Italian Director Pierantonio Maria Micciarelli is one of those filmmakers who drank from the romantic chalice most Europeans sip in regards to Cuban reality. When he arrived and began shooting, he experienced something different. “When I was young I was fascinated by the myth of the Cuban revolution”, says Micciarelli. “but being now in Cuba, I saw another face and reality. They are people of great valor and courage, even though Cubans are prisoners in their own home. I knew it was a dangerous project but it was my story, real and proper, and I needed to continue”.

In his documentary, Micciarelli conducts tough talks with residents who comment on the government fat cats — “Really, ‘they’ [government] have always been giving themselves good lives. They never cared about the people… the people that adored them, and still do.” Son of Cuba’s Vice President Juan Almeida Bosque (3rd ranking official who recently passed in 2009) also comments in this film. “I think the Revolutionaries strayed far away from their ideas” agrees Juan Juan Almeida, an independent journalist who was imprisoned after his fathers death for his honest testimonies on the system.

“Fidel Castro is known as a cynical person with a great propensity to lie,” says another independent journalist/poet and former prisoner. Needless to say, the Italian director became very impassioned with all the information he learned on his trips, including a first-hand suspect experience with Laura Polllan, the CEO of “Damas de Blanco” (Ladies in White), a pro democracy organization in Cuba. During her interview, a car from State Security T-Bone crashes straight into them with the Director in the car. The footage is all too real and a shocking display of an intolerant State.

Blogger/writer Yoani Sanchez is also featured in this film and remains hopeful, envisioning a future where all Cubans, with all their political stances, can co-exist side by side one day.

One of the most frequent statements spoken about Cuba is the fact that there are no advertisements anywhere. Well, we all need to get over this fact because local cubans are walking bilboards. If you’ve ever walked down a street in bustling Havana, you’d get propositioned instantly by locals with private restaurants in their homes. “Are you hungry?” they ask with a smile. “Come to a great paladar I know of”. After making a new friend, within 10 minutes, you’ll get the next line of vocal advertising. “Do you need a place to say?”, is another commonly asked question. “I know of a great house to rent” at which point they describe the rooms, the air conditioning, the safes, and meals included. Sometimes these locals are not even pushing their own homes. If they refer a tourist to their friends, they could very well make a handsome commission, thereby making every Cuban, a veritable walking billboard. Earlier this year, after Raul Castro granted at least 200,000 new business licenses for Cubans to own small businesses, foreigners saw more alternative forms of advertisements around the island — flyers on car windows (“Need to Fix Your Tire?”), hand painted street signs (“Beers are 2 for 1″), etc.

This month is a new chapter in Cuban Advertising. In December 2011, the Cuban government has allowed its first official sign of advertising. The state-run phone directory (aka the Cuban Yellow Pages) will invite small businesses to print private advertisements. This is Raul Castro’s latest move to a more open economy. He is said to be encouraging more private initiative and reducing the role and size of the state in some sectors.

Most major cities in the world have already bid farewell to the cumbersome Yellow Pages opting for smart phones or iPhones to search listings — movie theaters, pubs, whatever. My personal favorite is Google Text for listings. Other cities like Tokyo and New York have officially reached the cinematic future with moving image billboards just as Bladerunner predicted. As Cuban private entrepreneurs struggle to build businesses, the move to spur Yellow Pages advertising seems as antiquated as the old 1950′s car. Cuba is just a bit, um behind. But at least they are in the game now!

As I like to say on this blog (and I say it alot)… small reform is better than no reform.

Here’s how it will work. State telephone monopoly Etecsa will charge $10 for a listing in a basic registry that includes a firm’s name, address, and up to two phone numbers, the Communist Party newspaper Granma said Thursday. That’s not cheap in Cuba, a country where government salaries average $20 a month. It’s more than what some independent workers like gardeners pay for their monthly license fees, and Granma said the fee is to be paid in Cuba’s more valuable convertible pesos, known as CUC.

