Cuban Independent Video

First   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Enrique Pineda Barnet and Tomas Piard
Experimental   10 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
A man finds his other image in a mirror. They greet, they argue, they fight, they reject, and love each other.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95


House Without a Roof, A   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Alberto del Rey
Experimental   10 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
The discourse of a maniac on the environment, modernization, and the evolution of humans with nature.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95


Saddened Earth, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Daniel Diez
Documentary   7 minutes   1999
With English subtitles
Images of beautiful landscapes accompanied by words from the scriptures.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95


Under the Skin   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Niurka Perez
Documentary   25 minutes   1995
With English subtitles
An intimate portrait of Ecuadoran artist Oswaldo Guayasamin in which he discusses his life, work, and philosophy.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


Men's Work   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Waldo Ramirez
Documentary   15 minutes   1999
With English subtitles
A loving portrait and visual poem depicting some of the tasks performed by men in the mountains of the Sierra Maestras.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95


Four Sisters, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Rigoberto Jimenez
Documentary   15 minutes   1998
With English subtitles
This short film takes us far from the noise and bustle of Havana, to a palm-lined valley in the remote Cuban countryside.There, four elderly sisters live together in the humble tin-roofed cabin where they were born. Although it lacks electricity and running water, the cabin is in perfect order, and smoking cigarettes on the porch and listening to the transistor radio before bed are diversion enough for the industrious sisters. The film depicts these strong and self-sufficient women at work – planting seeds, grinding flour, roasting coffee, and washing clothes in the river – as they recall the stories that brought them to live together on the family farm. Hard-working Dolores, feisty Gelacia, sad-eyed Cira, and pensive Josefa grew up minding their strict parents. When their father died, their mother and they worked even harder, refusing to take charity. After the mother died, all of them left the farm at some time, in ill-fated relationships with men, but ultimately each decided that men were more trouble than they were worth, and so they have chosen to live the farmer’s humble life of hard work and orderliness in the family cabin. The film offers the stories of the sisters, laconic, unassuming, and always at work, as a testament to the strength and self-reliance of women to make a life for themselves from the bounty of nature and their own sweat.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


How Is It Possible?   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Luis Acevedo Fals
Documentary   27 minutes   1996
With English subtitles
This documentary narrates the transformation of a community in the neighborhood of Villa Clara. Its reputation as a violent, crime ridden area is changed as community residents unite to build housing and educate their neighbors.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


Forging Ahead   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Luis Acevedo Fals
Documentary   27 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
The documentation of a community education project in Pinar del Rio and its effects on the neighborhood and its residents.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


Cauri: The Word of the Saint   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Luis Acevedo Fals
Documentary   27 minutes   1996
With English subtitles
A documentary about the Santería religion and the magic of the cauri - shells used by Santería priests to translate messages from the gods. These messages explain what has happened and what may happen, thereby helping believers navigate periods of hardship. The documentary also provides a clear explanation of each of the saints in this Afro-Cuban religion, and discusses Santería’s syncretic relationship to Catholicism.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


Babalu Aye   Get Details
Orlando Dominguez
MusicVideo   4 minutes   1998
No English subtitles
A video clip about the Afro-Cuban tradition. Babalu Aye, known as San Lazaro, is recreated by the children of the community. Featuring singer Henry Mendiz.


Scorpion, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Gloria Rolando
Documentary   19 minutes   1999
With English subtitles
Who stung the slave María Josefa? The Spaniard says it was the cockroach but the old African knows it was the scorpion… This vivid documentary treats the Scorpion Parade, a festival that fills the streets of Havana with music and color during Cuban Carnival season to re-enact the ancient legend of the Scorpion. Mixing present day parade footage, interviews, and rare period photos from the 1930s, El Alacrán tells the story of how the Carnival parades were originally brought from Africa by the slaves who cut sugarcane in the Cuban plantations. Once in Cuba, it mixed with European, Indian, and Asian cultures to create an event which is both a colorful spectacle of music and dance, and a deep affirmation of identity for Afrocuban people. El Alacrán traces the origins of the Scorpion Parade from 1908, in the segregated setting of Old Cuba, where elegantly costumed whites in blackface paraded in carriages, and Afrocubans practiced their sacred drumming and dancing traditions in secret. In 1938, however, the Afrocuban Santos Ramírez organized the people of his working-class neighborhood to parade together, bringing the traditional dance, costumes, and music to the streets of Havana. The Scorpion Parade has remained a living expression of Cuban popular culture ever since. The film explains how every detail of the lavishly decorated floats and papier-mâché puppets, the costumes of the musicians and dancers, have deep cultural meanings and historical resonance for black Cubans. We see the construction of the floats, and how each float is baptized and consecrated to a different African god. We see the representation through costumes of cane-cutters, sultans, African spirits, and top-hatted gentlemen. Most of all, we see how the parade acts in the everyday life of the people of the city itself, passed down from generation to generation by the matriarchs and patriarchs to the young children we see learning the dance to carry on this vibrant tradition.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


