Soon the Cuban audience will have the opportunity to come closer to a new stage in Fernando Perez cinematography. His film, Madrigal, was an approach to difficulties in the artistic universe; José Martí: el ojo del canario, revealed an unexplored dimension of an eternal Cuban myth; and La pared de las palabras deals with a grieving family for the loss of their only child behind the white walls of a mental institution. OnCuba talked to Erick Grass, the artist behind each of the universes, environments and images that make up these stories. How was your creative initiation with Fernando Perez? I worked with Jorge Luis Sánchez in El Benny. This film got some recognition, including the Caracol award, among others. It seems Fernando heard about me and when I was preparing Madrigal and he called me. I was stunned. He had asked Jorge Luis or a member of the team for my telephone number because he wanted to get in touch with me. He told me he wanted to make a contrived movie based on dramas and parallel universes… And right away I visualized what he was asking for the movie. When we started working together I once again ran...

The “Traspasos Escénicos” International Workshop on Research and Creation has become the perfect space for Cuban and artists and specialists to reflect on creative practices and relations in the current theater not only from art in the stage but also from audiovisuals, design, plastic arts, literature, philosophy, aesthetics and distribution processes. This is the second edition of the event which will be attended by personalities from eight countries. Itwill have workshops, colloquiums and samples on the topic of X Spaces: Micropoetics and macrospeech in contemporary artistic creation. We talked with Eberto García (Head of the department of Theater and Dramaturgy and General Director of Traspasos Escénicos), who gave us an update on the activities of the workshop and the means for foreigners to exhibit their projects in forthcoming editions. How did this initiative emerge? Traspasos Escénicos emerged as an idea to go beyond the usual scenarios we move in. We named the project like that not only aiming at that but also at stressing that we all build the stages where we perform and modify the circumstances in our life, where we interact in many different ways and those spaces are precisely the focus of analysis in the event. How...

The documentary Persona by producer Eliecer Jiménez Almeida, from Camaguey province, was premiered within the context of the 20th Workshop on Cinematographic Criticism. Without a single musical note this documentary creates a symphony, a symphony from the soul. For 27 minutes, five people share their noises, voices, weeps and stifled screams. In short instants the author takes inside a universe where we end up getting rid of miseries and recovering faith in the human being. A look at some of your documentaries (Usufructo, Mi Saoco…) allows us to notice your interest in popular culture. Why do you retake this interest in Persona in humble and common people? High culture cannot understand popular culture, regardless of books and all theory in the world, if there are no strong personal experiences it is impossible to understand the extraordinary in human relations and with those people that don’t posses high education and high economic positions. I’m interested in small stories from town people… because that’s what’s universal for me. And that’s something that anyone living in Vedado for instance, surrounded by books and contemplative knowledge about life cannot get. What can they say about life those who haven’t suffered at all? How did...

As part of the 500th anniversary of the Eastern Cuban city of Camaguey, its inhabitants have arranged a great many architectonic projects as for instance the thematic promenade through the universe of the Seventh Art nationally and internationally. The street of cinemas goes from the Plaza de los Trabajadores (Workers’ Square) to La Soledad Church. Even though for its people this might just be another avenue to move around early in the morning and to return from work in the afternoon, having to deal with annoying observers scrutinizing every corner of this historic site…,finding out what’s behind every door in this thematic promenade has been an adventure for many of us visiting the city these days. Since when do they call this avenue like that? Who knows? Many of the people I asked can only recall that their parents and grandparents already referred to it by that name. It has always been a required visit for city buffs. It is competing with the streets that get to Coppelia in Camaguey, because La isla del Tesoro, a small ice cream parlor between the Nuevo Mundo cinema and Casa Blanca movie complex has taken all the affection –rightly, I would say– from...

Around these days Camaguey province has become the venue for the most important event held annually in Cuba in terms of films; that is, a Workshop on Cinematographic Criticism. From the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC by its acronym in Spanish) in Havana; from Santiago de Cuba and in Camaguey, critics and producers in representation of different generations from in and out the country come together to evaluate Cuban productions. On this occasion, the participants will make a thorough assessment of the Cuban cinematographic production from the 80’s. In this sense, the organizers of the event have created a panel devoted to films produced by Fernando Perez, Juan Carlos Tabio and Rolando Diaz. The workshop will be attended by Rolando Diaz, who took part in the comedy Los pájaros tirándole a la escopeta or the sports drama En tres y dos, films that have marked the Cuban filmography. The presence of Rolando Diaz in the event has aroused special interest for the people from Camaguey and for the participants in the panel as he will premiere his documentary Los caminos de Aissaand his full-length film Cercanía, stared by Reynaldo Miravalles. A dialogue with Juan Antonio García Borrero, cinema critic and author...

Shortly Apatia by Lilian Susel Zaldivar will reach the Cuban scene accompanied by Gerardo Fulleda and the Rita Montaner acompany The Rolando Ferrer playwriting Chair bets this year on young female voices in celebration of the bicentenary of the birth of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. In its usual Lecturas Cruzadas space on the Dulce Maria Loynaz Center, it welcomed playwright Lilian Susel Apathy Zaldivar and her Apatia text, for which the author received the Writing of the difference Award (2012), a prize that pursues the development of the feminine literature. Apatia delves into Cuba in the crisis reflected in an aspect of our drama since the early 2000. It flow between his dialogues, issues such as housing shortages, intergenerational conflict and individual constraints that problem can lead to. At the same time, the situation of women in patriarchal society with which today we continue dealing with and loneliness that marks all spaces and beings that live in it. In Apatia there is not a single place where to find shelter from what is corrupt, or selling your body. The fact is that the author even denies her characters the right to choose whether to live or not: none of the...

To what extent digital cinema and new audiovisual technologies have favored or affected art and film industry? How do these elements affect the aesthetics of auteur cinema? These questions drove the panel chaired by FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) in the framework of the 35th New Latin American Cinema Festival underway in Havana that took the pulse of the Latin American audiovisual of today's digital age. The discussion turned around two main facets, the display of the films and previous effects the use of technologies generates during the production process. Ivonete Pinto, Brazilian representative and president of the panel initiated dialogue and brought to the fore some of the problems theaters in her country face. She commented that there is a correlation between the 203 million inhabitants and the 2800 Brazilian movie theaters that exist, of which only 40% are digitized because of the high cost of access to these new technologies. For Pinto, it should be borne in mind that in Brazil 400 film festivals are produced annually and many of the films that are distributed during those events are precisely in digital format, with which not only the number of local limited to accessed, but sound and...

It is possible that Yerandy Fleites Perez competes with hours to beat up a little more time out of the day. Maybe he makes up thousands of stories, equations to calculate and combine his writing life, with household responsibilities, and his work at the National School of Arts (ISA). Maybe ... but what I do not doubt that one day he will return to his hometown Ranchuelo to relive the calm you feel in that frozen time of the countryside to enjoy every word, every story he creates.

First time I heard of the new latest staging at the El Sotano Theater: “Mi tio el exiliado” (My uncle, the exile) I couldn’t help but wondering if it had any relation with the novel “Mi tio, el empleado” (My uncle, the employee), written in the XIX century by Ramón Meza. The curious thing was that I wasn’t the only one to make that unwitting connection.