains

Agnès Varda

A photo montage of Cubans made out of the 1800 photographs taken by Agnès Varda during her visit to Cuba in 1963, four years after Fidel Castro came to power. This documentary explores their post-revolution culture and society through her pictures and through commentaries in voice-over.

Mi aporte (My contribution)

Sara Gómez

In 1972, the Federation of Cuban Women commissioned Gómez to make a film about women's contribution to the sugar harvest and, by extension, to the Revolution. The ensuing short—a series of testimonials and portraits of how difficult it is for women to contribute as full citizens due to machismo—was instead censored by the organization and has rarely been screened on or off the island. A 33 minute "report" on women's lives 13 years after the "triumph of the Revolution," Mi aporte is a model of feminist consciousness-raising documentary form: self-reflexive, critical, and direct.

Una isla para Miguel (An island for Miguel)

Sara Gómez

One of 12 children from a poor family in Havana, Miguel is one of thousands of young people sent to the Isla de Pinos during the Cuban Revolution in order to become "a new man." While capturing the dignity and vitality of Miguel and his family, Gómez offers a probing investigation of masculinity, self-determination, and an experiment of the Revolution.

Guanabacoa: Crónica de mi familia (Guanabacoa: Chronicle of my family)

Sara Gómez

An intimate portrait of Gómez's family and their city of Guanabacoa on the outskirts of Havana, this film remediates photographs and music recordings to create an archive of the family that is brought to life through the voices of women: Sara, her Madrina, and her Aunt Berta.

Los Ultimos Frikis

Nicholas Brennan

Despite restrictions beginning under the regime of Fidel Castro, heavy metal band Zeus became iconic in the Cuban music scene. Over the decades, the band and its front man, Diony Arce, have challenged the status quo under government threat.

Cuba and the Camerman

Jon Alpert

Life in Cuba over the course of 45 years, from the cautious optimism of the early 1970s to the harrowing 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union and the 2016 death of Fidel Castro. The focus is on three families and their growth and struggle.

Limbo

Rafael Ramírez

In an isolated region of the country a family transforms daily acts into rituals .The focus of its circular existence is the father, around whom the limbo of the nation takes shape.

Archetypes (Arquetipos)

Raydel Araoz

A group of women talk about their breasts and men's penises.

El Gran Zoo

Alexis Gambis

Guillen's poetry combined with 8mm landscapes and interviews with Cubans in and around Havana brings to the forefront the chilling realities and the absurd to fashion a zoo of natural and humanmade wonders alongside a wealth of social and political issues.

Cuban Dancer

Roberto Salinas

Alexis is a 15 year old talented and proud student of the National Ballet School of Cuba. He spends his life practicing chassé and entrechats with his girlfriend and dance partner Yelenia. However, when his parents move to Florida to be reunited with his sister, his happy teenage world is turned upside down. He's forced to leave behind Cuba, his colleagues at school, his relatives, and his beloved girlfriend. Facing rejection and homesickness for his native Cuba, Alexis feels lost and alone. When he gets accepted into the prestigious Harid Ballet School, he has to start all over. He doesn't speak the language, has no friends and his Cuban style of ballet does not match the American schooling method. Meanwhile, his parents are making sacrifices for his career by working extra hours at their humble jobs. Alexis knows that he has to find his way quickly in the bourgeois and elitist world of American ballet while trying to remain faithful to his roots.

The Music Of The Spheres (La Música de las Esferas)

Marcel Beltran

A social and political portrait of a post-revolution Cuba through a beautiful love story. Two young artists met in the 80s and despite a lot of prejudice and obstacles, the couple stayed together for more than 35 years.

La nube (The Cloud)

Marcel Beltran

Ana is a single mother who lives in a country town. The sudden death of her father, the head of the family, comes as a terrible surprise.

