December 2014 - Cuba Travel Services

Transcription

what’s on
In co-operation with
HAVANA
dec
2014
Film Fever:
International Festival of
New Latin American Cinema:
December 4-14, 2014
The best 20
Cuban films ever
eXtras: A portrait of Cuba’s
Escuela Internacional de
Cine y Televisión
CUBAN CINEMA ISSUE
HAVANA GUIDE
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Photo by Nicolás Ordóñez from eXtras series - La Diva de Gala
EDITORIAL
Cover picture by Nicolás Ordóñez
from the series eXtras. Featuring Ilka
M Valdés & Nelson Rodríguez.
This issue is dedicated to Cuban cinema in recognition of Havana’s growing influence in the film culture of the
American hemisphere. This is highlighted each year in the Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano to
be held from December 4-14, 2014 in Havana. Described as the ultimate word in Latin American cinema, this annual
get-together of critics, sages and filmmakers has been fundamental in showcasing recent Cuban classics to the
world.
Cuban cinema has always been closer to the European art-house tradition than to the formula movies of Hollywood.
The 1960s were the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos’s (ICAIC) Golden Decade under the
leadership of Afredo Guevera. The giants behind the camera were Humberto Solás, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Juan
Carlos Tabío and Santiago Alvarez who, working under Guevara’s guidance, put cutting-edge Cuban cinema on
the international map. Since then, Cuban cinema has passed the baton to a new, equally talented, stash of movie
guerrillas including Fernando Pérez (Suite Habana), Juan Carlos Cremata (Viva Cuba) and more recently, Ernesto
Daranas’ (Conducta).
This issue features retrospectives on the state of Cuban cinema and just what it means to the country, alongside
interviews with Enrique Pineda Barnet and Juan Carlos Cremata, and a piece in memory of Humberto Solás. We
preview this year’s Havana film festival; our pick of the top 20 Cuban movies of all time and a review of Conducta
(this year’s smash hit). We have also profiled the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Antonio de los Baños
through the eyes of photographer Nicolás Ordóñez in the brilliant series eXtras. Rounding out this issue is an article
on Cine Pobre: a low budget hip festival which takes place in April each year.
Outside of the cinema, December is a beautiful time to visit Cuba. Long-sleeved shirts may be required but the sun
still shines and the festive season is packed with both cultural and historic events from Cuba’s best jazz festival to the
wonderful Parrandas de Remedios. Christmas in Cuba is low key, largely free from the mass collective consumerist
binge elsewhere and arguably truer to the roots of familial solidarity mixed with the odd glass of rum or two. Enjoy!
December 2014 Highlights (Havana, unless stated)
•
Dec 4-14, International Festival of New Latin American Cinema
•
Dec 6-21, FIART
•
Dec 17, Pilgrimage to Rincón for the feast day of San Lázaro
•
Dec 17-21, Jazz Plaza
•
Dec 24, Parrandas de Remedios, Charangas de Bejucal
•
Jan 1, Anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution
Thanks to all of our contributors, sponsors, partners and readers. Do please keep providing us with your feedback,
comments and suggestions. All enquiries should be directed to Sophia Beckman at CubaAbsolutely@gmail.com. All
the best. Viva Cuba!
Photo by Nicolás Ordóñez from eXtras series - Final de camino
DECEMBER 2014
CUBAN CINEMA
HAVANA LISTINGS
HISTORY &
CULTURE
TRAVEL
HAVANA GUIDE
Havana’s Film Fever p6
Chronicles of a country told in celluloid p13
Just how good is Cuban cinema today? p16
The best 20 Cuban films ever p18
Conducta: Ernesto Daranas’s smash hit p24
Enrique Pineda Barnet: A life spent at the movies p26
Humberto Solás: For the love of Cuba p29
Juan Carlos Cremata: An irreverent genius p31
Cuba’s International School of Cinema p34
eXtras: A portrait of Cuba’s Escuela Internacional de
Cine y Televisión p36
Cine Pobre: Cuba’s hippest & retro film festival p39
Visual Arts p41 — Photography p44 — Dance p45 —
Music p46 — Theatre p55 — For Kids p57
Dec 17: Pilgrimage to Rincón for the feast day of San
Lázaro p59
Dec 24: Parrandas de Remedios: An explosive
Christmas p61
Dec 24: Charangas de Bejucal p64
Dec 25 & 31: Christmas & New Year’s Eve in Cuba p65
Jan 1, 1959: Triumph of the Cuban Revolution p68
Nazdarovie: Soviet style, Cuban finesse p70
Features — Restaurants — Bars & Clubs — Live Music —
Hotels — Private Accommodation p73
Havana’s Film Fever
by Juliet Barclay
During the first two weeks of December, a virulent
plague takes hold of Havana. Immunization is
impossible and there’s no option but to surrender.
The consolation is that there are so many fellowsufferers with whom to compare notes on
symptoms, cures and pulling extended sickies
from work. Employers are not inclined to be
sympathetic to doctor’s certificates for Cinemania
Febril Virulans, or to give it its common name, Film
Fever.
The cause of the epidemic is the annual Latin America
Havana Film Festival. For a fortnight, queues wind
round and round the blocks which house the main
cinemas and a hot trade takes place in passes and
tickets. The riskier the film, the further from the
center of town it seems to be shown, so serious
movie buffs often find themselves driving to tiny
cinemas in obscure little villages in what seems
like the back of beyond to see films which don’t
always merit the journey. But a desperate mustsee mentality has the habaneros in its inexorable
grip, and all reason is abandoned in the keen-eyed
pursuit of celluloid novelty. The names of the stars
are on ever yone’s lips, scandalous gossip about
their private lives passes from balcony to balcony
and strange disjointed conversations take place
about the convolutions of plots and individual
characterizations as the previous night’s offerings
are mercilessly dissected in kitchens and offices
You’ve
all over the city. The infection spreads like wildfire
and before very long it passes to cities all over the
island.
Since December 3, 1979 Cuba’s flamboyant capital
has been the venue for the International Festival of
New Latin American Cinema. Local passion for the
‘Seventh Art’ dates back to 6pm on Sunday, January
24, 1897 when the island’s first film was exhibited
in a small hall close to the former Tacón Theatre,
now the Gran Teatro de La Habana. According
to contemporary newspaper reports, over two
thousand habaneros turned out to see a series of
20-minute shows that continued until midnight.
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With the same enthusiasm exhibited by their
ancestors, millions of film buffs throughout Cuba
support the Festival, which has served as a launch
pad for Latin American cinematography and
become one of the leading festivals of the region.
With awards in categories that include animated
film, documentary, fiction, first work, unpublished
script and poster, as well as direction, screenplay,
actor, actress, art direction, music, film editing
and sound, the Festival has not only honored
filmmakers and technicians of the region, but
also the best films on Latin American subjects by
directors from further afield.
The energetic atmosphere of the Festival and the
discussions it provokes have caused numerous
cinematic celebrities to visit Havana: Steven
Spielberg,
Pedro
Almodóvar—accompanied
by his creative harem, Francis Ford Coppola,
Carlos Saura, Oliver Stone, Robert Redford, Jack
Nicholson, Robert de Niro and Michel Legrand have
been welcomed with the same enthusiasm with
which earlier habaneros greeted Marlon Brando,
Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Cesare Zavattini and
Alain Delon. It remains to be seen whether one
of Havana’s barmen will create a cocktail named
after a star… somehow, asking for a Cameron Diaz
doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as a request
for a Mary Pickford.
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The Havana Film Festival has also contributed to the recovery of Cuban cinematography, which had
declined due to the economic crisis in Cuba in the 1990s, by supporting partnerships with overseas
production companies. It’s the variety and creativity of films shown at the Havana Film Festival every
year that attract thousands of visitors eager to experience Latin American cinema, meet its most
significant figures, attend collateral screenings and throw themselves into the frenzied comings and
goings of Cuban moviegoers. Film fever, like malaria, recurs, but if you’re not afraid of infection we’ll see
you in Havana in December.
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XXXVI Festival Internacional del
Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano
Since December 3, 1979, Havana has been the venue
of the International Festival of New Latin American
Cinema, which has served as a launch pad for Latin
American cinematography and become one of the
leading film festivals in the region. Awards are given
in categories that include animation, documentary,
fiction, first work, unpublished script and poster,
as well as direction, screenplay, actor, actress,
art direction, photography, music, film editing
and sound. Numerous professional workshops
and seminars also take place during the festival,
plus much awaited screenings of international
contemporary cinema.
The organizers have announced that 42 feature films
out of over 100 films will be competing for prizes
and that the event will open with the Argentinean
film Relatos salvajes, directed by Damián Szifrón.
The film deals with extreme situations of heartbreak
and violence and is sure to win some of the awards.’
Argentina will be bringing the largest number
of feature films, most of them in co-production,
including La tercera orilla and Aire libre.’ Brazil,
whose participation this year will not be as significant
as in the past, will bring Traigo conmigo and Playa de
futuro. Chile will probably will gain popular success
with the thriller Matar a un hombre, while La voz en
off seems of interest as well as La tierra en la lengua
from Colombia.
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The Cuban films in competition include the
excellent Conducta directed by Ernesto Daranas;
La pared de las palabras by the acclaimed director
Fernando Pérez. The film is a heartrending
reflection on (in)communication of man, pain
and the limits to sacrifice, with a deluxe cast that
includes Jorge Perugorría, Isabel Santos, Laura de
la Uz, Verónica Lynn and Carlos Enrique’ Almirante.
Other Cuban film. Other Cuban films that will be
competing for prizes are Fátima o el Parque de la
Fraternidad directed by Jorge Perugorría, based on
a story by Miguel Barnet about a transvestite who
reigns in Havana at night, also with a “heavyweight”
cast: Carlos Enrique Almirante, Mirta Ibarra and
Broselianda Hernández; Venecia directed by
Enrique Kiki Álvarez, which tells the story of three
hairdressers who on payday have a night on the
town; and the promising first work Vestido de novia
directed by Marilyn Solaya, which which deals with
the conflict faced by a man who discovers he is
married to a transsexual, with another star cast:
Luis Alberto García, Laura de la Uz, Isabel Santos
and Jorge Perugorría.
The social vocation and interest in bringing history
to the present times, which was one of the keys of
new Latin American cinema in its infancy, seems
to have given way to fiction, personal stories, the
intimate nature, introspection, but still hold sway
among documentaries with films such as A vuelo de
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pajarito y La ballena va llena (Argentina), Manos unidas (Argentina-Bolivia-Chile), A quemarropa, Castaña,
Democracia en blanco y negro (Brazil) and Chile, las imágenes prohibidas.
One of the attractions of the festival have always been guests stars who come to the event, and it is said
that Benicio del Toro, Matt Dillon and possibly the great Russian director Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky
will be arriving in Havana soon .
The first digital projectors purchased by Cuba have been installed at the Chaplin, Yara amd Multicine
Infanta theaters, where the sound systems have also been improved. A mobile screen will tour several
districts throughout Havana, including Alamar, Cerro, Old Havana, San Miguel del Padrón, Víbora, Lisa,
Habana del Este and Regla. The event will pay tribute to one of the founders of the Festival. Gabriel García
Márquez, with screenings of documentaries on his life and films based on his works at the Pabellón Cuba.
Competing Feature Films, First Works and short films
CHAPLIN
THEATER
December 5-11, 10am, 12:30, 3:00,
5:30, 8:00 & 10:30pm
Feature Films:
Argentina, Mexico, Denmark, US,
Netherlands, Germany, France,
2014, Fiction, 108’, HD, Color
EL
CERRAJERO
Argentina, 2013, Fiction, 77’, HD,
Color
JAUJA
LA TERCERA
ORILLA
Argentina, Germany, Netherlands,
2014, Fiction, 92’, 35 mm, Color
REFUGIADO
RELATOS
SALVAJES
Argentina, Spain, 2014, Fiction,
122’, HD, Color
AIRE LIBRE
You’ve
Argentina,
Poland,
Colombia,
France, Germany, 2014, Fiction,
95’, HD, Color
Argentina, Uruguay, 2014, Fiction,
102’, HD, Color
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TRAGO
COMIGO
Brazil, 2013, Fiction, 84’, HD, Color
FÁTIMA O EL
Cuba, 2014, Fiction, 90’, HD, Color
PARQUE DE LA
FRATERNIDAD
A ESTRADA 47
Brazil, Italy, Portugal, 2013, Fiction,
107’, HD, B/N-Color
LA PARED DE
LAS PALABRAS
MATAR A UN
HOMBRE
Chile, France, 2014, Fiction, 82’,
HD, Color
VENECIA
Cuba, Colombia, 2014, Fiction, 74’,
HD, Color
LA VOZ EN
OFF
Chile, France, Canada,
Fiction, 96’, HD, Color
VIENTO
APARTE
Mexico, 2014, Fiction, 99’, HD,
Color
TIERRA EN LA
LENGUA
Colombia, 2013, Fiction, 86’, HD,
Color
LOS
AUSENTES
Mexico, Spain, France,
LOS HONGOS
Colombia,
Argentina,
France,
Germany, 2014, Fiction, 103’, HD,
Color
DÓLARES DE
ARENA
Dominican Republic, Argentina,
Color
CONDUCTA
MR. KAPLAN
Uruguay, Spain, Germany, 2014,
LA SALADA
Argentina, 2014, Fiction, 88’, HD,
Color
EL CORDERO
Chile, 2014, Fiction, 90’, HD, Color
JUANA A LOS
12
Argentina, Austria, 2014, Fiction,
78’, HD, Color
LA MADRE DEL Chile, 2014, Fiction, 79’, HD, Color
CORDERO
ATLÁNTIDA
Argentina, France, 2014, Fiction,
88’, HD, Color
NO SOY
LORENA
Chile, Argentina, 2014, Fiction, 82’,
HD, Color
CIENCIAS
NATURALES
Argentina, France, 2014, Fiction,
71’, HD, Color
GENTE DE
BIEN
Colombia, France, 2014, Fiction,
86’, HD, Color
HISTORIA DEL
MIEDO
Argentina,
France,
Germany,
Uruguay, 2014, Fiction, 79’, HD,
Color
VESTIDO DE
NOVIA
Cuba, Spain, 2014, Fiction, 104’, HD,
Color
A HISTÓRIA
DA
ETERNIDADE
FERIADO
Ecuador, Argentina, 2014, Fiction,
82’, HD, Color
CASA GRANDE Brazil, 2014, Fiction, 112’, HD, Color
GÜEROS
México, 2014, Fiction, 106’, HD,
B/N
OBRA
Brasil, 2014, Fiction, 80’, HD, B/N
LA VIDA
DESPUÉS
Color
2014,
2014,
First Works:
Brasil, 2014, Fiction, 80’, HD, B/N
OBRA
PERMANÊNCIA Brazil, 2014, Fiction, 90’, HD, Color
VENTOS DE
AGOSTO
EN LA
ESTANCIA
Mexico, Argentina, 2014, Fiction,
106’, HD, Color
CLIMAS
Peru, Colombia, 2013, Fiction, 84’,
HD, Color
EL REGRESO
Venezuela, 2013, Fiction, 107’, 35
mm, Color
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OTHER COMPETITIONS
Multicine Infanta
Dec 4-14, 8pm
DOCUMENTARIES
Dec 5-10, 10am
ANIMATED FILMS
SPECIAL SHOWINGS
Teatro Martí
DEC 7, 5PM
Cine Infanta Sala 3
The Lodger: A Story of the London
Fog, Alfred Hitchcock, 1927, UK
DEC 10, 10AM
The Second Homeland, Edgar
Reitz, Germany
OTHER SHOWINGS / From Latin America
Cine 23 y 12
Cine Infanta Sala 2
DEC 4-7, 5:30 & 8PM
Diversity
DEC 4-9, 10:30PM
At midnight
DEC 4, 5, 8, 9, 3PM
For all ages
DEC 10-11, 10:30PM
Stories of violence
DEC 6 & 7, 10AM
For all ages
DEC 4-14, 12:30PM
Society
DEC 8-14, 10:30AM
Sports
Cine Infanta Sala 3
Sala Charlot
DEC 4-8, 3PM
Cities and other landscapes
DEC 9-14, 3PM;
Exodus
DEC 9-14, 5:30PM
Latin American film library
DEC 4-7, 10:30AM
Faith
DEC 4-7, 5:30PM
Environment
Musicals
DEC 9-11, 5:30PM
Shorts
Cine Infanta Sala 4
DEC 4-12, 12:30PM
Art & tradition
DEC 4-14, 3PM
Memory
DEC 9-12, 5:30PM
Puerto Rican documentaries
Cine Acapulco
DEC 4-14, 10AM,
12:30, 3, 530, 8 &
10:30PM
Cine Charles Chaplin
Avant-garde
DEC 4-14, 6PM
DEC 4-14, 12:30PM
Packed house
FROM OTHER REGIONS
CINE RIVIERA
DEC 5-9, 8PM
German cinema
CINE LA RAMPA
DEC, 8:00 PM
Canadian cinema
CINE RIVIERA
DEC 4-14, 5:30PM
Spanish cinema
CINE INFANTA SALA 3
DEC 5-8/, 5:30 PM
Animated Japanese cinema
CINE CHARLES CHAPLIN
DEC 5-10, 10AM
Independent African-American Film (1915-1952):
CINE 23 Y 12
DEC 8- 11, 5:30PM
Two Indie Filmmakers: Jim Jjarmush & Sara Driver
CINE INFANTA, SALA 1
DEC 5-9, 12:30PM
Retrospective of Eugene Jarecki
CINE CHARLES CHAPLIN
DEC 4- 14, 4PM
Experimental Film from the US
CINES RIVIERA, LA RAMPA & 23 Y 12
DEC 10:30PM
International Panorama
CINE INFANTA SALA 4
DEC 8, 5:30 PM
Bafta 2013 Shorts
CINE INFANTA SALA 4
DEC 4-11, 10AM Y 8PM
Documentaries
For more information
see http://www.habanafilmfestival.com
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Left to right Manuel Octavio Gómez,
Santiago Álverez, Tomas Gutiérrez
Alea, Julio Espinosa, Pinera Barnet
Chronicles of a country told in celluloid
by Ricardo Alberto Pérez
For Cubans of my generation, going to the movies
has always been a happy occasion. It has also been
a rather spiritual way of cultivating friendships,
making new friends and finding unexpected
passions. Generally speaking, in one way or
another, the inhabitants of this Island have spent
the twentieth century showing their passion for
the art of filmmaking.
Cinematography made its arrival in Cuba relatively
early. It was brought from Mexico in 1897 by
Gabriel Veyre who that same year presented the
first public screening on the Paseo del Prado, near
the Tacón Theater. Veyre also filmed one minute
of the first movie ever made in Cuba, Simulacro de
Incendio, a documentary about the firefighters of
Havana.
Clearly, for both filmmakers and spectators,
the cinema has meant much more than mere
entertainment. Its language has been a very clear
and efficient way of expressing and spreading
our identity, our conflicts and our dreams as well
as for also for remembering crucial moments in
our history. Over the years, a mature audience
emerged, one that continued the love for film
of earlier generations, and have watched the
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work of many filmmakers with lofty esthetic and
conceptual aspirations.
In the Republican Period (1902 to 1959), the most
important directors were Enrique Diaz Quesada
and Ramón Peón García. The former dedicated
his career to making historical films such as the
outstanding Libertadores o guerrilleros (1914).I n
1930, Ramón Peón filmed La Virgen de la Caridad,
making a huge impact with its strong religious
content.
The short documentary El mégano (1955), directed
by Julio García Espinosa with the collaboration
of Alfredo Guevara, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and
José Massip. seems to signal a point of departure
towards more substantial films having serious
esthetics and working with concerns of all kinds.
