Discoveries from Cuba World Cinema

Urban reform during the first months of the Cuban revolution is the subject of this documentary

Loose collection of individual portraits of the inhabitants of the Isle of Pinos (now Isla de la Juventud), who tell their stories, share ideas and discuss topics such as racism and crime.

Hilario (76) is an old man who lives in a forest in western Cuba. In a travel diary he writes down his findings: labyrinthine caves, cave paintings, prehistoric animals and nocturnal visions that wake him up at night. Driven by his curiosity and insomnia, he enters a deep cave, where he will have to face what he fears the most.

The 1960 Havana Carnival is presented in a romantic story.

Lillah Halla asked five Cubans to dance in front of the camera to music that sums up their lives at that moment. The songs are inaudible to the viewer, but the rooms in which the people dance, the way they move and their facial expressions as they listen reveal their state of mind.

Fictional documentary by Eduardo del Llano about rock and heavy metal in Cuba and around the world.

The first film in the Popular Encyclopedia series consists of three stories: 1 – Vision Defects (a popular explanation of nearsightedness and farsightedness); 2 – "Marine Fauna" (with a visit to the national aquarium); 3 – "How a Cartoon Is Made" (a brief description of the process of creating cartoons).

As the international press pours into Havana, Cuba to report on the death of Fidel Castro, a little girl proudly holds a large cardboard sign over her head on the Plaza de la Revolución. In a fascinating shot lasting almost 12 minutes, we watch this girl-braids, red dress, white knee socks, fighting against the wind-as she experiences her moment in the spotlight. We can't see what's written on the sign because she's being filmed from behind. Armed with cameras and cell phones, the people around her are taking countless photos and uninvited selfies with her. As the minutes tick by, our unease grows. Placed in the role of an ignorant spectator, we have time to contemplate the omnipresence of the camera-and we become desperate to know what's written on that sign.

Havana is occupied by foreign forces and on the edge of civil war. Lazaro, a kid from the slums, walks us through his streets and reveals the chaos that has taken over the capital.

Young Doctor Ana lives alone because she couldn't bear to leave Cuba when her family sailed away on a raft to the US. Ernesto lives in his car with his belongings in a small case, traveling from embassy to embassy trying to fulfill his dream of leaving Cuba. These Star-crossed lovers long to be together, they are pulled apart by different dreams rooted in different countries. In his directorial debut, Alejandro Brugués offers his personal view on the insistently revisited theme in Cuban art and literature - emigration and the laceration that it implies.

Nicanor has been arrested for doing graffiti at three in the morning. Against all logic, the graffiti is in favor of the government. The police captain who interrogates him—a cultured policeman, for a change—tries to understand why he does it.

Animated short film from Elpidio Valdés' series. Coronel Elpidio Valdés trains his horse Palmiche. He becomes an outstanding war horse.

A child discovers the importance of work, however simple it may be, by understanding the usefulness of the nuts his father makes.

The documentary shows the guerilla fight of the Angolan revolutionaries from the fight against Portuguese colonialism. The people had been fighting for 14 years for their independence and when it was going to be declared an independent republic, pseudorevolutionary forces and organizations and puppet groups were supported by imperialism to stop the liberatory desires of the people. The CIA supported UNITA, FLNA, etc. All of this served to to oppose the courage and decision of the Angolan people, supported the Cuban people with their arms, force, and their own lives. In great battles, the Angolan and Cuban patriots expel the enemies. On November 11, 1975, President Agostinho Neto took office.

Rita, a woman in the crisis of the 40s, decides to end a relationship that has no future, and undertakes the search for a new love in the days before the historic concert of the Rolling Stones in Havana.

Cuban children have always built chivichanas for racing, using any wood to hand and ball bearings for wheels. During the hardship of the early 1990s, rural communities realised the potential of the toy and adapted it for personal and cargo transport, but in the streets of Havana it’s all about speed. Health and safety be damned, as up to five kids pile on and clatter downhill and around sharp corners at breakneck speed, steering the front wheel with an ingenious tiller. The film is a thunderous sound piece, too, with exhilarating moments of full immersion.

Leoneidi is only 12 years old and already a mother. She spent pretty much her entire pregnancy in hospital, she says with a deadpan expression, with no support from her parents. Now she lives with the father of the child, who constantly gives her orders about the housekeeping.

The dismantling of a sugar mill in the voices and faces of its workers and the inhabitants of the surrounding village

Detective Patricia receives news of the death of Mariano, a man who she believes had been wrongfully accused in the past.

A mercenary from the Bay of Pigs invasion escapes in search of protection and is taken in by a peasant woman who ignores his identity.

Single channel, super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent.

After years of not seeing each other, Irene meets her ex at a restaurant and he tries an unexpected rapprochement.

A 2009 Cuban drama by Rebeca Chávez taking place in Santiago de Cuba at the beginning of revolution. In the late 1950s, the city of Santiago de Cuba was afire, the site of some of the fiercest resistance to the murderous dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The film's narrative unfolds over 24 hours in the lives of several youthful members of the underground as they confront their own uncertainty about the morality of armed struggle and the necessity of severing bonds that had seemed unbreakable.

A Sunday afternoon in the neighbourhood: apparently nothing happens. In this stillness, humorous observations unfold, in which the trivial becomes poetic, turning the absence of events into the film’s central narrative material.