Parihuela

Marcel Beltran

Parihuela means the traditional way to carry sick people in a mountainous region, which has an inconvenient transportation in Sierra Maestra, Cuba. The film not only holds firm to the basic principle of 'direct cinema' but has a view of sincerity and completion.
Parihuela es el nombre dado a una forma tradicional de transportar personas enfermas en esta región montañosa de la Sierra Maestra, Cuba, donde a veces no hay otra forma de transporte. La película no solo se mantiene firme en el principio básico del "cine directo", sino que tiene una visión de sinceridad y cercanía.

Memoria del Abuelo

Marcel Beltran

Intimate confession of the famous Cuban composer Harold Gramatges, while listening to the Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17, No. 4 by Frédéric Chopin. El valor icónico de la visualidad, el carácter narrativo de la voz del personaje y el valor dramático de la música tejen una puesta audiovisual de la sensibilidad creativa de Harold Gramatges. De ser un retrato, el documental apela al legado del expresionismo cuando deposita la productividad discursiva en la traducción visual de las palabras del músico. Ángel Pérez

La Opción Cero (Option Zero)

Marcel Beltran

There are countless stories of Cubans reaching their dream destination of Florida as boat refugees. A lesser known route to the United States starts with a flight in a ramshackle plane to Guyana. Then the refugees travel to Colombia where they cross the jungle to arrive in Central America, from where they hope to reach the promised land of America—a hard and dangerous journey. Cuban filmmaker Marcel Beltrán visits them in a refugee camp in Panama, where one of the residents gives him an idea. Many people here have filmed their journey, she says, and these videos tell their real story.
These jerky, shocking videos are interspersed with Beltrán's footage of the camp, tangibly illustrating the difference between the hectic pace of the journey and the insecure life at the reception center. Will these displaced people be transferred to another location or will they be deported back to Cuba? A poignant portrait of a group of Cubans for whom living in their native country is no longer an option.

La edad

Marcel Beltrán

Short film

digna guerra

Marcel Beltran

"digna guerra" touches on moments of the personal and professional life of unos of the most influential voices of Cuban contemporary music, Digna Guerra. From an observational documentary perspective, moments of intimacy with Digna that shares with no fear her personal and artistic convinctions.
"digna guerra" abarca momentos de la vida familiar y profesional de uno de los referentes de la música cubana contemporánea, Digna Guerra. Desde un acercamiento observacional se develan pequeños momentos de la intimidad de Digna que comparte sin temor sus convicciones personales y artísticas.

Cuerda al Aire

Marcel Beltran

Anolan is a soloist in a string orchestra, lives with her mother and dedicates every minute to his profession; Enmanuel is a peasant resident in the Sierra Maestra who devotes his time to working the land, accompanied by his young son.
Al observar de forma alterna la cotidianidad de Anolan y Enmanuel, el documental pulsa en las expectativas individuales de dos personas que, en condiciones de vida diferentes, son capaces de encontrar un modo de redimir sus vidas y ser felices. Es sorprendente cómo en las imágenes vibra la dimensión existencial de estos individuos con solo reparar en instantes de su transcurrir cotidiano.

Cisne Cuello Negro, Cuello Blanco

Marcel Beltran

Sergio Abel lives in a small town in Central Cuba and he videotapes his life. He is also a grade school teacher. A beautiful documentary that incorporates Sergio's observations and footage and his student's aspirations for the future with the outsider's eye to tell his story.
Retrato de una personalidad excepcional: Sergio Abel, un individuo con el coraje suficiente para trascender la mediocridad de lo cotidiano. Quizás la clave para comprender esa reciedumbre existencial, la ofrezca él mismo cuando apunta: «Me siento como una matica en el concreto: con mucho poder dentro de mí, pero limitado por el medio exterior». Ángel Pérez

Casa de la noche

Marcel Beltran

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.

You Have to Be Patient (Hay que ser paciente)

Luis Ospina

"Patient" is the word that defines the state of those who have to follow medical instructions or wait for something. In the labyrinthine world of the Colombian healthcare system patients have to face absurd bureaucratic obstacles. The film was part of the web documentary Paciente, directed by Jorge Caballero Ramos.

