Havana Film Festival New York schedule is up. I’m excited to see Dia de las Flores, though there are a few movies absent from this list… still waiting to see Seven Days in Havana.
— if Alan Gross’ story is any indication — is a pretty crap deal. See Tracey Eaton’s amazing analysis, here at Along the Malecón, of the shady dealings that he signed up for, which subsequently got him put in jail and abandoned there by the U.S. government. Here’s hoping that a second Obama term will hold only good things for U.S.-Cuban relations, and nothing like the Bush-era strategery outlined here.
For the heavy metal-inclined traveler heading to Cuba this winter: Brutal Fest will rage on stages around the country in February. A mini-mini video preview here.
“It was interesting to observe how in Cuba, a country isolated largely by the U.S. embargo, people have no access to foreign publications, and their international exposure is very limited. However, Cuban artists are quite well informed. They have a long tradition of sharing the information they do have, and of distributing among themselves books and magazines that become community objects. ”
- Gabriel Orozco on visiting the Havana Biennial.
Within a broad conversation printed in Art In America — between Orozco and fellow Mexican conceptual artist Damián Ortega — there are interesting tidbits on the differences between the Cuban and Mexican art contexts. Check it out here.
This is the sort of song that was playing in my mind while I was shopping at Yanet’s. Check out my short essay, in today’s Paris Review Daily, on buying old illicit things at her Havana vintage emporium.