Cuba has a unique dual-currency system in which most salaries are paid in national pesos while the convertible pesos are used to pay for many imports, high-ticket items and tourist activities.
Etecsa will also let small-business owners purchase larger ads for unspecified but presumably much higher prices, calculated at 20 percent of the rates currently being charged. Up until now the yellow pages have been of limited utility in the Communist-run nation, as they list only state-run concerns and mixed government-private companies.

But with hundreds of thousands of people having taken out private business licenses since last year, what today is just 68 pages of yellow for the entire city of Havana (population 2 million), stands to fatten considerably.

Propaganda Billboards, step aside, now there’s a new Advertisement in town… Let Your Fingers do the Walking!

Source: MSNBC

The newly released book, Great Houses of Havana (The Monacelli Press), is a visual celebration of the chic spirit of the island’s homes. Architect Hermes Mallea, a Cuban-American architect and author has been amassing a collection of photographs of Cuban residences for several years now. Included in his search were also vintage family shots which is what makes this book unique. One cannot help but get engrossed in all the imagery from various years causing the reader to travel in time to witness the evolution of many styles.

“I was not interested in doing another album of pretty pictures” explains Hermes, “it was my goal to create a history book with a real message, which is an appreciation of the glamour and sophistication of Havana, as well as a celebration of this significant architecture and the talented Cubans that designed & built these houses.” Take a look at this video to get to know the author’s vision a little better.

To read details on these neighborhood homes ranging from Miramar to Varadero,Cuba, visit Cuba Absolutely’s Review in their latest issue.

One day I visited the restaurant my grandfather owned in Cuba. It was a hub for all things cool in 1950′s Cuba. Several years earlier, during the Spanish Civil War, he was fighting on the Basque revolutionary, and finally decided it was time to leave his country, so he headed for Cuba.  He built Centro Vasco and made it into a meeting place for athletes, business folks, movies stars, and political figures. It is located one block away from the old Meyer Lansky Hotel, Habana Riviera, where casino’s reigned supreme. Lucky Luciano’s office was tucked beside the restaurant as well.  After Fidel came into power in 1959, my grandfathers business was nationalized and taken away from his custody. My father, who was 17 years old moved to Miami with him and decided to bring the family business to Miami, where Centro Vasco was launched in 1963. This is where my mother and father met and fell in love and produced a little baby girl named Jauretsi (me!). I was raised around all the exiles in my dads bar waxing poetics about the good ‘ol days. It always made me year to see this original building in Havana (an idea that made Cuban-exiles angry just at the suggestion).

One day I couldn’t wait anymore and broke all the rules — I decided to visit the homeland. The following photos are Centro Vasco today, 2011. All the photos of my grandfather are still hanging on the wall. The employees running the restaurant, including Luis (one of the longest standing waiters) were open armed and together we had a lovely afternoon reminiscing about the history. They cooked me a paella (my grandfathers old recipe) as I sat underneath a painting of my grandfather holding a big rock, a classic Basque sport. Here’s some photos of the building today.

More from the article:

The new rules go into effect on Nov. 10, according to Cuba’s state-run newspaper, and while some of the fine print is still being written, the law published on Thursday amounts to a major break from decades of socialist housing. For the first time since the early days of the revolution, buyers and sellers will be allowed to set home prices and move when they want. Transactions of various kinds, including sales, trades and gifts to relatives by Cubans who are emigrating, will no longer be subject to government approval, the new law says.

Owners will be limited to two homes (a residence and a vacation property) and financing must go through Cuba’s Central Bank, which will charge fees, which have not been determined. And a tax of 8 percent will be split by the buyer and seller.

On one hand, billions of dollars in property assets that have been essentially unvalued or undervalued and locked in place for decades would be available for sale. Some experts say home sales could free up the capital needed to jumpstart the island’s economy. At the very least, they argue, it will probably lead to a boom in renovation.

(Caption from NYT: People looking to exchange apartments look for signs posted in a park in Havana. There are no vacancies in Havana – every dwelling has someone living in it, and since it can take years to find an appropriate swap, most Cubans are essentially stuck where they are)

The boom can possibly exacerbate class conflict, plus the new law does not broach the subject of property confiscated by the government in the early years of the revolution. So get ready for a bumpy ride.