We Are the Music (Nosotros la música)

Rogelio París

We Are the Music (Nosotros La Música), a vivid panorama of the island's music and dance legends from the early 1960s, featuring the likes of Ignacio Villa, Celeste Mendoza, Ana Glorai, Charanga Francesa and many more. Made in 1964 by Rogelio Paris, the film can be considered the unofficial father of Buena Vista Social Club.

Under the Concrete

Roy Arida

Beirut, Lebanon. The city is riveted by a series of car bomb attacks. Alain, bored with his job as a sales representative, decides to turn his back on his life in this madness. Looking for a way out, he decides to devote himself to his passion, scuba diving. Quickly, he becomes increasingly obsessed with only one thing: breaking the world diving record.

The Last Supper (La última cena)

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

In 18th-century Cuba, a clueless count (Nelson Villagra) wants to bring the light of religion into the lives of his slaves. And he can think of no better way to share the power of Christianity than to involve them in a staging of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. After picking 12 of his slaves to serve as disciples, the count arranges them around the dinner table for a rather odd exchange of ideas. He considers the night a success -- until his slaves stage an uprising on Good Friday.

La primera carga al machete (The First Charge of the Machete)

Manuel Octavio Gómez

Both Spanish soldiers and Cuban peasants recall the bloody attack by machete-slicing Cubans in the late 19th century. The officers discuss the attack and the implications their defeat will have as they dread the review from Madrid. Soon Cuba would break away from Spain, largely with the help of William Randolph Hearst who helped to facilitate the Spanish-American War. The film also goes over the history, use and care of the machete, which came out of the sugar cane fields to become a deadly weapon of hand-to-hand combat.

Reembarque (Reshipment)

Gloria Rolando

Reembarque / Reshipment (2014) by Cuban documentary film maker Gloria Rolando is the story of Haitian immigrants to the province of Oriente in eastern Cuba. In the early 20th century, Haitians crossed the Gulf of Gonaives to work as laborers in the cane fields. When the sugar market crashed, many were forcibly returned to Haiti. The voices of prominent historians join the memories of Haitians and their descendants in Cuba to understand a chapter of this complex economic and social history of the Caribbean. The film tells a story that, despite discrimination suffered by the Haitians, the Creole language, vodou, and other musical and dance traditions remain strongly embedded in the Cuban cultural landscape.

Raíces de mi corazon (Roots of my heart)

Gloria Rolando

"Raíces de mi corazon" ("Roots of my heart"), an independently produced short feature film, deals for the first time in Cuban media with the 1912 massacre of thousands of members of the Independents of Color, the hemisphere's first black political party outside Haiti.
The Independents of Color were largely made up of veterans of the Mambi Army, the Cuban Army of Liberation that defeated the Spanish in two Wars of Liberation (1868-1878 and 1895 - 1898). Recent research in Cuba has established that this army was overwhelmingly made up of Cubans of African descent (80% and perhaps as high as 90%): it was thus one of the largest slave revolts in the hemisphere. When the Mambises had all but ejected the Spaniards from Cuba, the plantocracy allied themselves with the Americans to bring about the American intervention known as the Spanish American War in 1898. See the Mambi photo Gallery - these photos are part of the rarely seen historical stock used in the film.
Evaristo Estenoz founded the Independents of Color in 1908 in order to secure a rightful share for AfroCubans in a Cuba which had successfully marginalized them. He was murdered by Cuban troops in 1912 along with over 6,000 other AfroCubans, mostly fellow party members, after an intense media campaign carried out by the plantocracy to demonize the party. As famed sonero Arsenio Rodriguez says: "Hay que adorarlos como a Martí!", "We have to revere them as we do Marti!" Historian Aline Helg does an excellent job reporting all of this in her book, Our Rightful Share, published in 1995.