As we notice the names of the men involved in
this production, we can see that all of them would
become key figures within the cinematographic
movement that was to be hatched just after the
triumph of the Revolution.
After 1959, renewal fever gripped the country and
it was reflected in filmmaking. Just three months
into 1959, the revolutionary government passed
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Filmación de Fresa y Chocolate...
the first law in the area of culture: the creation of
the ICAIC (Institute of Cinematographic Art and
Industry), under the guidance of Alfredo Guevara,
In 1960, the Latin American Nnewsreel saw its first
screening. It was directed by Santiago Alvarez,
the greatest Cuban documentary filmmaker who
reached a high point in his work with Now, a
documentary on the death of the US civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr.).
There was a time when the ICAIC Latin American
Newsreel was as looked forward to in movie houses
as the feature film that would be screened after it.
It had an inestimable and valuable influence on the
development of the documentary genre.
Fernando Pérez dirigiendo Martí...
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In the early years of the Revolution, important
filmmakers, such as Agnes Varda, Cesare Zavatini
and Mikhail Kalatozov visited Cuba, drawn by
curiosity and the enthusiastic fervor here. They
made films on the Island, leaving an important
mark on some of our fledgling directors.
At that time, a young filmmaker began his ascent:
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, affectionately known
as Titón. He arrived fresh from his training at
the Cinema Institute of Rome, Italy, under the
benevolent and visible influence of neorealism.
Among his early films were Historias de la Revolución
and Las doce sillas, but his greatest production is
Memorias del subdesarrollo, providing us with a
lucid reflection on what was happening in Cuba at
the time. It also divided our cinematographic art
scene into a “before” and an “after.”
Filmación de la Bella de la Alhambra.
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Pineda Barnet,dirigiendo la
anunciación....
By the 1990s, Cuban movies were saturated by a kind
of ennui and dealt with the leitmotifs of emigration
and the shortages earmarking the Special Period.
It was also a time when co-productions began to
be increasingly made.
Now, in the twenty-first century, Cuban films
are being enriched by a wave of independent
productions, movies made mainly by young people
but also by some of the more veteran directors.
Generally speaking, this is critical and innovative
work, stimulated by the National Show of New
Filmmakers. The best directors of this decade are
Juan Carlos Cremata, Pável Giroud, Lester Hamlet
and Esteban Insausti.
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea continued building a solid
career in the years that followed with other
outstanding films, including La última cena and
Los sobrevivientes. In 1993, he hit a second high
point with his Fresa y Chocolate (codirected with
Juan Carlos Tabío), a film that makes the consistent
evolution of his work and his adhesion to dialectics
very clear. The film was nominated for an Oscar as
Best Foreign Language Film in 1994.
Titon’s contemporaries are such outstanding
directors as Humberto Solas (Lucía), Julio García
Espinosa (Las aventuras de Juan Quinquín) and
Manuel Octavio Gómez (La primera carga al
machete).
But we cannot truly end any commentary on the
state of Cuban cinema today without underlining
the crucial role played by institutions such as
the International Film School of San Antonio
de los Baños and the New Latin American Film
Foundation, as well as events such as the Havana
Festival of New Latin American Cinema, which is
getting ready to run its thirty-sixth edition. The
Festival will be held this from December, 4-14 and
to the 14th and will be dedicated to that great fan
of the movies, Gabriel García Márquez.
Post-Revolutionary
Cuban
cinema
loyally
chronicled and witnessed the different stages and
transformations the country was going through.
It experienced a sort of mutational process in
response to the political and social conditions of
the time. During the 1970s-1980s, we were seeing
many productions with distinctive ideological and
historical content but also with remarkable artistic
quality, as in two films directed by Enrique Pineda
Barnet: Mella and Aquella larga noche.
With the arrival of the 1980s, Cuban cinema
recovered its connections to a massive audiencebase thanks to a number of comedies that ironically
poked fun at the behaviors of many Cubans.
Some of these titles were Se permuta, Los pájaros
tirándole a la escopeta and Plaff. In 1989, Pineda
Barnet surprised us once more with an excellent
film, a musical called La bella del Alhambra, which
introduced us to the amazing talent of its young
leading lady ,Beatriz Valdés.
This period also saw the production of Fernando
Perez’s Clandestinos. In subsequent years, this
director would be responsible for a remarkable
body of work that includes Madagascar, Suite
Habana, La vida es silbar and José Martí, el ojo del
canario.
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Just how good is Cuban cinema today?
by Victoria Alcalá
About a year ago, the Cubasi website launched a
provocative survey: Are the movies being made
today in Cuba better or worse than those that
were made in the 1960s? From October 8, 2013
to February 14, 2014, out of 712 persons who cast
their vote, 50.3% thought they were worse, 39.7%
thought they were better and 10% thought they
were the same. The result is a sort of technical tie
in the assessment by a supposedly “general public”
of the most recent Cuban films. (www.cubasi.
cu/index.php?option=com_poll&id=62:iel-cinecubano-actual-es-mejor-o-peor-al-que-se-hizoen-la-decada-del-sesenta).
It is possible that there will be critics and
filmmakers who would differ about this parity and,
no doubt, they would have their reasons for doing
so, such as the precarious technology of the Cuban
film industry, the lack of resources, small annual
production figures, commitments requiering coproductions, the ostensible deterioration of movie
theatres many of which have been shut down or
converted to other uses…But as we glance over
the productions made between 2001 and 2014 now
closing, the panorama shows itself less bleak than
one would imagine.
The first thing that demands our attention is the
feature-length debuts of new filmmakers who
are enriching films with fresh outlooks and ideas.
You’ve
There are such remarkable films as Juan Carlos
Cremata’s Nada (2001) and Viva Cuba (2004), Pavel
Giroud’s La edad de la peseta (2006), Alejandro
Brugués’ Personal Belongings (2008) and Juan de
los muertos (2011), Ian Padrón’s Fuera de liga (2008)
and Habanastation (2011), Ernesto Daranas’ Los
dioses rotos (2009) and Conducta (2014), Lester
Hamlet’s Casa vieja (2010), Charlie Medina’s
Penumbras (2012) and Carlos Lechuga’s Melaza
(2013). If we add to that body of work the fiction
shorts and the almost underground documentaries
that are off the commercial circuits and TV, to be
seen every year at the New Filmmakers’ Show and
circulating informally, we have to admit that the
rebirth of Cuban cinema is a fact even though
it does not bring with it a realistic remodeling
of the institutional production and distribution
structures and often has to rely on more or less
“independent” channels.
As for the more veteran directors, they haven’t just
been standing around and twiddling their thumbs,
waiting placidly for their replacements. Fernando
Pérez, the most important Cuban director today,
has given birth in these first decades of the new
century to two of his most relevant and moving
productions: Suite Habana (2003) and El ojo del
canario (2010). Enrique Pineda Barnet emerged
from a long twenty-year hiatus with La anunciación
(2009) and the controversial Verde verde (2012).
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Gerardo Chijona finished Perfecto amor equivocado
(2004), the heart-wrenching Boleto al paraíso
(2011) and Esther en alguna parte (2012). And
Rogelio París released the highly publicized but
insignificant Kangamba (2008), Humberto Solás,
one of the icons of the 1960s made his last film
Barrio Cuba (2005) to partial success without
reaching the heights of his emblematic Lucía or Un
hombre de éxito, Manuel Pérez gave us his visceral
Páginas del diario de Mauricio (2006), Juan Carlos
Tabío sat at the apex of popularity with his ironic
El cuerno de la abundancia (2009) while Daniel
Díaz Torres closed his filmography with La película
de Ana (2012), one of the best of his career.
With all this work by veterans and beginners, new
subjects made their appearance on the big screen,
new problems and concerns were being shown
in Cuban films: marginality (Conducta, Chamaco,
Habanastation), disillusionment (Páginas del
diario de Mauricio, Boleto al paraíso, Penumbras,
El cuerno de la abundancia), homoeroticism and
homophobia (Verde verde), the drama of emigration
(Nada, Personal Belongings, Viva Cuba, La
anunciación, Casa vieja), material precariousness
(Suite Habana, Melaza, Barrio Cuba), explicit
eroticism (Afinidades) and prostitution (La película
de Ana, Los dioses rotos). There was an outbreak
of adaptations of theatrical plays (El premio
flaco, Casa vieja, Chamaco, Penumbras, Si vas a
comer espera por Virgilio, Contigo pan y cebolla)
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along with revitalization of the documentary, the
legitimization of new actors and the arrival of new
technical personnel ready to take on the challenge
of changing technologies. The first Cuban zombie
movie was made (Juan de los muertos), the first
Cuban science-fiction movie (Omega 3), the first
Cuban 3D graphics movie (Meñique) and the first
independent productions (Mañana, Melaza, Juan
de los Muertos) far away from those distant years
when the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic
Art and Industry (ICAIC) was founded. Several
important events were founded in this decade:
the Santiago Álvarez In Memoriam International
Documentary Film Festival (2000), the New
Filmmakers’ Show (2001) and the International
Low-Budget Film Festival of Gibara (2003). And
in opposition to some pessimistic forecasts, the
International Festival of New Latin American
Cinema continued to breathe life.
The announced premieres of La pared de las palabras
(Fernando Pérez, for the first time affiliated with
the independent Santa Fe Producciones), Leontina
(Rudy Mora), Fátima (Jorge Perugorría), Venecia
(Enrique Álvarez) and Vestido de novia (Marilyn
Solaya) promises a good harvest for 2015. So, in
answer to our opening question, we would answer
“neither better nor worse, Cuban cinema is—true
to the times—different.”
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The best 20 Cuban films ever
by Silvia Gómez, 2014
To call Cubans film buffs is a gross understatement: Cinema looms in the national consciousness.
It makes sense, then, that if any major art form offers a vivid, frank window into Cuban society,
it is film. Cuban cinema has won accolades from all around the globe; a glance at the list below
reveals awards and honorable mentions for a great number of films. Before the Revolution, Cuban
cinema existed in a diluted form controlled by the U.S. film industry. In the 1960s, the support
granted by the newly formed ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Cinema Art and Industry)—plus the copious
cache of primary material and inspiration on the ground in Havana—allowed a handful of talented
filmmakers to launch careers that would, in turn, launch Cuban cinema to internationallyrecognized heights.
La muerte de un burócrata
[Death of a Bureaucrat]
Memorias del subdesarrollo
[Memories of Underdevelopment]
1966 / Dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
This black comedy that lashes out against
institutionalized bureaucracy tells the story of a
young man’s attempts to disinter his uncle who
was buried with a document that his widow now
needs to legalize her pension. This was the first
great Cuban film of international significance.
Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Karlovy Vary Film
Festival (Czechoslovakia).
A middle-class intellectual, who has stayed in
Cuba after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959,
faces during those early years a new world he
does not seem to grasp. Solid dramaturgy and
outstanding acting, it is the most acclaimed Cuban
film by national and international critics and was
selected among the best 100 films of all times by
the International Federation of Film-Clubs. Based
on Edmundo Desnoes’s award-winning novel.
Lucía
1968 / Dir. Humberto Solás
These three tales about three Lucías set in
three separate periods that were essential to
the formation, consolidation and splendour of
Cuban national conscience--1895, 1932 and the
early years of the Revolution--reflect the parallel
maturing process of Cuban women. Gold Medal
at the Moscow International Film Festival, 1969;
Golden Globe at the Italian Cinematheque Film
Festival (Milan) 1970.
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La última cena
[The Last Supper]
Set in 18th-century Cuba and freely based on a true
story, the film recreates the tale of a slave owner
who decides to instruct his slaves in the canons
of Christianity by inviting twelve of them to a reenactment of the Last Supper, where hypocrisy
under the disguise of faith and the ancestral
instincts of liberty are brought face to face with
each other. The famous supper scene--centrepiece
of the film--with its solid dialogues, accomplished
portrayals, profound historical research, brilliant
acting, meticulous set design, artistic coherence, timely music and bold camera work gives rise to one
of the best moments in Latin American cinema of all time. Its numerous awards include the Golden
Hugo at the 1976 International Film Festival of Chicago and the First Grand Prix at the 1979 Iberian and
Latin American Film Festival of Biarritz.
Los sobrevivientes
[The Survivors]
Retrato de Teresa
[Portrait of Teresa]
1979 / Dir. Pastor Vega
Set in the 1960s, an aristocratic family from Havana
seeks refuge in their estate when the revolutionary
process adopts a radical position. Their total
isolation from the outside world leads them to
their material and spiritual disintegration in an
evolutionary journey that goes from civilization
to a state of barbarism. The theme of the closed
universe of a house, at times dealt with by
European cinema, adopts here a Cuban view of the
absurd and extravagance. Notable Film of the year,
London Film festival, 1979; Gold Prize, Damascus
Film Festival, 1981; Gold Plaque and Ghandi Award,
Laceno d’Oro Festival, Avellino, 1981.
The crisis of a marriage is accentuated when the
husband’s sexist attitude and the wife’s desire
to become more liberated clash in this incisive
portrayal of Cuban society of the 1970s: a profound
insight into prejudice and conventionality.
Outstanding performance by one of the screen
idols of Cuban cinema, Daisy Granados. Best
Actress, Moscow Film Festival, 1979 and Cartagena
Film Festival, 1980; Outstanding Film of the Year,
London Festival, 1980, among others.
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Clandestinos
[Clandestine]
Papeles secundarios
[Supporting Roles]
1987 / Dir. Fernando Pérez
1989 / Dir. Orlando Rojas
Based on real events of urban guerrilla units
fighting the Batista regime during the 50s, the film
reflects the atmosphere of terror in which these
young people fought and overthrew the tyrant,
giving up their own lives, without losing the joy
of living or the conviction that victory would be
achieved. Fernando Pérez made his debut as a
director with this film, characterized by convincing
dramaturgy, impeccable performances, accurate
script and meticulous photography. Corals for
Best First Work and Best Actress, International
Festival of New Latin American Cinema, Havana,
1987; Golden Catalina for Direction and Best Actor,
International Film Festival, Cartagena de Indias,
1988.
The film’s stories, told in an atmosphere of
professional frustration, take place during the
rehearsal of a play whose ending reveals the moral
weaknesses of the characters while it stresses
individual and collective responsibility in their
personal as well as national future. Awarded the
Bronze Hand at the 1990 New York Latin Film
Festival and the Special Jury Prize at the 1990 Latin
American Film Festival of Italy.
La bella del Alhambra
[The Alhambra Beauty]
1989 / Dir. Enrique Pineda Barnet
The story of a vaudeville actress during the 1920s,
who asserting herself unscrupulously in the sordid
world behind the curtains, achieved fame, and
in her old age was nurtured by her memories.
Based on Miguel Barnet’s novel Canción de Rachel
[Rachel’s Song], it is also an anthology of the best
Cuban music of the first decades of the 20th
century. A melodrama that is easily seen more than
once thanks to its soundtrack music, excellent
versions of Cuban vernacular music and the
terrific performance of its versatile star, Beatriz
Valdés. Goya Award, 1989; Best Actress, Latino
Film Festival (New York), 1989; Coral Awards for
Soundtrack, Set Design and Setting, International
Festival of New Latin American Cinema, Havana,
1989.
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Adorables mentiras
[Adorable Lies]
Fresa y chocolate
[Strawberry and Chocolate]
1991 / Dir. Gerardo Chijona
1993 / Dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea & Juan
A make-believe swapping of sexual partners
triggers a reflection on hypocrisy, falseness,
mediocrity, corruption and the loss of values
of certain individuals of Cuban society of the
late 1980s. The film plays with the resources of
melodrama and comedy of intrigue to reveal the
conflicts without attempting to solve them. Coral
to Best Screenplay, International Festival of New
Latin American Cinema, Havana, 1991; APCLAI
Award to Best Screenplay, Latin American Film
Festival, Trieste, 1992.
Madagascar
Carlos Tabío
A young college student and a homosexual who
loves the culture of his country build up a complex
relationship in the midst of social prejudices
during the late 1970s, early 1980s. The film is an
attack on sexual, ideological, political and religious
intolerance. Based on Senel Paz’s short story El
lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo [The Wolf, the
Forest and the New Man], the film has received
numerous awards and recognitions, including the
1994 Berlin International Film Festival’s Special
Jury Prize, and is the first Cuban production ever
nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign
language film.
La vida es silbar
[Life is to Whistle]
The conflict between a mother and a daughter
becomes a study on the lack of communication
and on the individual and social after-effects of
intolerance and dogmatism. Based on Mirta Yánez’s
story Los Beatles contra Durán Durán [The Beatles
against Durán Durán], the film was awarded the
Grand Prix at the 1995 International Film Festival
of Freiburg, Switzerland and the Caligari Award at
the 1995 Berlin International Film Festival, among
others.
You’ve
1998/ Dir. Fernando Pérez
Set in Havana in the late 1990s, the characters’
dreams, hopes, needs and frustrations are
interwoven in an imaginary situation which blurs
the line between reality and wishes. Built upon a
language of the absurd, the story of each of the
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characters reveals a constant search for happiness, here and now, and how complicated this can be when
destiny is a factor to be reckoned with. Best Spanish Language Foreign Film Goya Awards (Spain) 2000;
C.I.C.A.E. Award at Forum of New Cinema at Berlin International Film Festival 1999; Special Mention,
Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Actress, Havana Film Festival; FIPRESCI Award; Glauber Rocha
Award; Grand Coral-First Prize; OCIC Special Award; Radio Havana Award at Havana Film Festival 1999;
KNF Award at Rotterdam International Film Festival 1999; Special Jury Award at Sundance Film Festival
1999; Flaiano Award for Best Foreign Film, Italy 2000.
Nada / [Nothing]
Suite Habana
2001 / Dir. Juan Carlos Cremata
A young woman, who works in a post office and
whose parents emigrated to Miami, rewrites
letters to improve the lives of its recipients. When
she is notified that she has been granted a visa to
travel to the US, she must decide whether to leave
and get on with her life or to stay and continue
helping others. In this his first film, Cremata-an audacious director who does not follow welltrodden paths--uses discreetly the techniques
of comics and animated film, enriching the story
with a combination of satire and teasing humour.
Coral Best First Work, International Festival
of New Latin American Cinema, Havana, 2001;
Vesubio Award, Naples Film Festival, 2002; Best
Full-Length Fiction Film, Miami International Film
Festival, 2003, among others.
Revealing the anguish, frustrations and hopes of
people who live in corners of Havana that are never
included in package tours, this film both moves
and shocks by its poignancy. A striking feature is
the fact that the director chose to focus on the
images in an intense dialogue with music, and
where no words are spoken precisely in a society
that is characterized by its loquacity. First Prize
at the Havana International Festival of New Latin
American Cinema, 2003; and SIGNIS Award at the
San Sebastian Film Festival, 2003.
Viva Cuba
2004 / Dir. Juan Carlos Cremata
Set in the 1990s, this road movie of a girl and a
boy who travel from Havana to the easternmost
tip of Cuba is an ode to friendship and the simple
daily experiences that conform the meaning
of homeland, as well as a call for respecting
children’s needs, concerns and contradictions,
so often overlooked by adults. The film’s many
awards and recognitions are justified not only for
the amazing performance of its two young lead
actors but for the message of humanism it puts
across. Grand Prix Ecrans Juniors, Cannes, 2005;
Best Film, International Children’s Film Festival,
L’Aisne, France, 2006; Best Film, Wurzburg
International Film Festival, Germany, 2006; Best
Film, Internationale Kinder Film Festival, Bremen
and Hannover, Germany, 2006, among others.
