English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Lynn Cruz, Havana Times, 23 March 2018 — I have been working with the San Antonio de los Banos School of Film and TV (EICTV) for sixteen years. Normally when teachers, both Cuban and foreign, connect with some actors, they always ask for these every time they hold their workshops, where purely creative interests are … Continue reading “My Unexpected Expulsion / Lynn Cruz”
14ymedio, Havana, 8 September 2016 – The American alternative rock band Jane’s Addiction has canceled its first concert in Cuba because of “transportation problems,” as reported Thursday by the official daily Granma. The performance, a spectacle that has been in preparation since last March, was scheduled for tomorrow at 10:00 PM in the Salon Rosado of the Tropical … Continue reading “Jane’s Addiction Havana Performance Cancelled / 14ymedio”
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 4 February 2015 – This coming February 22 Tania Bruguera should be in Madrid to present one of her works at the ARCO International Contemporary Art Fair, but she knows she isn’t going to make it. Trapped by Cuban justice since last December 30, when she was arrested during her performance … Continue reading ““In Cuba we have learned our duties very well, but not our rights” / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Tania Bruguera”
Research shows that among the main forms of cultural consumption in Cuba are television, visiting with friends and listening to music 14ymedio, ORLANDO PALMA, Havana, 5 January 2015 — A Cuban television special this Sunday entitled “They Call Me Cuba” addressed issues of “cultural consumption in the 21st century,” with special emphasis on the well-known … Continue reading “Here Comes the Packet, Knock, Knock / 14ymedio, Orlando Palma”
14ymedio, Havana, 5 January 2014 – This Monday, the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera returned the National Culture Award (Distinción por la Cultura Nacional) she received in 2002, and decided to renounce her membership in the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). “I can not receive recognition from, nor be part of, an … Continue reading “Tania Bruguera leaves UNEAC and returns her National Culture Award / 14ymedio”
Havana, Cuba, November, www.cubanet.org — With regards to the absurd and prudish limitations imposed on some students by the Communications Faculty, Elaine Diaz recently wrote on her blog: “. . . the policymakers are scandalized by things from the students as if the Revolution were going to fall apart next week. They should ask themselves … Continue reading “The Ideology of Prohibition / Luis Cino Alvarez”
Earlier this year a popular new entertainment business cropped up in Havana: 3D movies! And, as with anything new that happens in Cuba, even if it’s commonplace in much of the world, it’s taken the form of a private initiative (without official license), functioning outside the state institutions that still use obsolete equipment in their … Continue reading “3D Censorship in Cuba / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Havana, November 2013 – Movie and game rooms created by the private sector to stave off boredom is a sample of what can be achieved in a short time with the decentralization of the economy. The government’s recent ban on these recreational activities, shows who is holding back the changes. What is Cinema: Art? Cultural … Continue reading “3D Movie and Video Game Rooms Going Underground / Julio Cesar Alvarez”
LOOK AT ME, DEATH, AND FOR YOUR LOVE’S SAKE, DON’T CRY It’s been ten years ago already, in the purple-blue evening of Centro Habana, in an independent literary workshop that had the Ministry of Culture(made flesh in the person of the vociferous agent Fernando Rojas) dying of fear and envy, we had invited an activist … Continue reading “IN THE DEEPEST MARROW OF DEATH* / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Havana, Cuba. July 20th, 2011 *Official Statement of the Directive Council of the Rotilla Festival * Purpose: Denunciation of the Hijacking of Rotilla Festival Rotilla Festival, founded in the year 1998, is the only event of its kind in Cuba. It is brought together every year in the month of august, and during three consecutive … Continue reading “Official Communication of the Rotilla Festival in Response to the Government Hijacking / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
PHOTOS: Orlando (Pardo) poster: Rolando (Pulido) CAN YOU HEAR THE DRUMS, FERNANDO? Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo This year, 2010, a lot of things will be defined in quasi-cultural Cuba. The fate of certain private art exhibition spaces, for example. The fate of certain digital publications cornered between permits and panics, for example. The fate of … Continue reading “THE RED RAGE RELOADED / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
14ymedio, Havana, August 3, 2023 — During Tuesday’s opening ceremony at the Gibara International Film Festival in Holguín province, Cuban actor Luis Alberto García dedicated his Lucía de Honor award to the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers. In a controversial acceptance speech, which was ignored in official media coverage of the event, the artist alluded to … Continue reading “‘Cuba Will Either Have a Free Cinema or None at All,’ Says Cuban Actor”
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 14 August 2022 — Rarely can an exile choose the city in which his days will end. Fortune intervenes, rolls the dice, and the cards are shuffled. Wherever we fall, we live, and we try to make sense of the trip. The city that welcomes the exile can be dizzying or … Continue reading “The Furthest City”
14ymedio, Madrid, 28 April 2022 — The departure of Armando Franco Senén, former director of the university magazine Alma Mater, continues to generate reactions, and the Communist Party has taken notice. In a message on Twitter, Enrique Villuendas Calleyro, an official of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee and in charge of the press, said that he met … Continue reading “Silvio Rodríguez Regrets the ‘Closeness’ of the Cuban Leadership and the ‘Powers of Impunity’”
14ymedio, Havana, 21 March 2022 — To the massive protests of July 11 and 12, 2021, the Cuban government responded “with disproportionate and methodical political and judicial violence, which far exceeds the specific and spontaneous episodes of violence committed during the uprising by a few citizens,” denounced a group of Cuban artists and intellectuals in … Continue reading “Filmmakers, Writers, Artists in Cuba Denounce State ‘Judicial Violence’ in a Letter”