Psique

Miguel Coyula

Long ago, when time wasn't what it is today, Psique was a young girl so beautiful that men were afraid to approach her. Her parents visit an oracle who suggests that she'd marry a monster.

Pirámide

Miguel Coyula

An abstract, unavoidable catastrophe is closing in threatening the existence of mankind in Miguel Coyula's first short film

P.M.

Alberto Cabrera Infante Orlando Jiménez Leal

It is night. People are dancing in Havana. Meanwhile, some soldiers do their duty.
Jiménez Leal's documentary was made using footage sourced for a news story about how the Cuban people prepared themselves during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Yet the inclusion of any of these scenes made it impossible to air, as the timing was deemed inopportune by the authorities. The news director proposed reassembling the story by removing the images recorded in bars, and instead concentrating on the military preparations, in order to deliver a more heroic perspective. Jiménez Leal refused, deciding instead to create his own short film from the footage, keeping only the sequences recorded in bars and removing all military images. For this, Jiménez Leal decided to partner with Sabá Cabrera Infante, a young amateur filmmaker and the brother of novelist and film critic Guillermo Cabrera Infante. The subsequent screening and debate over PM, convened by ICAIC in the Casa de las Américas, was the prelude to a series of meetings presided over by Fidel Castro and attended by artists, media directors, and government officials who occupied the National Library in June 1961. Castro's interventions were published under the title "Words to the Intellectuals," a document that condemned all artistic creation that expressed a point of view different from the official one. The concluding phrase, "Within the Revolution, everything, against the Revolution, nothing," established the government's rules and defined its cultural policy for the future.

Omega 3

Eduardo del Llano

Cars (carnivores) have been the Antichrist for ages, but now even Ollies ("Egg-eaters!") hate Vegs ("tomato-worshippers"), and Fishies battle Frux with the ferocity of Djihadists. But the Macs ("macrobiotic crap!") – the "Opus Dei of nutrition", aptly clad in black – are the real bad guys. They make no prisoners, everyone knows that. They kill everybody who won't come around to see the light of reason about how to eat properly – you are what you eat, after all, aren't you? But what if the Macs took an Ollie and a Veg into their secret laboratory and made them eat meat? Will their metabolisms change for better or for worse?
OMEGA 3 is the first science fiction film out of Cuba in more than 100 years. In Eduardo del Llano's brilliantly evil science fiction dramedy the world has been at war for 12 years about what kind of food ideology is the best for all mankind. And as with all ideologies, tolerance goes out of the window when belief systems are at stake. As far as aesthetics are concerned 80s original MAD MAX meets THE FIFTH ELEMENT in this beautifully made Science Fiction film – but the loving detail in music, costumes and dialogues goes much further than that.

Oggún: un eterno presente

Gloria Rolando

This documentary is dedicated to the Yoruba tradition and to the legend of Oggún, the tireless warrior who fell in love with his mother and decided to live a prisoner in the mountains. Only Oshun, the goddess of love, will seduce him by dropping some honey on the lips of the god of metal, war, progress and civilization. This documentary also pays tribute to singer Lázaro Ros, one of the most important figures of Afro-Cuban culture. He recounts the story.
Features several documentary examples of Cuban folk dances and Cuban folk music, interspersed with dramatic recreations of some of the major figures of Afro-Cuban religion.
Documental dedicado a la tradición yoruba y a la leyenda de Oggún, el incansable guerrero que, enamorado de su madre, decide vivir prisionero en las montañas. Sólo Ochún, la diosa del amor, logrará cautivarlo cuando deje caer unas gotas de miel en los labios del dios del metal, de la guerra, del progreso y la civilización. Este documental también rinde tributo al cantante Lázaro Ros, una de las personalidades más importante de la cultura afrocubana, quien relata la historia que se cuenta.

Nadie

Miguel Coyula

The History of the Cuban Revolution through the personal experiences of writer Rafael Alcides, a once well known poet who became Nobody.