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Los dioses rotos
[The Broken Gods]
2009 / Dir. Ernesto Daranas
The research conducted by a young sociologist
about the legendary Cuban pimp Alberto Yarini
Ponce de León, member of a wealthy Havana family
who was murdered in the San Isidro neighbourhood
in 1910 by a French souteneur, takes her into
today’s subworld of prostitution and pimping and
involves her in a plot that increasingly develops
into a tragedy, where the past seems to come to
life in Havana’s marginal neighborhoods today.
Excellent performances; coherent use of elements
of melodrama, documentary and video clip; credible and at the same time grisly characters are some of
the virtues that make Ernesto Daranas’s first feature movie one of the most significant Cuban films in
recent years, winner of several awards at the 30th International Festival of Latin American Cinema and
the 6th Cine Pobre Festival, both in 2008, as well as winner for Best Art Direction and Best Music at the
17th Providence Latin American Film Festival in the United States in 2009.
El ojo del canario
[The Eye of the Canary]
Juan de los muertos
[Juan of the Dead]
2011 / Dir. Alejandro Brugués
This is undoubtedly the most significant film made
in Cuba in the 21st century, so far. Based on the
childhood and adolescence of José Martí, Apostle
of the independence of Cuba, the film turns away
from the hackneyed biographies of patriots and
portrays a human being within a difficult family
environment, filled with the typical contradictions
and insecurities of a teenager in 19th-century
Havana. The film’s excellent atmosphere and
outstanding performances were pivotal to the
awards received by the film not only in Cuba, but
also at the Ibero-American Film Festival of Huelva,
Spain in 2010 for Best Direction; and at the Mexican
Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences in
2011 for the Best Ibero-American Film (ex aequo).
Havana invaded by zombies; the media that
insists on accusing imperialism and dissidents;
a scoundrel--Juan--who takes advantage of the
circumstances to get ahead. Special effects never
seen before in Cuba, good photography, regular
performances, but most of all fun, irony, and
even sarcasm in its way of approaching reality,
guarantees to draw audiences that are eager for
some fun and excess. The film won the Goya Award
for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film, Spain;
the Audience Award at the Havana Film Festival;
Audience Award Runners Up at the Fantastic Fest,
Austin, Texas; and the Fanomenon Audience Award
at the Leeds International Film Festival, England.
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Conducta
Ernesto Daranas’s
smash hit
by Victoria Alcalá
It’s been a long time since a Cuban film grabbed
the imagination of the movie-going public in
Havana the way that Conducta has over the
past month. Not only do the long lines outside
the main movie theatres attest to the interest
generated but it has also spurred discussion and
debate around the educational system in general.
Brilliant performances and beautiful camera work
combine to make this unembellished look into
contemporary Cuba the most notable film since
Fernando Perez’s Suite Habana in 2003.
anecdotal account to give the viewers truths that
some people prefer not to see: the intolerance
and unconditional adherence to formalities and
bureaucratic rule; the futility of educating within
a bell jar and the crime of refusing to alleviate
wrongdoings on the pretext that it is not possible
to eradicate them entirely.
Conducta manages to deliver without lapsing
The film’s synopsis could make you think that this
is one of many Cuban stories, novels, plays that
examine contemporary issues. But Conducta is
something different. It is an incisive, sensitive,
deeply humane artistic look into the harsh and
difficult life of individuals who are povertystricken and marginalized in Cuba.
The story of Chala, the kid who supports his
alcoholic and drug addict mother by breeding
pigeons and training fighting dogs; who is loved
and understood by his teacher but is sent to a
school for children with behavioral problems when
the teacher falls ill and is temporarily replaced by
an inexperienced young teacher, transcends the
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into sentimentality or didacticisms. The script,
also by Daranas, is coherent; the dialogues are
accurate and consistent, devoid of the verbalism
that has hindered other films of this nature. The
characters are solid and compelling, drawn with
precision and without Manichaeism. Alejandro
Pérez’s photography manages to convey warmth
and poetry to a particularly damaged and
impoverished area of the city. And above all, the
wonderful performances—precise, perfect.
Alina Rodríguez embodies a firm yet sensitive
teacher who has been hit hard by the emigration
of her daughter and grandson, by her illness
and by the lack of understanding of others. Yet,
she refuses to give up and leave to their fate the
students who find in her sympathy and refuge.
Moderation and structure tinge the character
who is revealed by the look in her eyes, the tone
of voice, the gestures, the silences, her gait.
The young actress Miriel Cejas as the substitute
teacher who becomes increasingly committed to
her students manages to transmit the changes in
her character with expressive sobriety. Silvia Águila
is convincing in her role as a social worker, who
strictly carries out regulations and ordinances but
who has doubts that make her more human. Yuliet
Cruz confirms that she is every inch an actor in
her role as Chala’s violent, chaotic, drug-addict
mother, who, nevertheless, always shows some
trace of love for her son. Armando Miguel Gómez
takes on the role of the man who Chala may turn
out to be in the future: a hard, sometimes cruel
and violent man, in whom, occasionally, there is a
flash of goodness. Hector Noas magnifies his brief
role as an immigrant from the eastern provinces in
search of a chance of survival, which could make
for the subject of another film.
However, despite the excellent performances of
these experienced actors from film, television
and theater, the children are the ones who steal
the show. They “live” their roles with astonishing
naturalness, especially Armando Valdés, who
failed his first casting and was chosen at the last
minute, and who gave his unforgettable Chala the
harshness and the tenderness, the early maturity
and the boyishness required by his character.
The deft direction of experienced actors and
of children with no previous acting experience
confirm Ernesto Daranas as one of the great
filmmakers of Cuban cinema today.
Ernesto Daranas, is one of Cuba’s best known
film directors, whose film The Broken Gods,
2009 (Los dioses rotos) won widespread critical
acclaim and several awards. Other moves he
has directed include ¿La vida en rosa? (2004),
Los últimos gaiteros de La Habana (2004)
and most recently Conduct (2014). He is an
important Cuban television and radio critic.
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Enrique Pineda Barnet: A life spent at the movies
by Ricardo Alberto Pérez
Talking about Enrique Pineda Barnet (Havana,
1933) is more than talking about an eminent
film director who also writes prose and poetry,
someone who day after day thinks of himself as
a beginner in every activity he undertakes. As he
welcomes me into his cozy apartment in Vedado,
I feel I am in the presence of someone who is
going to be eternally young, enjoying absolute
spiritual peace and tranquility as a result of having
eliminated hatred from his system, as he genially
confesses.
When you talk to Barnet, even for a few minutes,
you cannot help but understand how much of a
privilege it is to be listening to this fascinating
living memory, capable of captivating us with
his ingenious manner of communicating his
reminiscences. Without a doubt, his vision has
been enriched by many of the events that have
been occurring in Cuba over more than seventy
years. His childhood took place among politicians
(his stepfather was a senator) and he remembers
how as a small boy he would sing Cuban political
songs to politicians of the ilk of Eduardo Chibás
and Carlos Prío.
He says that he came into this world with one foot
planted in show business; he became fascinated by
the cinema at a very early age and would also go to
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the theater with his grandmother, attracted by the
sensuous aura of these locales. He became hooked
on personalities such as Rita Montaner, Toña la
Negra, María Cervantes, Myriam Acevedo and her
Macorina and on songs, unforgettable melodies
that became a vital factor in his life. He was an
insatiable consumer of all this that became the raw
material for concepts that blossomed without any
limits or prejudices and which continue growing
even today.
He has a spectacular way of directing movies;
voraciousness accompanies his remarkable gift
of knowing how to make choices. I can imagine
him as being constantly sleepless as he mixes up
cinematic stories with real life.
In adolescence he was unstoppable; at fourteen
he was visiting Havana tenement houses where he
learned rumba at Yoruba celebrations and Santeria
rituals. Those were the days when he danced with
Josephine Baker at the Fausto Theater, uninhibited
and passionate. What a way to make use of night life!
He assimilated it as an element in his metabolism.
Everything entered the same way: jazz, piano bars,
the dance, and much more.
On his blog last August 24, Barnet contributed
this self-description: “I love swimming, dancing
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till I drop, climbing mountains, and if I could fly
or levitate, I would be the happiest being in the
universe. I don’t want to ride anything on the sea,
but I would be flying over it all the time. I don’t like
force—energy, yes, that’s something else. Nothing
strong; nothing forceful…Not even a loud voice or
a forceful gesture, slamming some door or hitting
a table, no lightning or strong winds, huge waves
or earthquakes, volcanoes, being pummeled by the
sea. But I love the sea, fire, wind, earth…”
When you get to know and immerse yourself in
his films, his short stories and his plays, you can
understand that his manner of thinking is very
exact and it is constantly bubbling up through the
different moments of his creation.
One of the principal characteristics of his
filmmaking has been to carefully pay attention
to all the elements making up every production,
almost obsessively overseeing the sound track, the
photography and the art direction.
His work is strongly connected to the visual arts;
it seems that behind each of his films there are
one or several paintings. This has been a constant
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feature right since his beginnings as a director
but most noticed in films such as La Anunciación
(2009) and Verde verde (2010). The former revolves
around a well-known painting by Antonia Eiriz,
giving it a new life in his film. The latter is based on
the spirit of Rocio Garcia’s paintings, creating an
environment that speaks of the amazing empathy
existing between the sensibilities of the two artists.
Barnet is a filmmaker whose head is full of
literature, the resukt of being such a compulsive
reader—from Mark Twain to Tennessee Williams,
William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Arthur Miller,
Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee, Walt Whitman,
Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury,
Samuel Beckett, Carson McCullers, Erich Fromm,
Thomas Mann and many more. The lengthy list
also includes Latin American authors (Ernesto
Sabato, Jorge Luis Borges, Vicente Huidobro,
Pablo Neruda, Juan Gelman and César Vallejo) and
Cubans writers, some of whom were his colleagues
and friends, such as Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera,
Lydia Cabrera, Pablo de la Torriente, Enrique Serpa
and Carlos Montenegro.
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Saturated in knowledge and desire, he directed his
first film, Giselle, in 1963 dealing with the mystery
of dance from a very personal point of view. This
is followed by the relationship with the playwright
Virgilio Piñera in Aire Frío (1965) in which he
immerses himself in a reflection on what we are.
David (1967) marks the beginning of a segment
dedicated to the theme of heroism and
rebelliousness; it is a hymn to clandestine struggle,
powerfully poetic and showing the human
dimension of the heroes. In 1975 he directed Mella
continuing his journey through history, falling
under the spell of that young man’s charisma and
capacity for struggle as he led several revolutionary
organizations in the 1920s. This cycle closed with
an exquisite tribute to the role of women in the
underground movements, Aquella larga noche
(1979), successfully demystifying the subject.
At the beginning of the 1980s, his work underwent
a noticeable change of course; his journey inwards
found the ideal launch pad in Tiempo de Amar
(1981). It was an essentially beautiful film supported
by extraordinary photography and the unmatched
freshness of a young actress at the time, Lili
Renteria.
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La bella del Alhambra (1989) is a very special
chapter in Enrique Pineda Barnet’s life, adding a
good dose of spice to his poetic vision. The film
allowed him to evoke eras and characters that he
had experienced intensely during his life, to take
advantage of the musical film genre and to launch
an actress named Beatriz Valdés to stardom.
Professionally, this film has given him the greatest
joys not the least of which was the Goya Award for
Best Spanish Language Foreign Film in 1990.
In his two most recent films, La Anunciación
(2009) and Verde verde (2010), he brutally reveals
the labyrinth of human conduct, vertiginously
suggesting hallucinatory moments. This is
filmmaking at the apex of his maturity that never
gives up exploring for even an instant.
His Arca, nariz, y alambre project has involved a
wonderful group of artists in an impressive show
of his vitality, a way of making experimental cinema
that has earned its own space. We have seen the
short films First (1997), La Ecuación (2000), Upstairs
(2014) and End (2014) as his most ambitious projects
in recent years. Now Pineda Barnet tends to be
more silent, more parsimonious with language.
In his 81st year, this director, winner of the 2006
National Cinema Award, continues to show us that
he is one of the most restless creators in Cuba.
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Havana view
photos by Y. Monte
Humberto Solás : For the love of Cuba
by Juan José González
Humberto Solás will always be remembered for
Lucía, the 1968 black-and-white drama film about
three Lucías set in three different periods—1895,
1932 and the 1960s—winner of the Gold Medal at
the Moscow International Film Festival, 1969, and
the Golden Globe at the Italian Cinematheque Film
Festival (Milan), 1970. But however exceptional
this film may be, Solás’s true grand work is Cuban
Cinema. To this, he devoted all his energy and
life, as did the late Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. If the
cinematography of a nation is its filmmakers and
their most brilliant movies, then, Solás and Gutiérrez
Alea are the foundation of Cuban cinema, to the
extent that even today the younger generations
of filmmakers are making films in the style of one
or the other. Lucía by Solás and Memorias del
Subdesarrollo [Memories of Underdevelopment]
by Gutiérrez Alea, both magical and mythical films
of the 1960s, placed Cuba at the forefront of Latin
American cinema.
Humberto Solás was born on December 4, 1941 in
Havana. A graduate in history from the University
of Havana, he started working in 1960 at the newly
created Cuban Institute of Cinematographic
Art and Industry (ICAIC) directing educational
documentaries and shorts. Influenced by Italian
realism, he directed the medium-length fiction
film Manuela in 1966, which garnered some
international success showing Solás great promise
as a filmmaker.
The unexpected death of Solás in 2008 at age 66,
victim of devastating cancer, left both a symbolic
and real void in Cubafor for, since 2003, Solás
had been the champion of the Cine Pobre Film
Festival of Gibara, an alternative competition
for low-budget films, which from the very start
emphasized the participation of young filmmakers
and new technologies, as well as the controversial
and sensitive content of the films.
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He was 26 when he shot his masterpiece Lucía,
which was essentially a portrait of the role of
women in the history of Cuba in three historical
moments: the wars of independence against Spain,
the struggle against the dictatorship of Machado
and the early years of the Revolution. The last story
in Lucía, which was filmed in the town of Gibara,
was the portrayal of a woman who is humiliated
by her husband. This last story caused quite a stir
as the husband represented the mentality that the
new revolutionary society wanted to overcome.
Lucía marked a new form of filmmaking in Cuba
and was considered by critics as one of the ten
most important films of Latin American cinema.
Women were a constant theme in his work. This
led him to film a free version of “Cecilia Valdés,”
Cuba’s most important novel of the 19th century.
Solás’s four-hour megaproduction of Cecilia
eventually became the most ambitious, expensive
and controversial project undertaken by ICAIC, and
sparked a debate that changed the way films were
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later produced in Cuba. His filmography includes
Amada (1983), Un hombre de éxito [A Successful
Man] (1985) and El Siglo de las Luces [The Age of
Enlightenment] (1991).
His last two films, Miel para Ochún (2001)
and Barrio Cuba (2005), were both shot using
digital technology. Now Solás resorted to a
straightforward aesthetical approach and dealt
with the harsh everyday life in his country. When
he created the Low-Budget Film Festival, he aimed
to recover Cuba’s film production, which had been
seriously affected by the crisis of the 1990s.
In an interview shortly before his death, when
asked how he would like to be remembered,
Humberto Solás replied: “For my love for Cuba,
its culture, its image, for the Cuban curiosity of
history, for the insatiable spirit of never wanting
to be left behind, to always be in the theater of
events, never distant.”
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Juan Carlos Cremata:
An irreverent genius
by Margaret Atkins
“This isn’t my home,” he says as he opens the door
of the house on 28th Street in the Nuevo Vedado
district in Havana. “My home is the other one,” he
tells us. The one that could not resist the effect
of time and deterioration; the one that collapsed
while he was away and his mother was hanging the
washing in the backyard. Luckily no one was hurt.
At least, physically. The collapse, however, appears
to have left its mark on the heart of the artist.
When we ask him to take us to the place in the
house where he works, he refuses for a very simple
reason: “I do everything in my bed,” he explains.
And it is clear to us that such an intimate place is
not suitable for public showings.
Cremata first greets us at the door, hatless and
without glasses. I don’t recognize him immediately.
Accustomed as I am to the image he has created
for himself, he seems all too human. Then, getting
ready for the interview, he dons his hat and glasses.
This is the Cremata we are used to seeing.
It is no secret that art runs in Cremata’s family. His
mother gave birth to three sons and, in each case,
labor pains surprised her inside a television studio.
The first place that she went after checking out of
the maternity hospital was a television studio as
well. It was a time when television was booming
in Cuba, when shows were done from the heart,
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says the filmmaker. “I remember the smell coming
out of the crates from the prop department, which
was a very important department at the time. It
was the smell of all things wonderful.”
His mom, who had run a dance academy before
the Revolution, became a choreographer for
television shows. His dad, who worked for Cubana
de Aviación airlines and was killed in the terrorist
attack on a Cuban plane off the shores of Barbados
in 1976, directed plays at amateur theatrical
groups. His aunt was also a famous TV actress who
married a no less famous actor, completing the
picture of the environment in which Juan Carlos
grew up. Television provided him with his first
taste of audiovisual creation. He reminisces about
his childhood days when he used to sneak in to the
matinees without paying or attempt to see films
not suitable for under-12s by painting a mustache
on his face.
It seems almost unbelievable that this man, who
raises a flag of irreverence in every sentence,
had once conformed to the rigid military life. Yet
Cremata was a “Camilito,” a high-school student
at the Camilo Cienfuegos Military Academy.
Unlike most of his schoolmates, he did not pursue
a military career but went on to study at the
University of Havana, where he was a history major
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for two years. The whole time, however, he was
waiting for a scholarship to study film directing in
the Soviet Union. He had already recognized his
true vocation. When “the scholarship never came,”
he decided to study theater and playwriting at the
University of the Arts.
Right after graduation, he enrolled in the newlycreated International Film and Television School
of San Antonio de los Baños. “It was like being
born again,” he confides, “being there all the time
just studying and doing what I liked to do the
most: making films.” His graduation thesis Oscuros
rinocerontes enjaulados [Dark Caged Rhinoceros]
was an experimental short film that earned him,
among others, the Grand Prize at the Eisenstein
International Film Festival in Wilhelmshaven,
Germany in 1992. In 1996, this film became part of
the film collection of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York.
Upon his graduation from the film school, Cremata
traveled all over Europe, going from one festival
to another. He returned to Cuba for a brief stay
before heading off to South America. “I stayed in
Chile for two months and then I went to Argentina,
where I taught at three different film universities.”
There, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship
in the United States. “I spent a year in New York
creating my own study material, eating different
foods from different countries every day, watching
six films a day, Broadway shows, visiting museums
and galleries… And every morning I’d film
something. It was like a sabbatical year for me. New
York is special because so many different things
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happen there. I could enjoy a performance by
the Spanish National Ballet or the aquatic puppet
show from Vietnam, or a concert by Pavarotti, or
a performance in the middle of the street, which
was more interesting than Pavarotti.”
No matter how enriching the New York experience
was, Cremata needed to make movies in Cuba.
As soon as he returned to the island, he began
to prepare his first film called Nada [Nothing].
He felt frustrated trying to turn Nada into the
first independent Cuban film at a time when
filmmaking in Cuba outside ICAIC (Cuban Institute
of Cinematographic Art and Industry) was much
more difficult than today. Disappointed with ICAIC,
Cremata decided to shoot a film “that would make
ICAIC regret not having made it themselves.” He
realized that a film with children as protagonists
had never been shot in Cuba. That is how Viva
Cuba was born. “The film is very Cuban,” he says.
“It’s about Cuba, but it’s a French production.”
The film attained instant success and went on to
win 34 national and international awards. “With
Viva Cuba,” he says, “I toured 45 countries. And it
marked a kind of reconciliation with ICAIC. It’s a
film which I am very grateful for. In fact, I believe
that I’m alive thanks to Viva Cuba.”