On november 27th, 1871 one of the most atrocious events happened in the Cuban territory, the regiment of voluntarys of the spanish army along with the Spaniard corrupt government that ruled the island, conspired to destroy the lives of 8 students of medicine. The resolution of the young students in maintaining their dignity over the injustice in which they were involved; the reaction of few fair spanish men to the inexplicable situation in which the events was developed and the never told roll of Fermín Valdés in the discovery of the truth will change the insight of this story. Based on true events, this film was a debt to the Cuban history that was settled.

A world record, an accident, a heroic act, a matter of scientific interest. All this happens simultaneously. The editorial board of the newspaper La Avanzada must decide what goes on the front page.

Record of the construction of the plaza structures for the Parrandas of Remedios, one of the most important popular celebrations in the country, alongside the Charangas of Bejucal and the carnivals of Santiago de Cuba.

An Angolan woman of the Kwanyama ethnic group helps a wounded Cuban soldier; to fight death, there is an alliance between love, life, reality, and imagination.

Upset by the glass ceiling in the workplace and a younger prettier woman moving up the ladder, a woman rants about her situation.

From a place far from home, Lara is driven by enigmatic dreams to fulfill a spiritual birth ritual that will take her and her dead aunt back to Africa.

Pedro, a young black man born into a family of Haitians who emigrated to Cuba, returns to his town and notes the changes that the new times have brought.

On December 31, 1958, a detective investigates the theft of a painting from the home of a wealthy widow in Havana. The relationship between the two, amid investigations and danzones, reveals the history of the house and the family. The arrival of the bearded men in Havana changes the course of events.

Documentary that reflects the development of tobacco production in Pinar del Río.

A life of political commitment led filmmaker Michèle Firk from the underground support network of the Algerian FLN to the guerrilla struggle in Guatemala. In 1966, she was in Havana when the Tricontinental took place, a conference aimed at forming a united anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist front of countries from the Global South.

Ricki travels to Cuba after many years to meet his girlfriend Beatriz, but she has changed a lot; Claudia, in a desperate search for money to buy a house, tries to scam a drug dealer; and Celina, a necrophiliac prepares to spend a weekend with a corpse.. Three dark love stories that, thanks to various unforeseen events, will intertwine until they become the revelation of the plot of a film that at the end of the story illuminates the drug dealer.

A young sociologist returns to Nuevitas, his hometown, to investigate the transformations taking place there, brought about by the advance of the revolutionary process. Disagreeing with the way his predecessor worked, he tries to change it and discovers the complexity of human relationships, social problems, and the sexist and racial prejudices she had to face.

In 1951, German Puig founded with a group of young people the Cinemateca de Cuba with the support of the Cinémathèque française and outside the official institutions. At 91, he recalls his struggles against indifference, ignorance and how, when the political confrontation extended to the field of culture, his work and name were erased from the island's history: it is the Revolution that has made him a hero.

Inspired by songs by Arrigo Barnabé, the film tells the story of a young man who was the victim of a scientific experiment on a TV network. From then on, he begins to commit a series of crimes whose objective is to take revenge on those who induced him to experience it.

The film follows a young man's jealousy over his girlfriend attending a backyard party in Havana, where musical acts and dances are performed. This is the first sound (short) film made in Cuba.

Documentary about Cuban medical volunteers in Pakistan following the devastating earthquake of 2005.

Various family members attend a wake in a crumbling national funeral home to grieve the loss of their eldest patriarch, a patriot and proponent for the Cuban communist revolution until his death.

The triumph of a young man in an important erotic literature contest reaches the ears of his grandmother.

Fidel, the only gravedigger in a small Cuban village, has made the cemetery into his home. He, a simple mortal, has the mission of burying all the dead of his village.

The unfair distribution of land in Cuba encourages the support of the peasants to the revolution.

Animated sketch dedicated to Benjamin Franklin's inventiveness.

2:04, 2007, Cuba.

Pandora, a 40-year-old transgender woman living in a residential neighbourhood in Havana, rejects Roy, the teenager who tries to win her over. While caring for a neighbour’s child, she gets an unpleasant surprise that makes her consider whether or not to give Roy a chance.

Havana. Mother and daughter embark on a journey in an old Polski Fiat commonly known in Cuba as the “Polaquito”. The bond between Bertha and Margot does not prevent a family's and country's turbulence from arising. Immersed in conversation, the distance to an inevitable destination is shortened.

A sunfish lives in a marine-space environment. A small and selfish being plans to capture him for his own benefit, which will bring devastating consequences.

Documentary about the iconic portrait of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara by Cuban photographer Alberto Diaz Gutiérrez (known as 'Korda').

A painter in search of inspiration pursues an imaginary woman whose portrait he finds in an abandoned house.

Carlos lives isolated deep in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra in Cuba, after an entire life of working in the high seas. His day to day life takes place between memories of another time, work in the field and his animals, the only travelling companions of this man who is a castaway on land.

Within a single roll of film, images of the funeral held in Bejucal to honour combatants killed in the Angolan War intertwine with celebrations of Las Charangas, the town’s most important festivity. Life and mourning coexist within the same flow of images.

The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry produces this short film that tries to explain the causes of the coup, anchoring them in debt and US interference, denouncing the torture and imprisonment of opponents and showing solidarity with the Uruguayan people.

After becoming wealthy in Cuba, a man decides to bring from Spain the daughter he abandoned twenty years prior. However he didn't expect the upheaval he would suffer with the new arrival.