Molina's Solarix

Jorge Molina

In the midst of an unequal war against an unknown enemy, a man who survives locked in a shelter receives a visit from a strange woman fleeing the outside world. The meeting will be decisive for the survival of humanity.

Molasses (Melaza)

Carlos Lechuga

With the closure of the sugar mill, the little town of Molasses is devastated, lifeless. Aldo and Monica are a young married couple who want to find a way to survive. By supporting each other, they try to save their world without losing their faith.

Método moderno

Juan Carlos Alom

Here I leave you with Modern Method (1999), a film by filmmaker and photographer Juan Carlos Alom. A film that is a grammar and an irony and a city (or two). A film that seems like a tribute to those underground movies from the 60s and 70s in NY and, at the same time, is reminiscent of the Cuban alternative cinema of the late 80s.

Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment)

Miguel Coyula

An intellectual leaves the Cuban revolution and 'underdevelopment' behind only to find himself at odds with the ambiguities of his new life in the 'developed' world. A portrait of alienation, of an outsider with no clear-cut politics or ideology. A stranger in a strange land struggling with old age, sexual desire and ultimately the impossibility for the individual to belong in any society. The film's narrative is a collage of flashbacks, daydreams, and hallucinations comprising live-action, animation, and newsreel footage assembled to suggest the way personal memory works, subjectively and emotionally.

Los Cimarrones (The Fugitives)

Damian Sainz Edwards

The night forest hides Orestes' deepest terrors: darkness, the spirits of enslaved ancestors and his brother's homosexuality.

Las campañas de invierno (The Winter Campaigns)

Rafael Ramírez Pupo

Filmmaker Rafael Ramírez takes Napoleon's campaign to Russia as a starting point for his enigmatic feature debut that stands up for the non-logical. He presents a singularly mundane reality, but also a disturbing universe of fantasy, exploring the use of forms such as images, texts, and sounds to reach a challenging place in contemporary cinema.

Las aventuras de Juan Quin Quin (The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin)

Julio García Espinosa

Farmer Juan Quin Quin survives in pre-revolutionary Cuba by his wits – as an altar boy, circus performer, bullfighter, coffee planter and revolutionary. The poor but shrewd farmer even plays the part of Jesus Christ with a traveling theater company.
As the revolution begins, Juan and his friend Jachero join the supporters of Fidel Castro and subsequently become ensnared by Batista's troops. Jachero is killed on a secret mission and Juan looks back on their adventures together in the revolutionary cause.
The influential concepts outlined by Espinosa in his manifesto, "For an Imperfect Cinema" (1969), found their first "paradigmatic" expression in The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin. This anarchic comedy consciously pays homage to classic film genres and styles.

La Novicia Jardinera

Arturo Sotto Odalys García

A love story in pandemic times. Adelina is a young Havana woman, internet in a monastery to forget a haunting passion. It is the 1920s and the world is riddled by the Spanish flu. The rigors in the convent interior lead to confinement. Adelina, incapable of holding her bubbling inner nature, confesses her feelings to a young clergy who visits the convent to confess to the sister. Adelina starts to send messages of love to the clergy man, hidden between garden roses. The messages become an extensive anthology of poems.
Una historia de amor en tiempos de pandemia. Adelina, una joven habanera, es internada en un claustro de monjas con el propósito de que olvide una tormentosa pasión. Son los años veinte y el mundo es azotado por la pandemia de la influenza española. Los rigores en el interior del convento obligan al confinamiento. Adelina, incapaz de contener su ardiente naturaleza, deposita sus sentimientos en un joven clérigo que visita el convento para confesar a las hermanas. Adelina comienza a enviarle mensajes de amor al clérigo, escondidos entre las rosas del jardín. Los mensajes terminan convertidos en un extenso poemario.

Kafe Negro: Cuba & the Haitian Revolution

Mario Delatour

Kafe Negro tells the story of migrations around a small grain that became the second most important raw material on the global market. This film tells the story of the waves of migration of Haitian workers who, over time, profoundly transformed the culture and demography of Cuba and developed coffee growing on the island.