You’ve
While in Paris, at the height of Viva Cuba’s success,
Cremata suffered a severe bronchopneumonia
which brought him to the point of death. “I was
making my farewell to this world. But no, I didn’t
leave. Looks like the devil looks after his own,” he
laughs. Here I am in this kind of bonus track that
life has given me every day trying to do more than
I can cope with.”
“I am an advocate of difference, both in life and
in art. That’s why I don’t like to repeat myself. I
always say that my job is to open doors and not to
close them. Apart from that, life deals unexpected
blows you couldn’t even imagine. Like the collapse
of my house, or the death of my partner six years
ago and having to take care of his daughter; being
a parent, all of a sudden, of a little girl who is not
only my child but the sunshine of my life. I fear
frustration, so I try to live every day to the fullest
and feel satisfied with what I do,” he tells us when
our conversation is nearing the end. When at last
I said goodbye to Juan Carlos Cremata, I had that
feeling that I’ve experienced at other interviews,
but this time it was particularly strong—a kind of
nostalgia caused by the rupture of the fleeting
intimacy that unites interviewer and interviewee
in the short period of their relationship.
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Cuba’s International School of Cinema
by Victoria Alcalá
The creation in 1974 of the Committee of Latin
American Filmmakers and the subsequent birth
in 1986 of the Havana-based New Latin American
Film Foundation (FNCL) are the parents of the
International School of Film and Television»—
EICTV. At the opening ceremony of this institution,
Nobel laureate and president of the FNCL Gabriel
García Márquez said that the main objective of
the Foundation was to “achieve the integration
of Latin American cinema as simple and vast as
this is.” Accordingly, EICTV was FNCL’s first major
project, made possible thanks to the contribution
of the Cuban Government and a number of
valuable international contributions. The first
graduation took place in 1990 with 50 students
from 26 countries of Latin America, the Caribbean
and Africa. Today, there are 120 students from 36
countries enrolled in the school’s regular courses.
So, this dream of training young people in
cinematic art came true with a project that was
wholeheartedly supported by Fidel Castro. A place
where young talented men and women could
defend their cultures through image and sound.
To this end, the government donated a site in the
town of San Antonio de los Baños, which is an
hour’s drive away from central Havana and half
an hour away from the José Martí International
Airport. On December 15, 1986, in the middle of flat
ground planted mostly with orange trees, the NGO
that is the International Film School, a subsidiary
of the New Latin American Cinema Foundation,
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was founded and Fernando Birri was appointed its
first director.
The installation has been gradually fitted out. The
students’ living accommodation is situated within
the school, which is laid out in campus style. It is
possibly the first Latin American and Caribbean
institution of an integrationist nature. It offers
advanced courses in cinema for people between
the ages of 22 and 29 and the fees for the whole
3 years, including accommodation and food, are
€15,000, which is only 25% of the actual cost of
the student’s training.
One of the principal goals of the International
School of Film and Television (EICTV) of San
Antonio de los Baños is to contribute to the
development of the integration of the peoples
of the world through cultural propositions that
show diversity and inclusion in a space of creative
freedom expressed in short films, documentaries,
fiction films, television series and soap operas. Its
scope includes exchanging creative experiences
and collaboration with many film- and televisionrelated institutions.
Hundreds of professionals from the film and
television industries from different countries have
trained several generations of students. Over 700
hundred students have graduated from the school
from over 50 countries, many of which have won
major awards at international festivals.
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EICTV is based on the challenge of constantly adapting to new cultural and technological trends under
the guiding principle of “learning by doing.” As well as many workshops, the school offers a regular
course of three years. The curriculum is divided into three levels: the first level or year introduces
students to the world of audiovisual creation showing them how a film and television crew works;
the second level includes Fiction Direction, Documentary Direction, Sound, Editing, Cinematography,
Screenplay, Television and New Media, and Production, according to the specialty each student will
major in; the third level focuses on the preparation of the diploma work. Very early in the course, the
students begin to produce films and videos for television.
Graduates should be able to develop both their technical and artistic skills with a humanistic approach
and sensitivity, work as a team and unite actors and crews towards a cultural product of high demand
and significance in the contemporary world. This dream come true ensures the training of many talented
people from many parts of the world, who have achieved recognition in their respective countries and
in international cinematography.
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eXtras
Nicolás Ordóñez Carrillo is
an unassuming Colombian
photographer who has been
studying and now working with the
International School of Film and TV
(EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños,
Cuba. To celebrate the school’s 25th
anniversary, he prepared this series,
eXtras, which is simply brilliant on
so many levels and demonstrates
creativity, attention to detail and
imagination that go a long way to
explain why the school has been so
successful.
A portrait of
Cuba’s A portrait
of Cuba’s Escuela
Internacional de
Cine y Televisión
Review of eXtras
By Joel del Río, 2012
Photos by Nicolás Ordóñez Carrillo
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To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the
International School of Film and TV (EICTV)
with images, lights and colors, the Colombian
photographer Nicolás Ordóñez Carrillo presents
his latest series, eXtras, aimed at throwing the
spotlight on some of the institution’s graduates, its
esteemed teachers, and, of course, the countless
possible universes—imaginary, real, rapturous—
that will continue to be forged in the vicinity of
the San Tranquilino Farm.
Hailing from different countries in the world,
heralds illuminated by the flashes of brilliance of
the various stages in the school’s 25-year history,
the protagonists of these pictures normally work
behind the cameras, but this time agreed to being
looked at, observed, haloed by Nicolás’s lens, and
gladly took on the role of postmodern demiurges
on the alert for the recreation of powerful
myths in film, television, advertising, audiovisual
communication.
The countryside that surrounds the school, its
facilities and spaces, provided the forum for the
settings of these tributes, slightly dissociated from
their referents. The filmmakers, graduates of the
school, decided to star in mock movies, invented
scenes, or similar to others that perhaps were once
filmed or shelved in some producer’s office. It’s like
putting in a photograph sequences that were shot
only in the imagination from references taken out
of art history, the media and private—or shared—
dreams, by the onlooker and the one looked at.
Theory and art history aside, these photographs
also illustrate a galaxy of captured crystals, static
epiphanies, human attitudes and aspirations that
challenge the limits of time and space.
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NICOLÁS ORDÓÑEZ CARRILLO (Bogotá, 1977)
www.niorcano.com
He graduated in Literature from the University
of the Andes in Colombia and earned a master’s
degree in Comparative Literature Theory at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona. He has
worked as a journalist and photographer in the
printed media such as The Spectator of Bogota
and Soho Magazine. He was a lecturer at the
symposium “Sweden and Colombia: The Swedish
Heritage in the Work of Leon de Greiff,” Stockholm,
Sweden. His paper was published by the University
of Stockholm and the University of Umea, Sweden,
2004.
He directed the feature documentary Trip Voyeur
(Cine Pobre Film Festival, Gibara, Cuba, 2010), and
was Director of Photography of the feature film
Giraffes by Cuban filmmaker Kiki Álvarez. He took
a screenwriting course given by Nobel Prizewinner
Gabriel García Márquez.
He was jury member for Unpublished Screenplays
during the 32nd Latin American Film Festival,
Havana, 2011, and selector of the Herralde Prize for
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Novel of the Anagrama Publishing House in 2000.
Since 2008, he has worked in the Creativity and
Photography division of the Department of Culture
at the International School of Film and TV (EICTV)
in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba.
His first series of photographs, “Glamour in the
Rubble,” was exhibited at Casa Gaia, Havana, in
February, 2011. This revision of the fashion of
ordinary Cubans was subsequently published in
the journal El Malpensante. “eXtras,” his second
exhibition of a series of pictures taken in Cuba,
opened at La Rampa Theater in December 2011
during the 33rd Latin American Film Festival in
Havana. He is currently preparing his third series,
“The Book of Trades,” in which a nurse, a carpenter,
a blogger, an astronaut—among many other
jobs—combine their talents and the daily chores
with atmospheres and characters that cannot be
ignored.
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Cine Pobre
Cuba’s hippest & retro
film festival
by Victoria Alcalá
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After a two-year break, Cuba’s “poor man’s” film
festival is back. Founded by Cuban filmmaker
Humberto Solas, the festival is traditionally held
in the sleepy fishing village of Gibara that wakes
up for a week in April to become a hotbed of
alternative, low-budget filmmakers. They may
not have Hollywood stars and camera-wielding
paparazzi, glamorous red carpet photo shoots
and posh after-parties, but if hip and retro is your
thing, this is as good as it gets in the Cuban film
scene.
The cinema festival itself is a young one, not only
because of the age of many of the participating
filmmakers, but for the general spirit. Former
festival director Sergio Benvenuto points out that
the event provides an outlet for films that are not
handicapped by the conservatism of big studios,
nor restricted by the need to secure instant
commercial success. This promotes the expression
of artistic purpose, which doesn’t originate with
how best to market, sponsor and product link
films.
Authentic, charming and off-the-beaten track,
Gibara is a town so obscure even many Cubans
struggle to find it on a map. Yet from 2003 to
2011, this picturesque town hosted one of the
most authentic and charming events on the
independent/alternative film circuit. Alongside
the competition that awards prizes for fiction
and documentary films, there are also meetings,
concerts, recitals and art exhibitions. The festival
guarantees a broad range of approaches and
topics, aspiring to become an alternative to
commercial filmmaking, promoting artistic quality
with production costs kept to a minimum.
The choice of Gibara as the principal venue has
certainly made the organisers job that much
harder. The town is a hefty 800-kilometre trek
from Havana and an hour’s drive along poor roads
from both Holguín (which boasts an international
airport) and the pristine beaches of Guardalavaca
(home to many all-inclusive resorts). Moreover,
Gibara, has no hotel and a limited number of
private rooms (which are booked up early for Cine
Pobre week). Yet in many ways, this remoteness
gives this event its intimate, authentic and unique
charm.
Limited in the number of films that may be shown,
the selection committee spends much of the
year deciding on (and sometimes the next year’s
selection. Juries selecting the winning films in
each category (Fiction & Documentaries) are
well- known and respected artists, critics and
film directors. While there is a top prize of Euro
15,000 (largely intended to assist in the transition
to 35mm), entrants are clearly not here for the
money.
The town itself was declared a National Monument
in 2004 and is near where, allegedly, Christopher
Columbus first set foot on Cuban soil. Perfect hosts,
it is the fiercely proud Gibararians who provide
much of the laid back and friendly ambience that
draws visitors, filmmakers, actors, musicians,
photographers, critics and artists. So don’t let the
remoteness of the location dissuade you, if you’re
into cinema festivals, this is the event of the year
not to miss!
photos by Alex Mene
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VISUAL ARTS
Museo Nacional
de Bellas Artes
Edificio de Arte Cubano
Through January 2015
Bésame mucho
Solo exhibition by Eduardo Ponjuán, National Art prizewinner 2013,
made up of large paintings and 3-D works that show a novel visual
morphology in his career. Regarding the title, Bésame mucho, or
Kiss Me a Lot, the artist has said: “I have always liked this bolero by
Mexican composer very much for its lyrics…the notion that in face
all things transient, fleeting, ephemeral, of the end of things, a simple
kiss can make one go on living.”
Centro de Arte
Contemporáneo Wifredo
Lam
Through Frebuary 6, 20155
Quisiera ser Wifredo Lam……
pero no se va a poder
A retrospective of Flavio Garciandía’s work, with
over 70 pieces created from 1973 to 2014, now
in the hands of private collector and the Cuban
State. Drawings, videos, paintings and installations
illustrate the different phases of this important
artist and teacher. Radical and inquisitive, F.
Garciandía has always paid close attention to the
latest trends in contemporary visual arts.
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Casa Oswaldo Guayasamín
Alianza Francesa
THROUGH
DECEMBER 9
Videoplay. Space for audiovisual
works oriented toward video
creation featuring the works
of León Ferrari, Catherine Bay,
Baggenstos Rudolf, Adonis Flores,
Sabrina Muzi, Elías Adasme, Carlos
Mastiel, Regina José Galindo,
Francesca Fini and Gruppo
Sinestético.
THROUGH
DECEMBER 7
Maldita circunstancia. Artist
Josué Pavel Herrera offers a look
into the Cuban character and the
relationship of the Cuban people
with their island-nation through
large-scale landscapes.
OPENS
DECEMBER 19
Paz
es
entregarse.
Sandra
Pérez Lozano, mainly focused
on
installations,
approaches
the causes and consequences
of repression as a method for
educating, indoctrinating and
controlling social behavior in
human beings.
Biblioteca Pública Rubén Martínez Villena
THROUGH
JANUARY 4
La piel que habla. Solo exhibition
by Roberto Diago, who conveys
the pain, resistance and selfassertion of Afro-Cuban culture
from a minimalistic point of view
bordering with abstraction while
referring to black skin.
Casa de Asia
OPENS
DECEMBER 23
Universo de rocío. Cuba y Japón
unidas en la poesía y la pintura.
Around 20 haiku-inspired ink
works by Miguel Ángel Anaya.
Centro de Negocios Miramar, edificio Jerusalem
THROUGHOUT Mí mismo. Solo show by artist
DECEMBER
Alejandro Barreras.
Centro Hispano Americano de Cultura
OPENS
DECEMBER 12
Casa del Alba Cultural
OPENS
DECEMBER 11
V+X = ALBA
group exhibition by important
painters of Cuba’s avant-garde,
such as Roberto Fabelo, Alexis
Leyva (Kcho) and Eduardo Roca
Casa de la Obrapía
Cine Charles Chaplin
OPENS
DECEMBER 4
by Carlos Guzmán who in this
exhibition depicts a magical,
fantastic world using the medium
of acrylic on canvas.
OPENS
DECEMBER 8
Casa Juan Gualberto Gómez
Sí, es expresionismo abstracto. A
retrospective of the work of visual
artist Yonny Ibáñez Gómez.
THROUGH
DECEMBER 6
Silencios (Cristo Hoyos). Ofrendas
(Bibiana Vélez). Exhibitions by two
of the most prestigious Colombian
visual artists.
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Treinta carteles. First exhibition
of Czech film posters. Given
its variety regarding authors,
aesthetics and styles, it is a journey
of sorts through the different
periods of this artistic expression
in a country that boasts a long
history in graphic art.
Galería Collage Habana
Galería El Reino de Este Mundo. Biblioteca Nacional
José Martí
THROUGH
JANUARY 7
Carteles en concurso. Exhibition
of film posters competing in the
36th International Festival of New
Latin-American Cinema.
Cine La Rampa
THROUGHOUT Puntada a puntada rehago el
DECEMBER
universo.
Large-scale
works
OPENS
DECEMBER 5
Bienal de Cerámica. Exhibition
of award-winning and competing
ceramic
sculptures
and
installations on free themes.
Para dónde vamos. Solo exhibition
by René Francisco Rodríguez,
National Visual Arts Prizewinner
in 2010. The artist seems to
question man and his time through
paintings, videos and installations,
whose profuse color has surprised
many viewers..
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Factoría Habana
THROUGHOUT
DECEMBER
Galería Génesis Miramar
La utilidad de la historia. The
curatorial project, which includes
the participation of Abel Barroso,
Celia y Yunior, Arianna Contino,
Rigoberto Díaz, Ricardo Elías,
Alex Hernández, José Manuel
Mesías, Frank Mujica, Fernando
Reyna, Lázaro Saavedra and José
Ángel Toirac, takes as its starting
point the creative processes
and historical research that
sometimes become artistic events.
The project includes works by
a group of young artists who
prioritize research and the use
of documents linked to the final
result, as well as artists from the
1980s and 90s, representing the
generations that have influenced
the newer generations in their
Legado. Young artistas Alex
Hernández,
Aluán
Argüelles,
Glenda Salazar, Rafael Villares
and Rigoberto Díaz exhibit works
characterized by the relation
with the natural environment,
landscape
and
ecological
awareness.
THROUGH
DECEMBER 20
Galería Latinoamericana. Casa de las Américas
DECEMBER
5-JANUARY 19
Ausencias
presentes.
Solo
exhibition
by
Marta
María
Pérez Bravo, who, through selfrepresentation,
always
deals
with the deeply-rooted religious
systems in Cuba and whose
practices, usually hidden to
profane eyes, she recreates and
documents through photographs
and videos.
THROUGH
DECEMBER 12
La vuelta al cine en 35 carteles.
Retrospective of film posters made
by designer Rafael Morante whose
production is bold, renovated and
different.
THROUGH
JANUARY 25
Heridas-Conexiones. Seventeen
works, mostly installations by
German artist Günther Uecker,
deal with social violence and
violence against nature, and to the
connections that could mitigate
them.
Palacio de Lombillo
THROUGHOUT Impresiones. Group exhibition of
DECEMBER
printmaking by artists from the
Historia de un harakiri. Group
exhibition of Cuban film posters.
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La vanguardia: incursiones en
el paisaje. Landscape drawings
by the avant-garde from the
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
collections.
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.
Edificio de Arte Universal
Pabellón Cuba
OPENS
DECEMBER 5
Nature Boy: Edel Rodríguez en la
Casa. First solo exhibition in Cuba
by Cuban-American designer Edel
Rodríguez. Graphic design and
art meet in this show, made up by
40 posters conceived for theater
festivals, Broadway shows, operas
and films; drawings and original
books; and a digital sample
of illustrations and covers for
different magazines he has worked
for, including Time magazine.
Museo de Arte Colonial
Galería Servando
OPENS
DECEMBER 11
Silencio. According to Isabel María
Pérez Pérez, “The works that make
up this series are made up as subtle
epigrams of silence. Inscriptions
that bear witness to an irreverent,
theatrical, insolent silence. They
are also likely to be testimonies of
the passage of time, of the finite
nature of certain chimeras and
of the eternal dilemma between
indifference and belligerence.”
Taller de Gráfica de La Habana.
Enfoques. Show by José Manuel
Fors and Jorge López Pardo.
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PHOTOGRAPHY
Convento de San Francisco de Asís
December-January
Oltre la maschera. Show by Italian photographer
Alfredo Canatello.
Sala de la Diversidad
Opens December 12
My Tuscany: requiem. Through 165 shots, the
British photographer illustrates the transformation
of a small area in Tuscany from a rural paradise
of beautiful scenery and medieval citadels to its
current image of a degraded environment.
Art Pub
Throughout December
En blanco y negro. Exhibition by Nestor Martí,
one of the most interesting Cuban photographers
today.
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DANCE
De la misma rama
Teatro Mella
Dec 6, 8:30pm; Dec 7, 5pm
On occasion of its 15th anniversary, the Ecos,
Company will premiere De la misma rama, a
combination of rhythms, melodies and emotions
of traditional and contemporary flamenco with
contributions from the music and dance of Cuba,
including Yoruba, campesino and popular music.
Presentación del Ballet
Lizt Alfonso
Sala Avellaneda. Teatro Nacional
Dec 19 & 20, 7pm
New Year’s Eve gala with the performances
of dancers from the Lizt Alfonso Vocational
Workshops.including Yoruba, campesino and
popular music.
Programa de concierto del
Ballet Nacional de Cuba
Teatro Nacional de Cuba. Sala
Avellaneda
Dec 26 & 27, 8:30pm; Dec 28, 5pm
Varied program by the Cuban National Ballet and
its principal dancers.
Centro Hispano Americano
de Cultura
Dec 13, 5pm
Varied program by the Cuban National Ballet and
its principal dancers.
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MUSIC
CONTEMPORARY FUSION
Club Habana Party
Photo Alex Mene
The contemporary fusion and electronic music
scene has expanded recently as new bars
and clubs have opened party promoters have
organized events in parks and public spaces.