The Cuban Research Institute is a respected organization in Miami. I once traveled to Miami to screen/speak at one of CRI’s events in 2007 for East of Havana, and I must say, the room was a mixed bag of emotions concerning Cuba/US relations. Normally my other University tours involved cities such as Pittsburgh, New York, and Boston among others, where the majority of the rooms were Americans. Speaking at Florida International University in Miami was a whole other ball of wax — pointed educated questions, wounded first-hand Cubans who fled Castro, and passionate Cuban-American exile students searching for new answers from their motherland (which their parents forbid them from visiting). The audience was intense, educated, wounded, and curious. It was a treat to experience this energy bubbling to the surface. And that was 2007!

According to the Havana Journal’s latest newsletter, Cuba Watch, The Cuban Research Institute has released its 2011 Cuba poll of 648 randomly selected Cuban-American respondents in Miami-Dade County. Interviews were completed on September 19, 2011. This is the tenth in the series of Cuba Polls conducted by the Principal Investigators (Grenier/Gladwin) since 1991. Analysis is by Anya Landau French.

(2007 Visit to CRI Hosted Event for East of Havana)

This latest FIU poll raises a lot of the big questions on the table right now and gets some contradictory answers.

Overall, a majority of respondents say they support maintaining the embargo (56%), and only 39% are ready to expand trade and investment in Cuba beyond current levels. At the same time, a majority (57%) favors lifting all restrictions on travel, 60% oppose restrictions on family travel and 57% even support re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Oh, and a whopping 80% of respondents believe that the embargo has “not worked very well” or “not worked at all” — “Yes, you read that right” declares CubaWatch. To read the entire poll for yourself, go to DiasporaYDesarrollo.org

(Florida International University)

All Photos by Jauretsi

Nowness recently ran a photo essay by American photographer Michael Dweck, known for his photos of natural babes in Montauk, New York. This time, Michael visited Cuba and discovered a whole scene of the young cool crowd in Cuba’s elite circles (not the type of youth normally captured by most predictable photographers). “These people travel freely, have nice cars, big studios and a lot of assistants” writes Nowness. “They sell their artworks in other countries; they show at Art Basel, some have work in MoMA and the Tate. The government allows it even though Cuba is supposed to be classless. The regime doesn’t admit that this creative class exists, but I think they also realize that without culture you don’t have a society.”

Visit Nowness to see the whole feature… or go to Michael Dweck’s Cuba Project to see a more complete collection of images. The photographs will be exhibited in San Francisco at Modernism Inc from Sept 8 to Oct 29th located at 685 Market Street.

I’m sort of obsessed with Zombie movies myself. The subtext always follows a self-aware protagonist fighting for his/her soul against an army of mindless people. It’s always struggle for life, and refusal to accept joining a zombie mass. Deep, huh? Or it can be, if it wants to be. The beauty is it’s all cloaked in “entertainment”. Zombie movies always come in different shapes and sizes from apocalypse ones (28 Days Later) to comedies (Shaun of the Dead) to old fashioned badass classics (George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead). The latter of which had only one surviving hero… the person with the most soul… a black man in 1968.

This is where zombie movies can get political, I believe. The same year Night of the Living Dead was released in theaters, The Civil Right Act of 1968 was passed in the USA which finally prohibited several forms of discrimination. This was the end of an era in a long civil rights battle that lasted roughly from 1954 to 1968. Or maybe it was just a silly zombie movie, right? The thing about a good zombie movie is that they can be so damn complex, profound, and thought provoking, while at the same time, you can shut your brain off and watch a shallow action film, and laugh your ass off.

(A Zombie on the set during the making of Juan of the Dead)

Back to the Cuban zombie film. For starters, the movies tagline reads “Fifty years after the Cuban revolution a new one is about to start”. In the film, Havana is overrun by zombies while’s Cuba’s Communist leaders insist it’s just a plot by US-backed dissidents to bring down the government. The films hero, Juan, decides to not only ignore his governments propaganda, but he becomes the opposite of what every good Communist citizen is — he becomes a capitalist! Juan (played brilliantly by Cuban actor Alexis Diaz de Villegas) opens a business (a very relevant plotline today in Cuba). It is up to the hero Juan to rid the island of the undead for money.