Historia de un ballet

José Massip

Demonstrating the influence of native folk dancing on the national ballet and the par in Cuba of classical ballet.
This short documentary describes the process and inspiration behind the creation and performance of a new Cuban ballet based on Afro-Cuban traditions and beliefs.

Habana Solo

Juan Carlos Alom

In Habana Solo some of the most important Cuban musicians from the most diverse musical tendencies of today, showing us the city in them and the city they inhabit with no other words than the music solos they improvise _ in solitary space and without restrictions, and we can see through the free lens of the camera, freedom based on undertaking the translation of the sounds of their music and the city's, into an uninterrupted visual solo in which images concatenate each other, in the same way the musicians are composing in the real instant their improvised pieces, with the rhythmical and harmonical intensity of the music that happens, and with the same dose of abstraction, making palpable the spirit of the city possessed by its musical sounds in the same proportion they sound, beat and visualize, with a texture that doesn't betray its reality, possessed by her.

Gloria Eterna (Eternal Glory)

Yimit Ramírez

In a world in which the statues are worth more than the people, Julian finds out that he is nominated to be the next "Model Employee". He sinks into a deep crisis in the face of having to leave his family, however, it is that which fears to leave what pushes him to sacrifice and to obtain the great honor. That honor is nothing more than death, for to be the "Model Employee" consists of being bust for life and serving the state.

El tenedor plástico (Plastic Fork)

Miguel Coyula

After his girlfriend is brutally murdered a young man swears revenge with a plastic fork. Shot in two weeks during Cuban filmmaker Miguel Coyula first trip to the US in the year 2000.

En Un Barrio Viejo

Nicolás Guillén Landrián

A few years after the Revolution, Havana seems to be a post-war city. EN UN BARRIO VIEJO is a portrait of people who live in an old neighborhood. In LOS DEL BAILE we see people dancing and drinking during a performance of Pello el Afrokán, inventor of the so-called Mozambique Rhythm. The film was not exhibited, because it showed an undesired image when films were supposed to encourage revolutionary heroism. OCIEL DEL TOA is a poetic film about dreams and death: Ociel is a teenager who lives near the Toa river. Life is hard there. In REPORTAJE we see a political meeting of peasants: A rag-doll is burnt in an act of collective exorcism – banned. In RETORNAR A BARACOA we go to a distant and inaccessible place. Between the tradition and the new social order, the small town seems to be a prison with a park – banned. COFFEA ARÁBIGA was commanded as a propaganda documentary to show how to sow coffee around Havana. In fact, Guillén Landrián made a didactic film, exhibited but banned as soon as the coffee plan collapsed. (Manuel Zayas)

El Secadero

José Luis Aparicio Ferrera

While two police officers try to find the stolen severed head of a colleague, two other officers find the corpse of a woman.

El otro Francisco (The Other Francisco)

Sergio Giral

The Other Francisco was the first film in a trilogy of films made by Sergio Giral, a black Cuban, about the history of slavery in Cuba. The movie is built around a critique of 19th century abolitionist Anselmo Suarez y Romero's novel, Francisco.

El hijo del sueño

Alejandro Alonso

Julio Cesar left Cuba as part of the Mariel exodus in 1980, contracted HIV and disappeared from view. This beautiful film, made up of postcards and pictures, is Alejandro Alonso s attempt at a re-encounter with his uncle, a putting him back in the picture. The film´s style evokes a hazy memory of things unsaid, half-remembered, all enveloped by very strong bonds and much love, pieced together through postcards he sent home, family pictures, and textured sounds. It´s very moving and brings together many histories: political exile but also those kinds of exclusions, structural, that seem to appear once the suspicion of homosexuality makes itself felt. Part of a cycle curated by Dean Luis Reyes for Rialta magazine and featuring beautiful sound work from José Homer Mora.