Good live music venues include Bertolt Brecht
(Wed: Interactivo, Sunday: Déjá-vu) and El Sauce
(check out the Sunday afternoon Máquina de la
Melancolía) as well as the newly opened Fábrica
de Arte Cubano which has concerts most nights
Thursday through Sunday as well as impromptu
smaller performances inside.
In Havana’s burgeoning entertainment district
along First Avenue from the Karl Marx theatre to
the aquarium you are spoilt for choice with the
always popular Don Cangreco featuring good live
music (Kelvis Ochoas and David Torrens alternate
Fridays), Las Piedras (insanely busy from 3am) and
El Palio and Melem bar—both featuring different
singers and acts in smaller more intimate venues.
Adrián Berazaín in Concert
December 25, 8:30pm
Teatro Mella
The popular singer-songwriter, who combines
trova with rock and pop, will promote his most
recent album, Si te hago canción, in this concert
with the performances of several guest musicians,
such as David Blanco and Dianela de la Portilla ,who
worked with him on this new CD, which reflects a
more mature composer and singer.
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MUSIC CONTEMPORARY FUSION
Café Cantante, Teatro Nacional
TUESDAYS
Fresa y Chocolate
La Crema
Aceituna Sin Hueso
SUNDAYS
5 pm
10 pm
WEDNESDAYS Qva Libre
Havana Hard Rock
5 pm
THURSDAYS
Elaín Morales
5 pm
Soul Train, a show of soul music
SAT & SUN
Cover bands
10 pm
Café Concert El Sauce
THURSDAYS
EVERY OTHER
FRIDAY
Submarino Amarillo
Mucho Ruido
10 pm
SUNDAYS,
SUNDAYS
5 pm
La Máquina de la Melancolía, with
Frank Delgado and Luis Alberto
García
9 pm
Centro Cultural Bertolt Brecht
WEDNESDAYS Roberto Carcassés and Interactivo
Tercera y 8
MONDAYS
Los Kents
10 pm
Baby Lores
11 pm
Club Turf
THURSDAYS
Café Corner
THURSDAYS
Tesis de Menta
10:30 pm
10 pm
Diablo Tun Tun
Jardines del teatro Mella
Ruta 11 and guests
DEC 12
Djoy
4 PM
WEDNESDAYS Karamba,
5 PM
Adrián
Ernesto Blanco
FRIDAYS
Gens
Berazaín
y
5 pm
DEC 25
Con100cia
4 pm
La Madriguera
Piano Bar Habaneciendo
TUESDAY
Habana Fusión
11 PM
Con100cia
DEC 18
8:30 PM
DEC 27
WEDNESDAY
Osaín del Monte
5 pm
Pablo Menéndez & Mezcla
5 pm
DEC 31
El Prófugo
8:30 pm
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Photo by Alex Mene
SALSA / TIMBA
Casa de la Música Habana
Casa de la Música de Miramar
WEDNESDAY
11 pm NG La Banda
MONDAYS
11 pm
THURSDAY
11 pm Charanga Latina
TUESDAYS
11 pm Pedrito Calvo y La Justicia
WEDNESDAYS
5 pm Juan Guillermo
11 pm Adalberto Alvarez y su Son
FRIDAYS
5 pm El Niño y La Verdad
11 pm NG La Banda
Piano Bar Tun Tun
THURSDAYS
11 pm NG La Banda
SATURDAYS
5 pm Manana Club
Café Cantante, Teatro Nacional
5 pm Charanga Latina
11 pm Caribe Girls
FRIDAYS
Sur Caribe
Jardines del 1830
FRIDAYS
Azúcar Negra
10 pm
Tercera y 8
WEDNESDAYS Alain Daniel
11 pm
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MUSIC JAZZ
Jo Jazz
© Adam Bernstein - Will
Magid gives it his all at
Jazz Plaza 2012
November 19-22, 2014, Havana
Although some people still see it as a mere
preamble to the International Jazz Plaza Festival,
Jo Jazz has been gaining in popularity from that
distant day in 1998 when the first festival was held
on the initiative of the famous musician Chucho
Valdés and other enthusiasts.
The ever-increasing numbers of Jo Jazz fans
are getting ready to enjoy this competition for
young Cuban and international jazz musicians
and composers from 16 to 30 years of age. Prizewinners have included musicians who today are
popular not only in Cuba but abroad, such as
Yasek Manzano, Michel Herrera, Yissy Garcia and
Harold López-Nussa.
Besides the competition, the event will include
workshops organized by experts on the subject,
concerts and jam sessions in various places in
Havana. However, one of the most exciting thing
for jazz lovers seems to be to predict, in situ, the
birth of future Cuban jazz stars.
Café Jazz Miramar
Shows: 11 pm - 2am
This new jazz club has quickly established itself as
one of the very best places to hear some of Cuba’s
best musicians jamming. Forget about smoke filled
lounges, this is clean, bright—take the fags outside.
While it is difficult to get the exact schedule and in
any case expect a high level of improvisation when
it is good it is very good. A full house is something
of a mixed house since on occasion you will feel
like holding up your own silence please sign!
Nonetheless it gets the thumbs up from us.
Asociación Cubana de Derechos de Autor Musical
DEC 18
6 pm
Alexis Bosch (pianist) and Proyecto
Jazz Cubano.
2 pm
Zule Guerra (singer & composer)
and Blues D´Havana
DEC 2
10 pm
Natural Trío
DEC 3
UNEAC
DEC 11
Café Miramar
10 pm
Peña La Esquina del Jazz hosted by
showman Bobby Carcassés.
Orlando Maraca Valle (flutist &
composer)
DEC 4
10 pm
SATURDAY
10 pm
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Roberto Carcassés (pianist
composer) and his trio
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XXX Festival Internacional Jazz Plaza
December 17-21 / Theaters and nightclubs in Havana
One of Havana’s most famous music events, the
Jazz Festival is a display of the link between Cuban
rhythm and jazz, which goes back to the late 19th
century when newly freed slaves immigrated to
New Orleans. Started in 1979 pretty much as a
local event at the Casa de la Cultura de Plaza, the
festival has grown in size and scope with venues
that include several large theatres and nightclubs.
International stars such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie
Haden, Steve Coleman, Michel Legrand, Ivan
Lins and Ronnie Scott are just a few names in
the list of past participants, who, together with
Cubans Chucho Valdés, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Bobby
Carcassés and Ernán López-Nussa, to mention
just a few, attract fans from all over the world.
More than 35 groups from 18 guest countries
have confirmed their participation,: pianist Arturo
O’Farrill, the Wayne Wallace Quintet and the
Kansas City Jazz Band (US), Anton Doyle (Trinidad
and Tobago), the CaboCubaJazz band (Cape Verde),
Iba Ibò Yoruba Specimen (France), singer Gryssel
Ramírez (Puerto Rico), The Norwegian Big Energy
Ensemble (NEBB); and Colombian sax player Justo
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Almario, who critics have dubbed as the Latin heir
to John Coltrane.
The Mella Theater has been chosen for the opening
gala which will be directed by bassist Jorge Reyes,
who is also the musical director of the event.
Reyes plans to take a tour of 30 years of virtuosity
of each instrument. Meanwhile, the López-Nussa
family will be responsible for the closing gala.
The Casa de la Cultura de Plaza, headquarters of
the event, will host a varied program and will close
each night with the performance of a popular
band, such as NG La Banda or Issac Delgado.
The Fábrica de Arte Cubano has announced the
performances of special guest musicians, and the
Alfonso family and Síntesis, who will be in charge
of closing each evening with their performance.
The Pabellón Cuba has organized performances,
jam sessions, master classes, lectures and
symposiums. Other venues include Jazz Café
Miramar and La Zorra y el Cuervo.
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MUSIC BOLERO, FOLKLORE, SON & TROVA
Conjunto Académico de Canto y Danza Alexandrov
December 6, 8:30pm
Teatro Nacional. Sala Avellaneda
Founded in 1928, the Alexandrov Academic Ensemble of Song and Dance of the Russian Army, will be
visiting Cuba for the first time with a an attractive show that includes folkloric and traditional music and
dances and religious hymns.
Silvio Rodríguez por los
barrios
Estadio Latinoamericano (parking lot)
December 20, 6pm
In his last concert around Havana’s neighborhoods
this year, Silvio Rodríguez will , be performing along
with Jorge Aragón (piano), Jorge Reyes (bass), Oliver
Valdés (drums) and Emilio Vega (vibraphone and
percussion)
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MUSIC BOLERO, FOLKLORE, SON & TROVA
Asociación Yoruba de Mañana
SATURDAYS
Centro Memorial Martin Luther King, Jr.
Los Ibellis (Folkloric group)
Marta Campos
DEC 18
4 pm
4:30 pm
Café cantante, Teatro Nacional
SATURDAYS
El Jelengue de Areíto
Arturo Hotman
MONDAYS
5 pm
Son del Nene
5 pm
WEDNESDAYS Trovando, a meeting with good
Café Concert El Sauce
TUESDAYS
8 pm
FRIDAYS
Plus Trova with Charly Salgado
and guests.
Frank Delgado
5 pm
trova.
THURDAYS
Conjunto de Arsenio Rodríguez
5 pm
Rumberos de Cuba
FRIDAYS
11 pm
5 pm
DEC 4
4 pm
DEC 17
3 pm
Grupo Rumba Morena,
dedicated to Shangó
gala
Grupo Rumba Morena,
dedicated to Babalú Ayé
gala
5 pm
Hotel Telégrafo
Ivette Cepeda.
FRIDAYS
9:30 pm
Casa del Alba
Hurón Azul, UNEAC
Trovador Eduardo Sosa
DEC 5
Timbalaye
SUNDAYS
Casa de África
SATURDAYS
5 pm
Bolero Night
9 pm
Peña El Canto de Todos, with
Vicente Feliú
DEC 25
6 pm
Pabellón Cuba
Peña Tres Tazas with trovador
Silvio Alejandro
FRIDAYS
4 pm
Casa de la Cultura Comunitaria Mirta Aguirre
Get-together with trovador Ireno
García.
DEC 28
5 pm
THURSDAYS
Peña with Marta Campos.
Peña with trovador Ray Fernández
5 pm
7 pm
Biblioteca Nacional José Martí
Centro Cultural Habaneciendo
SUNDAYS
4 pm
Peña Participo with trovador Juan
Carlos Pérez
Piano Bar Tun Tun (Casa de la Música de Miramar)
Casa de la Cultura de Plaza
DEC 13
SATURDAY
Filin with Fausto Durán and guests
DEC 6
Grupo Moncada
6 pm
3pm
Casa Memorial Salvador Allende
Café Teatro Bertolt Brecht
Peña La Juntamenta, with trovador
Ángel Quintero.
DEC 26
5 pm
DEC 27
Rafael Espín e invitados
4 pm
Casa de la Música Habana
SUNDAYS
Yoruba Andabo
5 pm
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CLASSICAL MUSIC
Photo by Ivan Soca
Basílica Menor de San Francisco de Asís
DEC 4
6 pm
DEC 6
6 pm
DEC 13
6 pm
DEC 19
6 pm
Pianist Alicia Perea and violinist Alfredo Muñoz along with the Coro Polifónico, directed by
Carmen Collado, will interpret works for piano and violin, and chorus, written by Cuban
composer Carlos Fariñas, one of the pioneers of the second musical avant-garde in Cuba.
Opening concert of the 2014 UNEAC Piano Competition with the performances of guest
jurors and the winner of the past competition.
The D’Accord duo, (Marita Rodríguez, piano, and Monterrey, clarinet), and Anolan González
(viola), will play works by Camille Saint Saëns, Louis Vierne, Henri Busser and Robert
Schumann.
Pianist José María Vitier has invited Abel Acosta and Abel González (percussion) and soprano
Bárbara Llanes to accompany him in performing several of his compositions. Actress Laura
de la Uz will be reciting.
DEC 6
Recital by pianist Víctor García Pelegrín.
4 pm
DEC 13
Performance of the Ventus Habana quintet, conducted by Alina Blanco.
4 pm
DEC 20
Recital by guitarist Alejandro Acosta.
4 pm
DEC 27
Gala performance of the Cuban Music Instituto and the Center for Concert Music.
4 pm
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Catedral de La Habana
Organist Moisés Santiesteban will play works by Felix Mendelssohn, Moritz Brosig, Paul
Hindemith and Gustav Adolf Merkel.
DEC 5
7 pm
Teatro Martí
DEC 6
8:30 pm
The Camerata Romeu, conducted by Zenaida Romeu, will premiere tyhe symphonic poem
Romanza and the orchestral suite Hemingway, by Bill Lorraine.
2014 UNEAC Piano Competition.
DEC 9
8:30 pm
DEC 27
8:30 pm
Pianist Ernán López-Nussa and his Trío, bassist Gastón Joya and drummer Enrique Pla,
among other guests, will play works from the album Sacrilegios, Grand Prix at the 2014
International Cubadisco Fair.
Oratorio San Felipe Neri
7 pm
Closing concert of the orchestra workshops conducted by the Belgian maestro Ronald
Zollman in which the Symphony Orchestra of the University of the Arts will play works by
Brahms, Johann Strauss I and II, the latter the author of the famous The Blue Danube .
DEC 18
Recital by soprano María Eugenia Barrios accompanied on the piano by Claudia Santana.
DEC 11
7 pm
Performance of works for chamber ensembles by Czech composers.
DEC 20
4 pm
Sala Covarrubias, Teatro Nacional
SUNDAYS
Concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra.
11 pm
Sala Gonzalo Roig. Palacio del Teatro Lírico Nacional
Cuerda Dominical, with guitarist Luis Manuel Molina
DEC 28
5 pm
Iglesia de Paula
DEC 3
7 pm
DEC 6
7 pm
DEC 8
7 pm
DEC 12
7 pm
DEC 20
7 pm
Choral concert by the Dartmouth College Glee Club, Hanover, New Hampshire, directed by
Louis Burkot.
The early music ensemble Harmonia del Parnàs will offer the concert Zuipaqui. A Voyage
Between Spain and Colonial America.
The Harmonia del Parnàs and Ars Longa early music ensembles will interpret sonatas and
cantatas from 17th and 18th-century Spanish America
Tyhe organist Moisés Santiesteban will give a program with compositions for organ related
to Advent and Christmas.
The Ars Longa Early Music Ensemble, the Baroque Orchestra of the National School of
Music, and the Cantus Firmus social/cultural project have announced the concert Christmas
Holidays in Colonial America.
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THEATRE
El tío Vania
Argos Teatro / Directed by Carlos Celdrán
Fri & Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm, Argos Teatro
With the classic of universal theater, Uncle Vanya,
by Anton Chekhov, Carlos Celdrán aims to dissect
today’s Cuban ordinary man, who bears a burden
of conflicts, contradictions, anguish, frustrations,
lost ideals and disagreements.
Rascacielos
Teatro El Público / Directed by Jazz Vilá
Through Dec 25; Tue/Wed/Thu, 6pm
Sala Adolfo Llauradó
Rascacielos (Skyscraper), aimed at young audiences,
continues playing to packed houses. According to
Vilá, coauthor of the play along with Marcos Díaz,
“each of the characters is a skyscraper because a
person’s limit is their thoughts. There are 11 million
skyscrapers in Cuba who grow infinitely.” Under
this premise, “four couples linked by the fate of
an artist reveal the essence of their emotions,”
hidden or explicit violence, the complexities of
relationships between people of different ages or
sexual preferences, of living together, the lack of
communication and intimacy.
The Phantom of the Opera
Sat & Sun, 9pm, Anfiteatro de La Habana Vieja
Alfonso Menéndez celebrates his 30th anniversary
in show business with The Phantom of the Opera,
the famous musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Menéndez is responsible for the script, Spanish
version and production of the musical. The main
roles will be interpreted by Maylú Hernández/
Marla Pileta as Christine; José Luis Pérez/Andrés
Sánchez as The Phantom; and Rigoberto López/
Rogelio Rivas as Raoul, who will be accompanied
by a cast of young singers, many of whom are
newcomers to the stage. Also participating in the
production are the Ballet de la Televisión Cubana
and the Ballet de Bertha Casañas.
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MUSICAL THEATER
Broadway returns to Havana
Opens December 24, 2014, 8:00pm
Teatro Bertolt Brecht
New production of Rent in Havana
Rent, a rock musical based on Puccini’s La Bohème, tells the story of a group of impoverished young
artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York City’s Lower East End under the
shadow of HIV/AIDS
Opening on December 24, 2014 at the Bertolt Brecht Theatre in Havana, this Spanish language
production,of Rent is being produced by Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment in partnership with
the Cuban National Council of Performing Arts and will be the first Broadway musical with a full cast,
musicians and first-class production elements to be staged in Cuba in over 50 years.
Andy Señor, Jr., who will direct a company of 15 Cuban actors is a leading member of Broadway’s Cuban
American community. He first starred as “Angel” in Rent on Broadway and later directed productions of
the show in numerous places around the world.
The Cuba production of Rent will also feature choreography by Marcus Paul James (Rent on Broadway
including the 2008 final performance film; Motown: The Musical), musical direction by Emmanuel
Schvartzman (On Your Feet), sound design by Michael Catalan, and costume design by Angela Wendt
(Rent original production). Thom Schilling is production manager.
Gisela Gonzalez, president of the Cuban National Council of Performing Arts, said: “This production will
be a paramount step for musical theater in Cuba. We will have the possibility of combining Cuban talent
with the long time history of Broadway as a form of art. This collaboration in the field of theater will
bring us together and we hope that we are going to come up with an authentic and high quality product
that leads us into future joint projects.”
Robert Nederlander, Jr. of Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment has said that “It has been a great
pleasure to work with the Cuban National Council of Performing Arts and their extremely talented
artists, musicians and technicians in Havana. We are honored to serve as a bridge between the Cuban
cultural and Broadway communities and to bring the best of Broadway to Cuban audiences.”
For more information:
http://www.nederlanderworld.com/rent-in-havana.aspx
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FOR KIDS
La Colmenita
December 27, 10am
The National Library has prepared a recreational
spot for kids with a show by La Colmenita plus
costume party, board games, contests and sale of
books and films, among other attractions.
Siempre Havana
Circo Nacional de Cuba
Sat & Sun, 4pm & 7pm
Carpa Trompoloco
Brand new circus show for the autumn with
exciting acts combined with the vernacular humor
that the first circuses in Cuba were based on. The
kids will love the clowns, the trained animals, the
fire-eaters, as well as other highly skilled acts, such
as aerial silk, tumbling and trampoline, juggling,
acrobatics, and much more.
Figuras en el cielo o La
historia del niño Samuel
Estudio Teatral Alba / Directed by Jorge Alba
Fri, Sat & Sun, 3pm
Teatro de títeres El Arca
In this play written by Margarita Milián, the
children are the protagonists of a story that shows
how childhood is the period in life in which you
can always connect earth and heaven through
imagination alone.
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XVIII Feria Internacional de Artesanía FIART
December 6-21
Pabexpo, Havana
Held as a way of expressing the identity and cultural
diversity of different countries, the International
Craft Fair has promoted arts and crafts attracting
thousands of visitors each year. Lectures, exhibits,
fashion shows, sales and the crafts themselves
offer an opportunity for interaction and exchange
between artists and the public. In past years, the
original treatment of contemporary design has been
remarkable in handicrafts, which, without losing
their ancestral nature, exhibit an undisputable
touch of modernity, whether applied to textiles,
fibres, leather, precious and semiprecious stones,
metals, clay, or any other material ready to be
fashioned and beautified through the sensitivity of
craft artists.