Juan’s commercials for his new business (another new challenge in Cuba, the introduction of advertising) pragmatically, and funnily, offers his clients to kill family members who are infected. The outbreak of zombies multiplies across Havana and Juan is open for business and making a killing (no pun).  And so begins the little nuances that set apart this zombie film from the others, with insidery Cuban jokes, and winks, and an overall release valve to laugh off all the pressures of living in a conflicted society in an economic crisis.

(Director and Writer Alejandro Brugués filmed Juan of the Dead with a Red Camera)

The young cool charismatic Director/Writer, Alejandro Brugués, is 34 years old and seems raised on Robert-Rodriguez-Tarantino influence. Born in Argentina, but living in Cuba, this is his second movie since graduating from Cuba’s International School of Film and Television. Somehow, this resident filmmaker borrowed 2.3 million budget (enormous for a Cuban film), and found producing partners in Spain who believed in him relentlessly. The film was produced by Gervasio Iglesias, Inti Herrera and Claudia Calviño, starring Alexis Díaz de Villegas, Jorge Molina, Jazz Vilá, Andros Perugorría.

(The Producers from Spain who supported Director Alejandro Brugués on his vision)

Burges offers his own insights on the storyline, “It’s a zombie film but it’s about Cubans and how we react in the face of a crisis because we’ve had a lot of them here over the last 50 years.” When asked if there’s deeper undertones, he answers “It is a social comedy, it has a bit of everything. It has horror, it has action and it pretty much laughs in the face of problems.” There’s nothing like a good raft joke in Cuba too.. the most useful “one-way-ride” out of the country. In Juan of the Dead, the hero’s car (his Batmobile, if you will) also doubles as a raft.

(The Hero’s Car doubles as a Raft)

The film will be released in Cuba this year and is also slated to be released in United States, but no release date has been set yet. All eyes will be on this Director who has managed to take the local movie game to new unpredictable levels.

On my last visit to Cuba this April 2011, I strolled the streets of Infanta, one of my favorite streets in Havana (with a few secret vinyl vendors). This last time, I walked past 3 movie theaters on the broad avenue where I noticed repeated posters of a local Cuban film called Boleto al Paraiso (Ticket to Paradise), by Gerardo Chijona. The poster hit my sentimental nerves due to the resemblance of the 1979 American film Over the Edge (Matt Dillon’s first big film). The soundtrack was genius with Cheap Trick, Ramone’s, Van Halen… and the heartbreaking “Ooh Child”, the Valerie Carter version.

Just as I stared at that album cover back in the days, I found myself stopping at every poster on Infanta, approaching it and getting to know the faces of these new protagonists, hungry to see the world and flex their independence just like their 70′s American disenfranchised counterparts. Over the Edge, was a dark reflection of a society that’s turned its back on its young citizens. Over the Edge was also a commentary on the generation gap which leads us to our Cuban version of this story released earlier this year on the island.

Boleto al Paraiso is melancholic, but illuminating. It’s also very provocative because it digs up all the old demons of the “Special Period”, a painful era full of economic crash from 1990′s Cuba. The Special Period is mentioned on this blog often due to the fact this exact period is what birthed the Hip Hop revolution in Cuba. In this particular movie, the characters from the 90′s era are the “rocker kids”, which was a different musical youth movement that came together in protest.

In the film, each of the characters are each going through their dark lives, starting with Eunice who flees home to escape her fathers sexual advances. She joins a crew of other runaway buddies as they all head towards Havana. It’s lots of bonding, emotions, and adventures. More importantly, the reflect and question their fates, and the paradigm they’re living within their own country — bonded through loneliness and emptiness. And just like the 90′s scene, some of the radical rockers in Cuba injected themselves with AIDS as a statement of their preference to die rather than live in a drone existence. The film touches upon this moment as well.

This film makes you want to grab the Rocker kids, give them a big hug and assure them that new days are coming. Hang in there guys! — “things are gonna get easier… ooh child things will get brighter”.

There’s a review on HavanaTimes.org if you’d like to read more. Check out the trailer here.