Rrring   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Pavel Giroud
Other   3 minutes   1998
With English subtitles
While sleeping with his lover a man receives an enigmatic phone call.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95


It Seems Like Happiness   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Aaron Vega
Documentary   20 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
This documentary portrays a large public performance of “It Seems Like Happiness,” a work by the legendary Afrocuban artist Manuel Mendive, in all its exuberance, sensuality, comic absurdity, and philosophical weight. In the Carnival atmosphere Mendive creates in the streets of Havana, brightly colored bodies serve as living, dancing canvases for the artist’s trademark anthropomorphic animals, abstract shapes, and vivid hues. Impressive for its scale, the energy of the performers, and its egalitarian proximity to the public, this was Mendive’s most ambitious work to date, reconfiguring symbols from Afrocuban religion, elements from nature, avant-garde texts, and the unembarrassed beauty of the human body. The video not only documents the vibrancy of the work, and its enthusiastic (if quizzical) reception by the public, but the spirit of camaraderie between the artist and the various performers in the long hours of preparation for the performance – a valuable record of Mendive’s idiosyncratic genius.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95


Island of Music, The   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Santiago Alvarez and Ismael Perdomo
Documentary   50 minutes   1998
With English subtitles
The last work of legendary Cuban filmmaker Santiago Alvarez, THE ISLAND OF MUSIC treats the powerful and diverse musics of Cuba, an island where every facet of daily life is suffused with music. The film travels through the island’s musical traditions and innovations, encompassing the stunning African traditions of santería, the humble genius of Cuban peasants’ improvised verse, the pulsating beat of the great dance musics, the sophisticated romanticism of bolero, Cuban classical music, and more. The multifaceted character of Cuban music is explained through the incredible ability of musicians to adapt from a variety of local and international sources without losing the essentially Cuban character of their own music. That is the basis of Cuban music – that it can be ravenously syncretic even as it is stubbornly insistent on keeping its soul. THE ISLAND OF MUSIC captures the same spirit of restless eclecticism as the music itself, juxtaposing historical film and contemporary video, young and old artists, traditional and current music, elegant nightclubs and the patios of humble apartment buildings. Despite the breadth of its scope, the film takes an intimate look into Cuban musical practice, with beautiful archival footage of a number of Cuba’s most venerated artists featured alongside rare glimpses of the musicians of today in their own musical environment, including stars of the Buena Vista Social Club jamming in the informal setting of a house party. Despite Cuba’s astonishing number of talented musicians and composers, however, they have had a hard time achieving the recognition they deserve because of the poor infrastructure of the recording industry, and some of Cuba’s most important innovators are all but unknown outside their own small towns. THE ISLAND OF MUSIC brings to light the stories of these unfairly forgotten legends alongside a first-hand portrayal of the creative process of Cuba’s best-known artists. In its exhaustive review of the music and musicians that have created Cuba’s vibrant expressive culture, THE ISLAND OF MUSIC provides a dazzling panorama of Cuban music across time.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95


Ella baila   Get Details
Josep Rodriguez
MusicVideo   5 minutes   1999
No English subtitles
Featuring Cuban singer Daniehl in this lively video clip.


Iyaromi   Get Details
Manuel Padron
MusicVideo   4 minutes   1994
With English subtitles
Music video of the group 'Sintesis.'


Aguzate   Get Details
Jorge Fuentes
MusicVideo   4 minutes   1997
With English subtitles
Juxtaposition of images of Cuba and music.


Senora usted   Get Details
Joel Guilian
MusicVideo   5 minutes   1999
No English subtitles
Featuring the group Mediterraneo


Nice Going   Get Details and Purchasing Info
Miguel Coyula
Fiction   10 minutes   1999
With English subtitles
A young woman undergoes a transformative experience in the countryside. Back in the city, her new-found obsession disturbs her family and friends.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95

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• Jewish Studies (April 2004)
  
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