This edition, which is dedicated to the province
of Guantánamo and handmade furniture, returns
to the comfortable halls of Pabexpo where around
270 Cuban artisans, along with about 70 exhibitors
from 18 countries will exhibit their products. In
addition to the usual expo-sale, the event will hold
encounters with crafts artists, a meeting with the
artisan Carmen Fiol, and panels “The role of artists
in the solution of integral projects,” “Furniture:
Tradition, design and consumption’ and “Creative
groups in the context of graphic productions.”
FIART 2014 will open from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm from December 6 to 15, at the Morro Cabaña Complex.
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December 17
Photo by Alexander Mene
December 17, Pilgrimage to
Rincón for the feast of San Lázaro
by Victoria Alcalá
This is another side of Cuba far away from tropical beaches, vintage cars and Tropicana dancers.
The Pilgrimage to Rincón for the feast of San Lázaro every December 17 is a reminder of the fusion
of Afro Cuban Santeria with the Catholic Church. This is based on the Lazarus parable in Luke
16:19-31 and combined with Babalú-Ayé, a deity of the Yoruba pantheon. There is an intensity and
devotion apparent in many OF the pilgrims, which makes any visit a deeply moving one and gives
visitors an insight into this part of the Cuban psyche.
In mid-December, come rain or shine or cold
weather, the largest religious pilgrimage in Cuba
takes place in celebration of the Catholic feast
of St. Lazarus. On December 17, thousands upon
thousands of people from various parts of Cuba
go out of their way to visit the church of the leper
colony located in the town of Rincón, about 25 miles
south of Havana.
Paradoxically, these people do not make the
pilgrimage out of devotion to the saint that is
recognized by the Catholic Church--Lazarus,
resurrected by Jesus Christ and later Bishop of
Marseilles, whose skin was cruelly lacerated before
being decapitated on December 17, 72 AD—but to a
Lazarus who is the result of the curious combination
of the sick beggar of the parable in Luke 16:19-31,
whose sores were licked by dogs, and Babalú-Ayé,
a deity of the Yoruba pantheon, orisha of smallpox,
leprosy, venereal diseases and skin, syncretized
with the St. Lazarus of the Catholic Church.
presides the altar of the church—Lazarus, Bishop of
Marseille—whom the pilgrims pay respect to, but to
another image situated to the left of the high altar,
which the Church considers the same saint, but
which popular tradition identifies with the Syncretic
Lazarus, the one in crutches accompanied by a dog.
This is the “Saint” Lazarus (a result of the diffuse
religiosity that characterizes the average Cuban) to
whom the faithful make offerings and sacrifices as
Because of this unorthodox mix, another curious
phenomenon occurs: it is not the image that
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a token of gratitude. And because in the collective
imaginary “old Lazarus collects his due,” no one
dares to break their word.
The long journey to Rincón begins on December 15
and 16. Many people use some sort of transportation
to go as far as the town of Santiago de Las Vegas and
walk a few kilometers to the church; others walk all
the way from their homes to the leprosarium. Some
come barefooted, or on their knees, or wearing
clothes made of jute sack, or towing heavy objects
such as large rocks, cement blocks, lead ingots and
even cannon balls. Of course, you’ll always find the
ones who go there out of curiosity or merchants
who set up flash businesses and sell fast foods,
beverages, flowers or candles. But what prevails in
the majority is gratitude for favors received or the
faith that their prayers will be heard. So, after the
initial shock one experiences at the many forms of
self-punishment, what follows is simple and plain
compassion.
The old man who drags his feet as he walks along
the rough road makes one inevitably assume that he
has a seriously ill grandson. The woman that leaves
a trail of blood from her knees probably has a child
in danger. No wonder when Pope John Paul II visited
Cuba in 1998 and expressed his wish to have “an
encounter with pain,” the place chosen was Rincón,
the lazaretto in Havana that is home to the most
serious cases of leprosy and where every December
17 tears, flowers, candles and many other offerings
bear witness to the pilgrim’s faith.
Leprosy
For many Cubans, Rincón is associated with dismal images related to leprosy. The presence in this town of
people affected with the illness dates back to 1917 when the hospital, which treated the sick since the 18th
century, was transferred to this territory in the outskirts of Havana, and consequently, expanded. Today,
leprosy is no longer a health problem in Cuba as the number of people infected with this disease is very
small. In 1962, the leprosarium became the Specialist Dermatology Hospital which serves all other skin
diseases, such as psoriasis, lupus erythematosus, chronic or acute dermatitis. The few cases of leprosy
which have been identified are treated as outpatients. However, when Pope John Paul II asked to have a
“meeting with pain” during his recent visit to Cuba, the place chosen was Rincón, where on December 17
the many offerings give witness to the faith of the pilgrim.
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Parrandas de Remedios:
An explosive Christmas
December 24
The Parrandas de Remedios takes place on Christmas Eve annually.
Although the celebration has also spread to other cities, the singularly
beautiful Remedios is the place to be to appreciate this highlight of
Cuba’s cultural calendar. On this day, citizens take sides and face off
against each other with floats, fireworks and dancing competitions in
a highlight of Cuba’s cultural calendar. Authentic, exciting, colorful,
loud, don’t expect to get much sleep…
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This tradition dates back to the 1820 when a young
priest named Francisco Vigil de Quiñones noticed
that in the chilly mornings of the last days of the
year, his congregations were dwindling. People
seemed to prefer to spend time in their warm beds
than fill the pews of his church. To persuade them
to change their ways, he came up with an ingenuous
solution. He got together a group of children and
encouraged them to make as much noise as they
could.
They were instructed to gather horns, tins full of
pebbles, maracas, pots and pans, and do whatever
was necessary to ensure that everyone would be up
for the series of masses beginning on the 16th and
ending on the 24th of December. The plan worked.
The church soon filled up, and one of the most
popular festivities celebrated in Cuba, the Parrandas
de Remedios, was set off.
By 1835, the tradition had become such a success
that a decree was issued by the government
forbidding the noisy parade before 4am. A few years
later, the cacophony had evolved into an orchestra,
with singers, guitars, mandolins, harps, congas,
claves and an instrument that was used exclusively
in parrandas, the atambora—a small barrel-shaped
drum covered with a tanned goat hide.
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More changes followed over the following 150 years,
leading to the present-day assortment of music, art,
and firework. The dramatic finale on Christmas Eve
is now a wild battle of firework displays, lights and
artwork between two huge floats, each representing
one half of the town. The parranderos make a tour
of the neighborhoods of Remedios, dancing to the
sound of polkas and rumbas composed more than a
century ago.
The competitive character that survives in today’s
celebrations goes back to the mid-19th century. The
eight neighborhoods into which the town was then
divided organized themselves into two rival groups,
El Carmen and San Salvador, each with its own
musical clan. Today the main event on December
24 still begins with a “rival rumba” between the two
clans.
This celebration has now extended to nearby cities
including Camajuaní, Vueltas, Caibarién, Guayos
and Encrucijada, as well as to other towns in central
Cuba.
But nowhere yet rivals Remedios. Year after year,
its inhabitants spend several months making the
elaborate floats, homemade rockets, costumes
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and all the other paraphernalia connected with the
festival. All is done in the strictest secrecy to be
revealed only on the opening night of the parrandas.
At 10pm on December 24, the church bells begin to
ring announcing the start of festivities. The night
sky glows with fireworks for several hours. Stunning
art works on the plaza are lit, and the floats—
the result of many hundreds of hours of labor by
carpenters, electricians, designers, dressmakers
and whole teams of local workers—begin their
triumphal parade. The Carmelitas from the Carmen
neighborhood, and the Sansaríes from the San
Salvador neighborhood, travel down Remedios’ old
streets. In this competition, devoid of judges and
juries, everyone’s a winner.
At dawn, around the same time those sleepy
locals were roused from their sleep two centuries
ago, Remedios’ visitors, many wearing hats as a
protection against the fireworks, head to their
beds. Meanwhile, the residents of El Carmen and
San Salvador begin secretly planning next year’s
Parrandas.
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December 24, Bejucal
Charangas de Bejucal
by Victoria Alcala
Picturesque Bejucal founded on May 9, 1714, some
twenty kilometers from Havana, will be celebrating
its 300th birthday in 2014. Try and make it for this
Christmas Eve to enjoy the for the Charangas de
Bejucal, which rival the more well-known Parrandas
de Remedios for floats, carnival and homemade
fireworks.
racial and nationality divisions started to fade away.
The bands changed their names. Malayos became La
Espina de Oro keeping the color red and Musicanga
became La Ceiba de Plata symbolized by blue. Music
in both bands became definitely Cuban strongly
flavored with African roots while the traditional
conga sustained the pullas.
Back in the day, Bejucal was a prosperous town
that eagerly anticipated Christmas celebrations all
year. On that day, slave-owners would give their
slaves the opportunity to enjoy themselves, sing
their songs and even throng to the main square
to collect their year-end bonuses. As time went
on, many Spanish and white Creoles would also
organize their own revelry thereby giving birth to
the two opposing bands that have remained today
in the Charangas. At first named Malayos (Spanish
and white Creoles) identifiable by the color red and
the rooster symbol, and Musicanga (slaves and black
freemen) symbolized by the scorpion and the color
blue, they brought life to the festivities with their
own music and dances and especially their “pullas”
or mocking allusions to the rival band.
The carrozas became more complex, transformed
by genius and inventiveness to combine the idea
of one single moving vehicle like the floats in the
Havana Carnival parade with the exuberant, static
Remedios central square structures. But one
detail sets them apart: the unveiled “surprises”
demonstrating technology that grew more modern
with the times, operated by hidden mechanisms in
the interior of the shell, moving incredible elements
into the air, sometimes up to heights of twenty-five
meters.
Although it is impossible to attach a starting date—the
purported centenary of the Charangas in 1940 was
a mere fraud for commercial purposes—the seeds
for the subsequently famous Bejucal Charangas are
buried in twentieth-century Christmas festivities,
which, little by little, began incorporating a veritable
arsenal of percussion and wind instruments, dances,
tonadas and rustic floats, carrozas, that started out
as simple stretchers carried on peoples’ shoulders.
With the passing of the years and the advent of
Cuban independence aspirations, quite a large
number of creoles went over to the Musicanga side
as a manner of putting distance between themselves
and the Spanish; at the installation of the Republic,
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Because of their powerful hold on people, the
Charangas have resisted wars, economic crises,
shortages and periods of intolerance. They have
arrived at our day with their contagious load of
joy, music and popular wit. They take place on
December 24, 25 and 26, and January 1, attracting
thousands of locals and visitors who dance in the
streets, have fun with the typical characters La
Kulona, La Mojiganga and La Macorina, enjoying
typical festive treats, such as roasted suckling-pig
sandwiches, tamales, peanut nougat, churros and
cotton candy, all supplemented generously with
beer and rum. The people lose themselves in the
streets following the sound of the congas and go
back to their childhood as they catch their breath
in amazement to see the “surprises” presented by
each of the bands who, at the end of the party, are
already getting ready to prepare for the next year’s
Charangas.
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December 25 & 31
Christmas & New Year’s Eve in Cuba
by Margaret Atkins
December is a special month in Cuba as throughout
the Western world. Early in the month, people
begin to get ready for the holidays. Homes, shops,
hotels, restaurants and other public or private
entities are decorated with lights and Christmas
trees that survive at least until January 6, when
the Three Wise Men of the East come riding on
camelback bringing gifts for the children who
have behaved well throughout the year.
out food and water for the camels. The children
followed the custom, just like nowadays, of writing
letters specifying their requests and thanking the
Wise Men for what they would receive. For most
kids, this belief would last throughout their infancy
until the rumor that “the Magi are mom and dad”
would start to spread. The older kids in the know
would then become their parents’ accomplices in
hiding this fact from the small ones.
The gift-bearing Three Wise Men is a tradition
in Spanish Catholicism that is deeply-rooted in
Cuba, much more than the super-hyped Santa
Claus. Despite the cultural influence of the United
States upon the island—particularly strong during
the first half of the 20th century and which has
remained to this day through music, movies and
TV, as well as Xmas ornaments sold around this
time of year—the white-bearded and red-suited
Santa clearly loses the battle against the Three
Kings of the Orient who paid homage and brought
gifts to the newborn Christ child in the manger
in Bethlehem, a scene that is repeated in every
Catholic church in the world around this time of
the year. In recent times, however, old jolly St.
Nick is increasingly growing in popularity among
many Cuban children who receive gifts both on
Christmas and on Epiphany to their benefit but
at the expense of their parents, who pay the price
of this cultural amalgamation that characterizes
Cuba.
With the radicalization of the Revolution, Cuba
officially became an atheist nation in 1962,
although the Christmas holiday continued to be
celebrated until 1969. The Magi slowly began to be
consigned to oblivion as well as the festivities that
surrounded the Nativity of Jesus Christ. There was
no place for Christmas trees, ornaments or lights.
Moreover, Catholic Churches were practically
deserted on Christmas Eve during the celebration
of Midnight Mass.
Prior to 1959 and in the early years of the
Revolution, some households followed the custom
of cleaning the floor of their homes with a special
kind of green-colored sawdust so that the Magi
would find everything spic-and-span, and set
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Although “Nochebuena” was dropped from the
Cuban calendar of holidays in 1969, many families
continued to come together on Christmas Eve for
the traditional meal of roast pork, rice and black
beans, boiled cassava in garlic sauce and a large
salad of tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, radishes and
whatever vegetables could be found at markets.
Dinner would be topped off with classical desserts
such as buñuelos, a kind of cassava fritter shaped
into the form of a number eight and served with
anise syrup. In the early 1980s, apples, mostly from
Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, could be bought
at subsidized prices. The disintegration of the
Socialist Bloc brought about an extremely harsh
period for the nation and its people during the
90s. Foodstuffs were severely reduced and this, of
course, was reflected on the Christmas dinner.
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The visit of Pope John Paul II was a landmark in the
religious openness that was already taking place
on the island. In 1997, the government declared
Christmas a holiday in honor of the Pope’s upcoming
visit in 1998. The following year, December 25 was
officially declared as a national holiday. Today,
practically everybody in Cuba, whether Christians,
atheists, Catholics or believers of Afro-Cuban
religions, celebrate Christmas Eve and New Year
as a way for reconnecting with family and friends
in a usually intimate climate.
restaurant or a nightclub in which special dinners
are prepared and enjoyed along with a show. Most
Cubans, however, continue to prefer to celebrate
the New Year at home with pretty much the same
dinner as for Christmas, except that chicken or
turkey may substitute the omnipresent pork.
Diehard Cubans, though, can’t conceive this day
without a slice—or two or three—of their favorite
In the late 19th century, a number of cultural and
recreational associations were created. These
“Sociedades” were divided according to the color
of the skin. On December 31, these centers would
organize balls and dinners allowing the attendance
of children on that sole occasion. On that day, and
only on that day¸ the Sociedades admitted people
of different races, and whites, blacks and mulattos
could be seen dancing and reveling together as
equals.
Many years later, this same spirit of equality and
sharing inspired collective dinners in different
urban communities, in which food was provided
by the neighbors who together welcomed the New
Year, congratulating and wishing each other the
best in the coming year, and eating 12 grapes as
a symbol of each month. In the early years of the
Revolution, collective dinners were organized on
New Year’s Eve, the most famous being the Giant
Dinners at the Plaza de la Revolución.
Traditions remain but the way they are celebrated
change with the passage of time. Today, many
people prefer to celebrate New Year’s Eve at a
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meat. Beer, red wine and rum are the favorite
drinks, while a sparkling wine is reserved for the
toasts at midnight. If there isn’t a party going,
then families will sit down in front of the TV to
see the special shows, which are mostly musical
or humorous. At 12, the official ceremony with the
12-gun salute is broadcast live from the Cabaña
Fortress.
Many Cubans follow the custom of throwing a
bucketful of water out into the street at midnight
as a kind of exorcism, in which the bad things
from the year gone by are expelled letting in the
good things that the New Year may bring. Another
custom that has become increasingly popular is
walking around the block with a suitcase waving
goodbye to their neighbors, in the hope that this
farce will actually come true and ensure them a
trip abroad.
On January 1, the streets are deserted and silent.
This day is also the Anniversary of the Triumph of
the Revolution. Almost everyone rests on this day
after all the partying the day before, but it is not
unusual to hold a party that night because January
2 is also a holiday.
If you happen to be visiting Cuba around the
Christmas holidays, try to spend Nochebuena or
New Year’s Eve with a Cuban family. There you
will become acquainted with the warmth and
hospitality of the inhabitants of the largest island
in the Caribbean.
Happy new Year !!
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January 1, 1959:
Triumph of the Cuban Revolution
by Victoria Alcalá
New Year’s Day has a special meaning in Cuba since
it was on this first day of 1959, Cuba was shaken by
a much-awaited news—Fulgencio Batista, who had
seized power through a military coup on March 10,
1952, had fled the country in the early hours of the
morning, finally convinced that he was unable to
resist the determination of the rebels commanded
by the young lawyer Fidel Castro, who after
becoming strong in the mountains of the province
of the then province of Oriente, marched westward.
On November 20, 1958, Castro personally led the
Battle of Guisa, which marked the beginning of the
definitive revolutionary offensive. Columns from
the second and third fronts of the Rebel Army were
approaching Santiago de Cuba, the most important
city in eastern Cuba. The armoured train that the
government had sent to reinforce the defence in the
belligerent regions was derailed by guerrilla forces
led by Ernesto Che Guevara, who would take hold
of the city of Santa Clara by the end of December.
Around the same time, Camilo Cienfuegos would
take control of the city of Yaguajay, also in the
centre region of Cuba. The underground resistance
movement in the cities had become more intense.
There were few Cuban families—from all social
classes—who, some way or another, did not have
a relative involved in the resistance against the
dictatorial government. Thousands of young men
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had been tortured or killed, while others had to
go underground permanently, had gone to the
mountains to fight or were in exile; hence, the
outburst of collective joy with the news that Batista
and his henchmen had taken flight.
I cannot remember any other demonstration of
popular joy comparable to the one that took place
on that morning (today, I still can’t recall if the day
was cold or warm, but radiant it was for sure) in
which all the shouting coming from the street, the
shots fired into the air, the honking from cars, and
the singing got me out of bed.
New Year’s Eve had been different, not to say
strange. My parents and their friends had not seen
in the New Year at a cabaret or nightclub as usual.
Only my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents
met at my house, where they dined quickly and
half-heartedly, while the music that was coming out
of the record player was only a pretext to muffle
the conversation that was already taking place in
whispers. The 12 grapes at midnight were eaten
only at the children’s insistence, as we had little
inkling—or no inkling at all—as to what was making
the family, who was so fond of good food and fine
wines, so serious and austere.
The rejoicing in the streets also woke up my parents
a few minutes before the phone started ringing
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insistently. “The man has fled,” announced my father, hugging my grandfather. Amidst protests from the
entire family, Dad took me with him out onto the street. Never before or since have I been hugged and
kissed by so many strangers, who were laughing, crying, singing, running… Every now and then, somebody
would make a speech that would be fervently applauded and that would end by singing the national hymn
or the then little heard 26th of July March. The streets were suddenly filled with flags, posters and olive
green uniforms that appeared in advance of the ones that would be left a few days later, on January 6,
under the Christmas tree as a gift to many Cuban children. The times that followed would be magnificent
or sad. There would be coincidences and antagonisms, successes and failures. But on that January 1, 1959,
a new era in the national history had begun. Cuba was happy.
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NAZDAROVIE
SOVIET STYLE,
CUBAN FINESSE
by Margaret Atkins
I never really knew the Cuba from the days of Soviet
support. My first memories of the island belong to
a time that is very close to the Great Change, when
we were already starting to see that what had at
one point been rock-solid was about to fall apart.