Duelo (Duel)

Alejandro Alonso

Yoan is tormented by nightmares. He is anguished over the absence of his father and the visions of spirits that visit him at night and keep him from falling asleep. At the age of 17, he conceives life as a great fight.

Diario de la Niebla

Rafael Ramirez

Bahamut Limited Corporation crafted its film on the remains of found footage discovered in the city of Dzershinzk after its implosion. Doctor James Cracker-Fishbourne took it upon himself to create its own aesthetic preservation.
Bahamut Limited Corporation montó esta película sobre los restos del material encontrado en Ciudad Dzershinzky luego de su implosión. El doctor James Cracker-Fishbourne se hizo cargo de su aspecto estético.

Diario

Juan Carlos Alom

Film inspired by the Campaign diary from José Martí (De Cabo Haitiano a Dos Ríos), written in 1895 right before his death.
Película inspirada en el Diario de Campaña de José Martí en el Cabo Haitiano a Dos Ríos, escrito en 1895 poco antes de su muerte.

DeMoler

Alejandro Ramírez Anderson

Small look at the sugar workers' feeling when they see their sugar cane mill dismantled.

Demasiado miedo a la vida o Plaff (Too Afraid of Life or Splat)

Juan Carlos Tabío

A superstitious middle-aged woman falls in love with a taxi driver, while trying to learn the identity of the unseen person tossing eggs at her.
Living in 1980s Cuba, Concha (Daisy Granados) is a woman with an extremely superstitious belief system. Set in her ways, the middle-aged Concha has no intention of letting scientific explanations replace her old and decidedly unscientific views of the world -- so when her daughter-in-law, Clarita (Thais Valdes), challenges her adherence to the superstitions, Concha views it as an attack. Now, Clarita is squarely in the woman's crosshairs as Concha slowly loses her sanity.

Delirio (Delirium)

Alejandro Alonso

Delirium enters and translates the waking dreams of a group of people who think of the future of their city. In this new dream dimension, the city appears oblique, fragmented in crystals and mirrors of water, reverberating amid shadows that elongate, warped by gestures, noises, voices, barricades, and, above all, time. The dream and real cities become intertwined and confused when the veil is lifted and we discover that we are awake. Or are we?

Cucarachas rojas (Red Cockroaches)

Miguel Coyula

First of a Trilogy: In a New York ravaged with acid rains, a man in his twenties meets a mysterious, yet familiar young woman who disrupts the banality of his day-to-day existence. Together, they will embark on a surreal journey with a devastating climax.
Debut production of Miguel Coyula, it was the result of a two-year effort on a tiny budget of $2,000. Shot entirely using a portable digital camcorder and edited on a home computer, Red Cockroaches is an example of DIY cinema. In its review, Variety called it a "A triumph of technology in the hands of a visionary with know-how…" It is the first of a planned trilogy that continues with Corazon Azul (Blue Heart)

Blue Heart (Corazon Azul)

Miguel Coyula

Fidel Castro uses genetic engineering to build the new man and save Cuban socialism. The experiment fails as these beings are highly intelligent but also cruel and uncontrollable. Rejected by their own creators, a group organizes a series of terrorist actions, chaos reigns on the island. Elena, one of its oldest members, finds a trace to the origin of her genes, and begins a journey to discover her humanity.

Buena Onda (Nice Idea)

Miguel Coyula

An extremely sensitive girl finds a rare object in the forest. Nothing will be the same once she's back into the city.

Bailar Sobre Agujas (Dancing on Needles)

Miguel Coyula

A young woman is going to get married. She looks in the mirror as she remember her traumatic past.
Bailar Sobre Agujas, aka Dancing on Needles, is a Cuban student film directed by Miguel Coyula in 1999. It's based on a short story by Raymond Carver.

Alona

Rafael Ramírez

The inhabitants of a house are being studied by an evil force. No one seems aware of their fate except for an old man, who is sure that the culmination of his masterpiece will save them from the inevitable.