Sandrine Bonnaire's gaze gives her away. No matter how inadvertent she tries to pass by, how much negligence she holds the cigarette with or how mild is her makeup: the famous French actress has distinctive dark eyes that look at everything like if they can’t understand anything... That’s how I immediately recognized her in the lobby of the Chaplin movie theater when, dressed in black and skinny she walked against the crowd looking for an open space to smoke. By the way, weird habit for someone whose last name sounds like "good air" ... I went to the lobby to interrupt a drag, and in my bad French and his gringo-accented English we talked till the organizers of the French Film Festival asked her to enter back, because the show was about to begin ... "I would like to know more about Cuban cinema, because in my country we hardly known Strawberry and Chocolate, and that’s about it," she confessed with some embarrassment. She folded her arms, and spoke about Elle s'appelle Sabine (Her Name is Sabine), a documentary about her sister, who suffered the consequences of delayed diagnosis of a form of autism. For 25 years, Sandrine filmed moments...

But precisely the gift of "seeing" things that scare other have gathered experts here from various countries, in this land of Siguaraya where anyone has an aunt who perceives beings, and when she notices your nervousness she says, "Quiet, fear the living. "

"I left in 1994 for family affairs, and 15 years passed without me coming back, because I could not. When I was allowed I came, because I'm a parent, and my country is this. To be clear, I can live in any country, but my country is this, is Cuba"

Those who know that allergic-to-Gillette skinny boy, whom some people call Charly, others Carlos Manuel, and me proudly “Namesake”, knew that at any given moment he would win an important literary award. Because though he might like journalism very much, Carlos Manuel Alvarez Rodriguez was born to write literature...

Sometimes Berita misses those days when everything was simpler: arrive in a club or G street, take his guitar and get to "play", without any other concern than feeling good, vent out his sorrows, sing what he thinks of life, love, the world ... Share his songs and sing other’s, sometimes with a harmonica, without further payment than the applause, a drink, a kiss ...

An official, of those that wears guayabera and portfolio, tells a journalist "We can talk about secrecy, but it is not for publishing ". The joke, incisive and devastating, crowns a mural of caricatures in the center of Santa Clara city, home of some of the Cuba's major graphic humorists for whom nothing human is stranger... In fact, this city has hosted for many years the major erotic humor hall of Cuba, because their caricaturists draw the humorous side of sex, paint walls against the war, or look inside them as the journalists they also are...

Ariel Pestano knew the moment would come sooner rather than later, but he did not expect it to be now, and least of all because a childhood illness: apparently a late chickenpox took him out of Cuban national team to the 3rd World Baseball Classic (WBC). Well, the chickenpox, his age and Victor Mesa...

If there is irrefutable proof of parallel universes, it is the amount of Havanas that coexist in Havana. Our capital has many faces which makes impossible to know them all, and thank God, because if you lose sleep over public Havana, what can I say of the hidden one? One wonders if that Havana the press sanctifies is the same literature demonizes, a city incomprehensible in its nuances, where things are not very much or so so, and where discourse and reality only have in common how  amazing what they can be...

As you can see, A week passed by after the announced end of the world, and although bad signs keep surfacing, I’m still here; Havana is still in the same place and the world is too…I’m afraid we all were the victims of a macabre joke of innocent saints, just a week ahead of time…

Buena Fe charged against fears and apocalyptic prophesies in a mega-concert attended by thousands of fans, who didn’t believe either the “Pi 3.14” Their followers sang along the sticky chorus that gives name to the seventh album of the band led by Israel Rojas and Yoel Martínez, undoubtedly the one that attracts the largest number of university students.

“Hello Charlie, I am Charly …: would you give me an interview? ” That was what I blurted out at Cuban producer Charlie Medina when I recognized him, long-haired and without shaving, in the patio of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba: I asked him a few minutes of his time and he spoke for half an hour with OnCuba on Penumbras, his debut work as a film director.

Hunting for a photo, watching over union interests, or just walking down the Monaco neighborhood, Ricardo López Hevia is a real man. It is his philosophy of life, and no dedication or earned name has changed it: always daring, always consistent, but above all, always authentic.

In tune with the times, Cuban Customs does not escape the update Cuba is undertaking: items that were not previously considered personal effects will be considered as such as of now, in a dialectical and logical "forgiveness" to technologies that are rapidly becoming everyday items like laptops and cell phones.

The steed of the blue coachman rides again, no bolt, and with a seductive trot through the Cuban narrative for children and adolescents; now he is far from Pueblo Nuevo (New Town) where he was conceived by Dora Alonso, his creator, but also near the sea, as well as two blocks from Havana’s Seawall, the Malecón.

He is name is Reinier; some people calling Giant, I prefer to call him Dream Repairman. But my new barber, on Real Street, is not a little dwarf working inside my head. Au contraire… God spare your ears if this huge black guy makes a mistake and the scissors slip, or even worse, the razor he uses to give you the final cuts. I know it from experience, because I went there to get a plain, traditional, haircut and I ended up with something that in Jovellanos they call the “Ballotelli”.