Nevertheless, my memories do include a lovely
apartment in Santa Clara, the home of a couple who
had gone to school in the USSR, and which I used to
visit frequently at the end of the 1980s. Today, as I
walk into the Nazdarovie Restaurant, I feel that I am
again being enveloped in a welcoming and sweetly
exotic embrace.
At the door on the ground floor, a young man
wearing a Soviet Navy cap talks to me in Russian
and Spanish. I climb the stairs and no sooner have
I crossed the threshold, I see a poster over the
bar of a Soviet worker who holds out his hand in
welcome and the lettering (in Russian of course, but
someone kindly translates it for me) says greetings
of friendship and peace. On carefully decorated
shelves, various Vodka bottles display a variety
of brand names and qualities, lovely matrioshkas
(those charming little painted dolls that are nestled
one inside another, getting smaller and smaller)
and a bust of Lenin. At one side of the bar, there
are several issues of Sputnik, the Soviet magazine
that used to successfully circulate Cuba, a samovar
and a bear is pursuing naughty Mashenka from the
television. To the right of the bar, the Soviet Room
has one entire wall decorated with posters showing
Soviet life and events. Lots of arts and crafts objects,
black tables, glass and way over there the terrace
dominates the Malecón in the late evening. Once
night has arrived, I enjoy the gorgeous view of the
line of lights that define the end of the city and the
start of the dark sea, interrupted here and there by
the lights of some small boat.
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In the Room of the Czars, one single table for six
diners has been set up for an elegant dinner. I chat
with Gregory Biniowsky, a Canadian of Ukrainian
background who has been living for 23 years in
Cuba and says he is the intellectual author of
Nazdarovie. With three Cuban partners, his wife
Danelys Coz and two old friends, Rolando Almirante
and Yociel Marrero, this restaurant was opened
just two months ago. The group is brimming with
passion and ideas. They would like their business to
be a genuine cultural experience, not just a moneymaking proposition.
Their staff has been chosen from the huge Slavic
community in Havana, people who had arrived
during the years when Cuba-Soviet relations
flourished and who had established their homes
and had their children here. Some of the waitresses
I talked with remembered New Year’s Eve dinners in
their childhood, with huge tables loaded with cakes
baked by the hands of their Soviet mothers who had
fallen in love with Cubans and followed them back
to Cuba. One of the cooks was born in Russia and
came to live here when he was three. One of the
barmen is from distant Siberia. All of this provides
a typical and authentic setting for visitors. The
mission of Nazdarovie and its staff is to make this
a place to revive memories of the Soviet Union, for
them and for Cubans who spent the best years of
their youth in the USSR and who miss those smells
and tastes that they never again could experience.
Until now, that is.
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In the kitchen I chat with Irina. She tells me about
how she came to Cuba, her mother’s cooking and
her dream of cooking the foods of her homeland,
a dream which has at last come true. Everybody
speaks Russian except one mulatto cook who has
the look of someone born in Uzbekistan. “I can’t
speak Russian,” he says, “but my cooking comes out
in Russian.” Although when we say “Russian” we are
selling it short: the idea here is to make Soviet food
that is authentic and delicious and that brings a
little from each of the 15 republics that made up the
socialist conglomerate. More than its political beliefs
and ideology, the USSR left a permanent cultural
mark on this Caribbean island. To achieve this goal,
the restaurant has a prestigious Cuban-Russian chef
who studied at the Cordon Bleu College of Culinary
Arts of Miami, travelled around the world and today
stands behind every dish served at Nazdarovie. The
menu is dynamic, designed to delight those who are
homesick ,and every week a Chef’s Special will be
highlighted, to be announced on the restaurant’s
website (www.nazdarovie-havana.com). And there
will be a file containing all of the Chef’s Specials
from past weeks so that diners can request a special
meal with their reservation.
Nazdarovie also has an admirable ecological
mission: in the works are plans to use solar heaters
for the water in the kitchen and to process fats. At
the present time, their organic waste is being used
to feed animals and they use totally organic spices.
They respect the ingredients in the original recipes
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so that Russian diners feel at home. This is the place where one middle-aged Cuban woman broke into
tears over her soup because the first spoonful had transported her back to her days as a young student in
the cold Soviet winters.
As of November, the restaurant is going to start showing the work of visual artists who use and pay tribute
to Soviet iconography. By the last week of November, they will initiate a permanent cycle of three special
days of discounts for Soviet women living in Cuba, for the Cuban-born sons and daughters of Soviets, and
for Cubans who had studied or worked in the USSR (in each case, there will be a special menu at a specific
time and the first 20 persons will be seated; more details on the website). And on Fridays and Saturdays,
traditional Russian and Ukrainian music will be played by Soviet women who live on the island.
Nazdarovie is trying to be more than merely a restaurant. It is well on its way to doing just that. It pays
homage to an era and to the people who lived through it. It is an ode to nostalgia and to the joy of
acknowledgement and revisiting the past. I raise my glass to that! Better still: I raise my glass with all of
you…Nazdarovie! To your health!
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Havana’s best places to eat
La Guarida
El Atelier
CA
5
Bella Ciao
CA 4+
Café Bohemia
CA
5
Café Laurent
CA 4+
EXPERIMENTAL FUSION
HOMELY ITALIAN
CAFÉ
SPANISH/MEDITERRANEAN
Interesting décor, interesting
menu.
Great service, good prices. A
real home from home.
Bohemian feel. Great
sandwiches, salads & juices
Attractive penthouse restaurant
with breezy terrace.
Calle 5 e/ Paseo y 2, Vedado
(+53) 7-836-2025
Calle 19 y 72, Playa
(+53) 7-206-1406
Calle San Ignacio #364, Habana
Vieja
Calle M #257, e/ 19 y 21, Vedado
(+53) 7-831-2090
La California
La Casa
Casa Miglis
El Chanchullero CA
CA 5
CA 5
CA
5
5
CUBAN-CREOLE/INTERNATIONAL
CONTEMPORARY FUSION
SWEDISH-CUBAN FUSION
Beautiful C19 colonial building.
Great fresh pastas.
VIP service. The Robaina family
place. Thurs Sushi night.
Oasis of good food & taste in
Centro Habana
Fabulous value hole in the wall
tapas. Trendy.
Calle Crespo #55 e/ San Lázaro
y Refugio, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-863 7510
Calle 30 #865 e/ 26 y 41, Nuevo
Vedado
(+53) 7-881-7000
Lealtad #120 e/ Ánimas y
Lagunas, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-864-1486
Teniente Rey #457 bajos, Plaza
del Cristo, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-872-8227
Le Chansonnier CA
El Cocinero
Corte Príncipe CA
4
CA 5
5+
Il Divino
CA 4+
CONTEMPORARY FUSION
INTERNATIONAL
ITALIAN
INTERNATIONAL
Stylish & contemporary with
good food. Expensive.
Industrial chic alfresco rooftop
with a buzzing atmosphere
Sergio’s place. Simple décor,
spectacular food.
Set in huge gardens outside
town. Great for the kids.
Calle J #257 e/ Línea y 15,
Vedado
(+53) 7-832-1576
Calle 26, e/ 11 y 13, Vedado.
(+53) 7-832-2355
Calle 9na esq. a 74, Miramar
(+53) 5-255-9091
Calle Raquel, #50 e/ Esperanza
y Lindero, Arroyo Naranjo
(+53) 7-643-7734
D. Eutimia
Esperanza
La Fontana
La Guarida
CA 5+
CA 4+
CA 4
CA 5+
CUBAN/CREOLE
CUBAN FUSION
INTERNATIONAL
INTERNATIONAL
Absolutely charming. Excellent
Cuban/creole food.
Intimate, idiosyncratic &
charming (not cheap).
Consistently good food,
attentive service. Old school.
Justifiably famous. Follow in
the footsteps of Queen of Spain
Callejón del Chorro #60C, Plaza
de la Catedral, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7 861 1332
Calle 16 #105 e/ 1ra y 3ra,
Miramar
(+53) 7-202-4361
Calle 46 #305 esq. a 3ra,
Miramar
(+53) 7-202-8337
Concordia #418 e/ Gervasio y
Escobar, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-866-9047
Habana Mia 7
Iván Chef
El Litoral
Nautilus
CA 5
CA 5+
CA 5+
CA 5
INTERNATIONAL GOURMET
SPANISH
INTERNATIONAL
FRENCH/MEDITERRANEAN
Endless summer nights.
Excellent food and service.
Brilliantly creative and rich
food.
Watch the world go by at the
Malecón’s best restaurant.
Imaginative, tasty and
innovative menu.
Paseo #7 altos e/ 1ra y 3ra.
Vedado
(+53) 7-830-2287
Aguacate #9 esq. a Chacón,
Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-863-9697
Malecón #161 e/ K y L, Vedado
(+53) 7-830-2201
Calle 84 #1116 e/ 11 y 13. Playa
(+53) 5-237-3894
Nazdarovie
Opera
Otra Manera
Río Mar
CA 5+
CA 5
CA 5
CA 5
SOVIET
INTERNATIONAL
INTERNATIONAL
INTERNATIONAL
Well designed Soviet décor,
excellent food & good service.
Homely & intimate
environment. Quality food. By
reservation.
Beautiful modern decor.
Interesting menu and good
service.
Contemporary décor. Great
sea-view. Good food.
Calle 5ta #204 e/ E y F, Vedado
(+53) 5-263-1632
(+53) 8-31-2255
Calle #35 e/ 20 y 41, Playa.
(+53) 7-203-8315
Ave. 3raA y Final #11, La Puntilla,
Miramar
(+53) 7-209-4838
Santy
Starbien
VIP Havana
Malecon #25, 3rd floor e Prado
y Carcel, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-860-2947
San Cristóbal
CA 5
CA 5+
CA 5+
CA 5
CUBAN/CREOLE
SUSHI/ORIENTAL
SPANISH
Deservedly popular.Consistently
great food. Kitsch décor.
Authentic fisherman’s shack
servicing world-class sushi.
Fabulous food and great service
in the heart of Vedado.
Jordi’s place. Fabulous modern
open-plan space.
San Rafael #469 e/ Lealtad y
Campanario, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-860-9109
Calle 240A #3023 esq. a 3ra C,
Jaimanitas
(+53) 5-286-7039
Calle 29 #205 e/ B y C, Vedado
(+53) 7-830-0711
Calle 9na #454 e/ E y F, Vedado
(+53) 7-832-0178
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La Guarida
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
Contemporary fusion
CostExpensive
www.laguarida.com
Type of place Private (Paladar)
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Authentic, charming and intimate
atmosphere in Cuba’s best known
restaurant. Great food, professional. Classy.
Don’t Miss Uma Thurman, Beyoncé or the
Queen of Spain if they happen to be dining
next to you.
Concordia #418 e/ Gervasio y Escobar, Centro
Habana.
(+53) 7-866-9047
El Litoral
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
International
CostExpensive
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Quality décor, good service and
great food. Best new place recently opened.
Don’t Miss Drinking a cocktail at sunset
watching the world go by on the Malecón
Malecón #161 e/ K y L, Vedado.
(+53) 7-830-2201
Nazdarovie
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
Soviet
CostModerate
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Getting a flavor of Cuban-Soviet history along with babuska’s traditional dishes
in a classy locale.
Don’t miss Vodka sundowners on the
gorgeous terrace overlooking the malecon.
Malecon #25 3rd floor e/ Prado y Carcel, Centro
Habana
(+53) 7-860-2947
Iván Chef Justo
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
Spanish
CostExpensive
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Spectacular innovative food. Light
and airy place where it always seems to feel
like Springtime.
Don’t Miss The lightly spiced grilled mahimahi served with organic tomato relish.
Try the suckling pig and stay for the cuatro
leches.
Aguacate #9, Esq. Chacón, Habana Vieja.
(+53) 7-863-9697 / (+53) 5-343-8540
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La California
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
Cuban-Creole/International
CostModerate
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Beautiful C19 colonial building.
Popular place with quality food and great
service. Love the fresh pastas.
Dont’t Miss The interesting history of the
neighbourhood, where Chano Pozo (legendary Afro-Cuban jazz percussionist) hung out.
Calle Crespo #55 e/ San Lázaro y Refugio,
Centro Habana
(+53) 7-863-7510
Casa Miglis
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
Swedish-Cuban fusion
CostExpensive
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for The beautifully designed interior,
warm ambience and Miglis’s personality
create the feeling of an oasis in Central
Havana.
Don’t Miss Chatting with Mr Miglis.
The Skaargan prawns, beef Chilli and
lingonberries.
Lealtad #120 e/ Ánimas y Lagunas, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-864-1486
www.casamiglis.com
Habana Mía 7
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
International gourmet
CostModerate
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Stylish and fresh décor give a
Mediterranean feel for long endless summer
nights. Excellent food and service.
Don’t miss Watching the world go by on the
lovely terrace overlooking the ocean.
Paseo #7 altos e/ 1ra y 3ra, Vedado
(+53) 7-830-2287
www.habanamia7.com
Santy
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
Sushi
CostModerate
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Fabulous sushi, wonderful ambience
overlooking fishing boats heading out to sea.
World class.
Don’t miss Getting a reservation here.
Calle 240A #3023 esq. 3raC, Jaimanitas
(+53) 5-286-7039
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Atelier
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
Experimental fusion
CostExpensive
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Interesting menu, beautiful building
with great décor and service.
Don’t miss Dinner on the breezy terrace
during summer.
Calle 5ta e/ Paseo y 2, Vedado
(+53) 7-836-2025
atelierdedecuba@yahoo.es
La Casa
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
International/sushi
CostExpensive
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Warm hospitality and openness
from the four generations of the Robaina
family. Quality food.
Don’t miss Thursday night sushi night.
The Piña Colada.
Calle 30 #865 e/ 26 y 41, Nuevo Vedado.
(+53) 7-881-7000
alerobaina@restaurantelacasacuba.com
Otra Manera
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
International
CostModerate
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Beautiful modern décor and good
food.
Don’t miss Pork rack of ribs in honey. Sweet
& sour sauce and grilled pineapple
Calle 35 #1810 e/ 20 y 41, Playa
(+53) 7-203-8315
otramaneralahabana@gmail.com
reservas@otramaneralahabana.com
http://www.havanabohemia.com
Opera
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
Style of food
International
CostModerate
Food
Ambience
Service
Value
Best for Best for Homely & Intimate
enviroment Quality food in a beautiful
setting.
Don’t miss Fresh pasta, vegetarian dishes
and quail.
Calle 5ta #204 e/ E y F, Vedado
(+53) 5-263-1632 / (+53) 8-31-2255
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OPERA
Best for Homely &
Intimate enviroment
Quality food in a
beautiful setting
Don’t miss: Fresh pasta, vegetarian dishes and quail
Dinner: 8:00 PM - 12:00 AM
Address: Calle 5ta No. 204 e/ E y F. Vedado
Lunch by reservation only
Tel: 831 2255 Cel: 52631632
Closed on Tuesday
opera.cuba@gmail.com
HM7 invites you
to celebrate Christmas Eve and the
coming New Year with a first-class
Dinner/Concert with the beautiful,
magical voice of Luna Manzanares
and the virtuosity of Alejandro
Falcón. Characterized by the good
omens that Christmas brings, you
can enjoy good music and the aromas
and flavors of our most refined dishes
that have been designed just for you.
Menu 1
Welcome cocktail: Traditional Cuban Cocktail
Breads: Baguette, Roquefort butter and salmon pâté
Entrée: Green salad with walnuts, cheese, croutons and salmon
Main course: Shoulder of lamb in wild mushroom sauce garnished
with roasted potatoes
Dessert: White chocolate mousse with strawberries
Assorted Christmas candies and nuts
Cup of espresso
Glass of red wine
30.00
Menu 2
Menu 3
Entrée: Mixed grilled seasonal vegetables in olive oil
Main course: Sirloin steak wrapped in Serrano ham on lettuce
tempura
Dessert: Tiramisú
Cup of espresso
Glass of red wine
35.00
Menu 4
Entrée: Octopus carpaccio in olive oil
Main course: Mariscada HM 7 (lobster, octopus, shrimp, blue fish,
white fish, clams)
Dessert: Lemon tart
Cup of espresso
Glass of white wine
40.00
Entrée: Cream of seasonal vegetables
Main course: Turkey filet in port wine
Dessert: Turkey filet in port wine
Cup of espresso
Glass of red wine
Paseo #7 altos e/ 1ra y 3ra , Vedado / (+53) 7-830-2287 / http://www.habanamia7.com
30.00
La Guarida
‘This remains the island’s best
restaurant, combining a sophisticated
and hip ambience with solid food
preparation’
Cigar Aficionado
“The greatest and most magical is La Guarida, so magical that
it is tempting to protect it by with holding its address…’
The Guardian
Havana’s legendary paladar just got better with the opening of a new cocktail
terrace that offers fabulous views, a funky vibe and Havana’s best bartenders.
Concordia #418 e/ Gervasio y Escobar, Centro Habana / (+53) 7-866-9047
La California
For Quality Food, impeccable service & an intimate ambience
Dine in a beautifully restored 19th-century
colonial building just one block away from the
emblematic Malecón drive and seawall. La
California is located on the place where legendary Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo used to
hang out.
La California now offers a tour of Havana in a
Classic Vintage Car plus lunch or dinner.
Your chauffeur will pick you up from your hotel
or private accommodation and show you around
the historical sights of this incredible city for one
hour before heading to La California.
Calle Crespo No.55 e/ San Lázaro y Refugio,
Centro Habana. Tel (+53) 7 8637510
Superb Cuban-Creole/International menu
The offer includes:
For reservations, call
Welcoming cocktail
(+53) 7-863-7510
Bread + surprise extra
Chef’s salad California style or Pumpkin Cream topped with
parmesan
Curry Chicken with apples / traditional Ropa Vieja (shredded
meat) / Grilled Fish with fine herbs / Cuban Lamb in red wine &
mint tea / Grilled Lobster with sweet potato in caramel & cider
(at your choice)
Moros y Cristianos (rice and beans) or vegetables
Traditional Cuban dessert (flan, sweet potato and rice puddings)
Domestic non-alcoholic beverage (water, soda, juice or beer)
Price: CUC 38 per person
Open daily noon-midnight
lacaliforniarestaurant@gmail.com
facebook.com/restaurant.lacalifornia
Executive Menu
Every day from 12:00 m to 3:00pm
All for 9.90
MAKAROF
Borsh soup or Salianka
Pelmieni
Blinchiki
Liquid or coctail
KALASHNIKOF
Galubzy
Blinchiki
Liquid or coctail
KATIUSHKA
Katlieta
Blinchiki
Liquid or coctail
PUSHKA
Montaditos varios
Carne rusa
Day dessert
Liquid or coctail
JACK - 40
Montaditos varios
Callos a la madrileña
Day dessert
Liquid or coctail
SPUTNIK
Montaditos varios
Bistec a lo pobre
Day dessert
Liquid or coctail
Address: Calle 20 No. 503 e/ 5ta y 7ma. Miramar
Tel: 202 9188
bar.tabarish@gmail.com
Sloppy Joe’s
Havana’s best Bars & Clubs
Traditional Bars
El Floridita
CA 4+
Hemingway’s daiquiri bar.
Touristy but always full of life.
Great cocktails.
Obispo #557 esq. a Monserrate,
Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-867-1299
Factoría
Plaza Vieja
CA 5
Sloppy
Joe’s Bar
CA 4+
Recently (beautifully)
renovated. Full of history.
Popular. Lacks a little ‘grime’.
Microbrewery. Serves ice
chilled bong of light locally
brewed beer.
San Ignacio esq. a Muralla,
Plaza Vieja, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-866-4453
Ánimas esq. a Zulueta, Habana
Vieja
(+53) 7-866-7157
Espacios
TaBARish
Cervecería
CA 5+
ANTIGUO ALMACÉN
MADERA Y EL TABACO
DE
LA
Microbrewery located
overlooking the restored docks
Simply brilliant.
Avenida del Puerto y San
Ignacio, La Habana Vieja
Contemporary Bars
El Cocinero
CA 5+
Fabulous rooftop setting, great
service, cool vibe.
Calle 26 e/ 11 y 13, Vedado
(+53) 7-832-2355
CA 5-
Laid back contemporary bar
with a real buzz in the back
beer-garden.
CA 5
A comfortable place to chat
/ hang out with your friends.
Great service.
Calle 10 #510, e/ 5ta y 31,
Miramar
Calle 20 #503, e/ 5ta y 7ma.
Contemporary bars/clubs
Don Cangrejo CA
4+
Love it/hate it—this is the
oldest Friday night party
place and is still going strong.
Outdoor by the sea.
CA 4
Über modern and stylish indoor
bar/club. Miami style crowd
and attitude.
Calle 94 #110 e/ 1ra y 3ra,
Miramar
(+53) 7-206-4167
Ave. 1ra e/ 16 & 18, Miramar
(+53) 7-204-3837
Other
Meliá Sports Bar CA
Kpricho
4
Big-screen sports-bar in
modern outdoor terrace. Good
for sports and live music.
Meliá Habana Hotel
Ave. 3ra e/ 76 y 80, Miramar
(+53) 7-204-8500
Up & Down
CA 5
From the team that brought
you Sangri-La. Attracting
a young party crowd, very
popular. Take a coat.
Calle 3ra y B, Vedado
El Gato Tuerto CA
4+
Late night place to hear
fabulous bolero singers. Can
get smoky.
El Tocororo
CA 5+
X Alfonso’s new cultural center.
Great concerts, funky young
scene.
(next to the Puente de Hierro)
(+53) 5-329-6325
www.facebook.com/fabrica.
deartecubano
(+53) 7-202-9188
(+53) 7-836-3031
Fábrica
de Arte
CA 4+
Expat favorite hangout. Small
indoor bar with live music and
eclectic clientele.
Sangri-La
CA 5
For the cool kids. Basement
bar/club which gets packed at
weekends.
Ave. 21 e/ 36 y 42, Miramar
(+53) 7-264-8343
Bertolt Brecht
CA 5
Think MTV Unplugged. Hip,
funky and unique with an artsy
Cuban crowd.
Calle O e/ 17 y 19, Vedado
(+53) 7-833-2224
Calle 18 e/ 3ra y 5ta, Miramar
Calle 13 e/ I y J, Vedado
(+53) 7-830-1354
Humboldt 52
Fashion
Bar Havana
Café Bar
Madrigal
Gay-friendly
Cabaret
Las Vegas
CA 4
Can get dark and smoky but
great drag show (11pm) from
Divino—one of Cuba’s most
accomplished drag acts.
Infanta #104 e/ 25 y 27, Vedado.
(+53) 7-870-7939
You’ve
CA 5
One of the hottest venues
for gay nightlife in Havana at
present.
Humboldt #52 e/ Infanta y
Hospital, Centro Habana.
(+53) 5-330-2989
CA 5
A superb example of
queer class meets camp,
accompanied by a fantastic
floor show.
San Juan de Dios, esq. a
Aguacate, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-867-1676
CA 4
Pop décor, fancy cocktails, and
the staff’s supercilious attitude,
this is a gathering spot for all
types of folks.
Calle 17 #809 e/ 2 y 4, Vedado
(+53) 7-831-2433
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Bertolt Brecht
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
CONTEMPORARY BAR/CLUBS
Ambience
Popularity
Entertainment
Service & drinks
Best for Hanging out with hip & funky
Cubans who like their live music.
Don’t Miss Interactivo playing on a
Wednesday evening.
(+53) 7-830-1354
Espacios
CA 5-
CA TOP PICK
CONTEMPORARY BAR
Ambience
Popularity
Entertainment
Service & drinks
Best for Laid back lounge atmosphere in
the garden area which often has live music.
Good turnover of people.
Don’t Miss Ray Fernandez, Tony Avila, Yasek
Mazano playing live sets in the garden.
Calle 10 #510 e/ 5ta y 31, Miramar
(+53) 7-202-2921
Sangri-La
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
CONTEMPORARY BAR/CLUB
Ambience
Popularity
Entertainment
Service & drinks
Best for Hanging out with the cool kids on
the Havana Farundula in the most popular
bar/club.
Don’t Miss The best gin and tonic in Havana.
Ave. 21 e/ 36 y 42, Miramar
(+53) 5-264-8343
Don Cangrejo
CA 4+
CA TOP PICK
CONTEMPORARY
Ambience
Popularity
Entertainment
Service & drinks
Best for Love it/hate it – come for the Friday
night party
Don’t Miss Looking for de see
(+53) 7-204-3837
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Humboldt 52
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
GAY FRIENDLY
Ambience
Popularity
Entertainment
Service & drinks
Best for Hot staff, comfortable setting, and
welcoming vibe at Havana’s first full-time,
openly-gay bar
Don’t Miss The disco ball, a talented opera
duo performing Wednesdays and karaoke
and drag performances other days of the
week
Humboldt #52 e/ Infanta y Hospital,
Centro Habana.
(+53) 5-330-2989
Fábrica de Arte
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
CONTEMPORARY BAR
Ambience
Popularity
Entertainment
Service & drinks
Best for X Alfonso’s superb new cultural
center has something for everyone
Don’t Miss Ne pas manquer Les meilleurs
musiciens cubains
(next to the Puente de Hierro)
Fashion Bar Havana
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
GAY-FRIENDLY
Ambience
Popularity
Entertainment
Service & drinks
Best for A superb example of queer class
meets camp, accompanied by a fantastic
floor show.
Don’t Miss The staff performing after 11pm
San Juan de Dios, esq. a Aguacate, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-867-1676
TaBARish
CA 5
CA TOP PICK
CONTEMPORARY BAR/CLUB
Ambience
Popularity
Entertainment
Service & drinks
Best for A comfortable place to chat / hang
out with your friends. Great service.
Don’t Miss The homemade Russian soup –
just like Matushka makes it.
Calle 20 #503, e/ 5ta y 7ma.
(+53) 7-202-9188
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Basílica Menor de San Francisco de Asís
Havana’s best live music venues
Concert venues
Karl Marx
Theatre
CA 5
World class musicians perform
prestigious concerts in Cuba’s
best equipped venue.
Calle 1ra esq. a 10, Miramar
(+53) 7-203-0801
Basílica San CA
Francisco de Asís
5
A truly beautiful church,
which regularly hosts fabulous
classical music concerts.
Fábrica de Arte CA
5
X Alfonso’s new cultural center.
Great concerts inside (small
and funky) and outside (large
and popular!).
Oficios y Amargura, Plaza de
San Francisco de Asís, Habana
Vieja
Calle 26 e/ 11 y 13, Vedado (next
to the Puente de Hierro)
Jazz Café
Privé Lounge
Sala CovarrubiasCA
5
TEATRO NACIONAL
Recently renovated, one of
Cuba’s most prestigious venues
for a multitude of events.
Paseo y 39, Plaza de la
Revolución.
Jazz
Café Jazz
Miramar
CA 4+
Clean, modern and
atmospheric. Where Cuba’s
best musicians jam and
improvise.
Cine Teatro Miramar
10:30pm – 2am
Ave. 5ta esq. a 94, Miramar
Salsa/Timba
Café Cantante
Mi Habana
CA 4
Attracts the best Cuban
musicians. Recently renovated
with an excellent new sound
system.
Ave. Paseo esq. a 39, Plaza de la
Revolución
(+53) 7-878-4273
Contemporary
Café Teatro
Bertolt Brecht
CA 5
Think MTV Unplugged when
musicians play. Hip, funky and
unique with an artsy Cuban
crowd.
(+53) 7-830-1354
Trova & traditional
Barbaram
Pepito’s Bar
CA 4+
Some of the best Cuban Nueva
Trova musicians perform
in this small and intimate
environment.
CA 5+
Small and intimate lounge
club with great acoustics and
beautiful decor. Jazz groups
play Sunday night.
Galerías de Paseo
Ave. 1ra e/ Paseo y A, Vedado
Calle 88A #306 e/ 3ra y 3raA,
Miramar
(+53) 7-209-2719
Casa de la
Música
Casa de la
Música
CA 4
CA 4
CENTRO HABANA
MIRAMAR
A little rough around the edges
but spacious. For better or
worse, this is ground zero for
the best in Cuban salsa.
Smaller and more up-market
than its newer twin in Centro
Habana. An institution in the
Havana salsa scene.
Galiano e/ Neptuno y
Concordia, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-860-8296/4165
Calle 20 esq. a 35, Miramar
(+53) 7-204-0447
Don Cangrejo CA
4+
Love it/hate it—this is the
oldest Friday night party
place and is still going strong.
Outdoor by the sea.
(+53) 7-204-3837
Gato Tuerto
CA 4+
Late night place to hear
fabulous bolero singers. Can
get smoky.
Calle O entre 17 y 19, Vedado
(+53) 7-833-2224
Calle 26 esq. a Ave. del
Zoológico. Nuevo Vedado
(+53) 7-881-1808
You’ve
CA 4
A staple of Havana’s jazz
scene, the best jazz players
perform here. Somewhat cold
atmosphere-wise.
El Sauce
CA 5-
Great outdoor concert venue to
hear the best in contemporary
& Nueva Trova live in concert.
Ave. 9na #12015 e/ 120 y 130,
Playa
(+53) 7-204-6428
Legendarios
de Guajirito
CA 5
See Buena Vista Social Club
musicians still performing
nightly from 9pm. Touristy but
fabulous.
Zulueta #660 e/ Apodaca y
Gloria, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-861-7761
La Zorra y el
Cuervo
CA 5
Intimate and atmospheric, this
basement jazz club, which you
enter through a red telephone
box, is Cuba’s most famous.
Calle 23 e/ N y O, Vedado
(+53) 7-833-2402
Salón Rosado
de la Tropical
CA 5
The legendary beer garden
where Arsenio tore it up. Look
for a salsa/timba gig on a Sat
night and a Sun matinee.
Ave. 41 esq. a 46, Playa
Times: varies wildly
(+53) 7-203-5322
Teatro de
Bellas Artes
CA 4+
Small intimate venue inside
Cuba’s most prestigious arts
museum. Modern.
Trocadero e/ Zulueta y
Monserrate, Habana Vieja.
CA 4+
Salón 1930
‘Compay Segundo’
Buena Vista Social Club style
set in the grand Hotel Nacional.
Hotel Nacional
Calle O esq. a 21, Vedado
(+53) 7-835-3896
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Havana’s Best Hotels
Hotel Nacional de Cuba
Simply the best…
CA
Iberostar
Parque Central
5+
Santa Isabel
CA 5+
Luxurious historic mansion
facing Plaza de Armas
Luxury hotel overlooking
Parque Central
CA 5
Beautifully restored colonial
house.
CA 5
Cuban baroque meets modern
minimalist
Obispo #252, esq. a Cuba,
Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-862-4127
Oficios #152 esq. a Amargura,
Habana Vieja
Business Hotels
Meliá Cohíba
Palacio del
Marqués...
CA 5
Oasis of polished marble and
professional calm.
Ave Paseo e/ 1ra y 3ra, Vedado
(+53) 7- 833-3636
Meliá Habana
CA 5
Attractive design & extensive
facilities.
CA 4
A must for Hemingway
aficionados
Mercure Sevilla CA
4
Stunning views from the roof
garden restaurant.
Calle Obispo #153 esq. a
Mercaderes, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7- 860-9529
Trocadero #55 entre Prado y
Zulueta, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-860-8560
Economical/Budget Hotels
Bosque
CA 3
On the banks of the Río
Almendares.
Calle 28-A e/ 49-A y 49-B,
Reparto Kohly, Playa
(+53) 7-204-9232
You’ve
Deauville
CA 3
Lack of pretension, great
location.
Galiano e/ Sán Lázaro y
Malecón, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-866-8812
5+
Immensely charming, great
value.
Oficios #53 esq. a Obrapía,
Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-867-1037
Occidental
Miramar
CA 5
Malecón esq. a Lealtad, Centro
Habana
(+53) 7-862-8061
CA 4+
Good value, large spacious
modern rooms.
Ave. 3ra y 70, Miramar
(+53) 5-204-8500
For a sense of history
Ambos Mundos
Hostal Valencia CA
Terral
Wonderful ocean front
location. Newly renovated.
Paseo del Prado #603 esq. a
Dragones, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-860-8201
Boutique Hotels in Old Havana
Florida
CA 5+
Stunning view from roof-top
pool. Beautiful décor.
Narciso López, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-860-8201
Neptuno e/ Prado y Zulueta,
Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-860-6627
Saratoga
Conde de
Villanueva
CA 5
Delightfully small and intimate.
For cigar lovers.
Mercaderes #202, esq. a
Lamparilla
(+53) 7-862-9293
H10 Habana
Panorama
CA 4+
Cascades of glass. Good wi-fi.
Modern.
Ave. 5ta. e/ 70 y 72, Miramar
(+53) 7-204-3583
Ave. 3ra. y 70, Miramar
(+53) 7 204-0100
Hotel Nacional
Riviera
CA 5
Eclectic art-deco architecture.
Gorgeous gardens.
CA 3
Spectacular views over wavelashed Malecón
Calle O esq. a 21, Vedado
(+53) 7-835 3896
Paseo y Malecón, Vedado
(+53) 7-836-4051
Saint John’s
Vedado
CA 3
Lively disco, tiny quirky pool.
Popular.
(+53) 7-833-3740
CA 3
Good budget option with a bit
of a buzz
(+53) 7-836-4072
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Havana’s
best private
places to stay
Cañaveral House
For Help reserving any Private Accommodation (Casas Particulares) in Cuba please contact
CubanCasas@gmail.com
Mid range - Casa Particular (B&B)
1932
Carlos in cuba
CA 4
CA 5
Gay Friendly BED and
Breakfast in Havana
Visually stunning, historically
fascinating. Welcoming.
Calle 2 #505 e/ 23 y 21, Vedado
(+53) 7-833-1329
(+53) 5-295-4893
carlosincuba@yahoo.com
www.carlosincuba.com
Campanario #63 e/ San Lázaro
y Laguna, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-863-6203
Habana
CA 5
Beautiful colonial townhouse
with great location.
Julio y Elsa
CA 5
Cluttered bohemian feel.
Hospitable.
Calle Habana #209, e/
Empedrado, y Tejadillo, Habana
Vieja.
(+53) 7-861-0253
Consulado #162 e/ Colón y
Trocadero, Centro Habana
(+53) 7-861-8027
Artedel
Hostal Guanabo
Up-scale B&Bs (Boutique hostals)
Cañaveral House CA
But undoubtedly the most
beautiful about private homes
in Cuba
5 Vitrales
39A street, #4402, between 44
y 46, Playa, La Habana Cuba
(+53) 295-5700
http://www.cubaguesthouse.
com/canaveral.home.
html?lang=en
CA 5
Hospitable, attractive and
reliable boutique B&B with 9
bedrooms.
Habana #106 e/ Cuarteles y
Chacón, Habana Vieja
(+53) 7-866-2607
CA 5+
Ydalgo Martínez Matos’s
spacious and contemporary
3-bedroom penthouse is
magnificent.
CA 5
Beautiful 4 bedroom seafront villa in sleepy Guanabo.
Excellent food.
Calle I #260 e/ 15 y 17, Vedado
(+53) 5-830-8727
Calle 480 #1A04 e/ 1ra y 3ra,
Guanabo
(+53) 7-799-0004
Habana Vista
Suite Havana
Apartment rentals
Bohemia Hostal CA
5+
Gorgeous 1-bedroom
apartment beautifully
decorated apartment
overlooking Plaza Vieja.
CA 5
Two-storey penthouse b&b
with private pool
CA 5
Rent Room elegant and wellequipped. Beautiful wild
garden and great pool.
Calle 17 #1101 e/ 14 y 16, Vedado
(+34) 677525361
(+53) 7-832-1927
(+53) 5-360-0456
Casablanca
CA 5
Elegant well-equipped villa
formerly owned by Fulgencio
Batista. Beautiful wild garden.
Calle 13 # 51 esq. a N, Vedado
(+53) 5-388-7866
Morro-Cabaña Park. House #29
(+53) 5-294-5397
www.havanacasablanca.com
CA
Michael
and María Elena
This leafy oasis in western
Havana has an attractive
mosaic tiled pool and three
modern bedrooms.
Calle 66 #4507 e/ 45 y Final,
Playa
(+53) 7-209-0084
CA 5
Elegant 2-bedroom apartment
in restored colonial building.
Quality loft style décor.
Lamparilla #62 altos e/
Mercaderes y San Ignacio,
Habana Vieja
(+53) 5-829-6524
Concordia #151 apto. 8 esq. a
San Nicolás, Centro Habana
(+53) 5-254-5240
www.casaconcordia.net
Luxury Houses
You’ve
5+
Beautifully designed
and spacious 3 bedroom
apartment. Spanish colonial
interiors with cheerful, arty
accents.
San Ignacio #364 e/ Muralla
y Teniente Rey, Plaza Vieja
Habana Vieja
(+53) 5- 403-1 568
(+53) 7-836-6567
www.havanabohemia.com
Villasol
Casa Concordia CA
5
Residencia
Mariby
CA 5
A sprawling vanilla-hued
mansion with 6 rooms
decorated with colonial-era
lamps, tiles and Louis XV
furniture
Vedado.
(+53) 5-370-5559
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Artedel Luxury
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
3 BEDROOM PENTHOUSE
Facilities
Rooms
Ambience
Value
Best for Stylish and contemporary furniture
along with a beautiful 360-degree view over
Havana
Don’t Miss Ydalgo – an impeccable host,
discreet or gregarious, as you prefer
Calle I #260, e/ 15 and 17, Vedado
(+53) 7-830-8727
Bohemia Hostal
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
GORGEOUS 1 BEDROOM APARTMENT
Facilities
Rooms
Ambience
Value
Best for Independent beautifully decorated
apartment overlooking Plaza Vieja.
Don’t Miss Spending time in Havana’s most
atmospheric Plaza.
San Ignacio #364 e/ Muralla y Teniente Rey, Plaza
Vieja, Habana Vieja
bohemia.plazavieja@gmail.com
(+53) 5 4031 568: (53) 7 8366 567
www.havanabohemia.com
Cañaveral House
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
Facilities
Rooms
Ambience
Value
Best for Large elegant villa away from
downtown Havana. Great for families or
groups of friends.
Don’t Miss Basking in the sun as you stretch
out on the lawn of the
beautifully kept garden.
39A street, #4402, between 44 y 46, Playa, La
Habana Cuba
(+53) 295-5700
http://www.cubaguesthouse.com/canaveral.home.
html?lang=en
Rosa D’Ortega
CA 5+
CA TOP PICK
BOUTIQUE VILLA
Facilities
Rooms
Ambience
Value
Best for Large elegant villa away from the
bustle of downtown Havana. Gracious hosts,
beautiful rooms.
Don’t Miss Exploring the off-the-beaten
track neighbourhood.
Patrocinio #252 esq. a Juan Bruno Zayas, 10 de
Octubre
(+53) 7-641-43-29 / (+53) 5-263-3302
http://www.larosadeortega.com
You’ve
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December 2014 - Cuba Travel Services

Transcription

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