When 30-year-old Erik Iglesias Rodríguez — the med school student-turned-bandleader Cimafunk — took the stage at Miami’s Global Cuba Festival in March, the crowd’s enthusiastic roar nearly overwhelmed the sound system. Cimafunk represents Havana’s modern street sound: an electrifying combination of funk and soul, layered over the five-beat clave, or the heartbeat of Cuban music, brought to Cuba by enslaved people from West Africa.
“There’s a strong connection between Miami and Cuba,” explains Cimafunk. “We’re all Cubans regardless of where we live, or how or why we...
“There’s a strong connection between Miami and Cuba,” explains Cimafunk. “We’re all Cubans regardless of where we live, or how or why we...
- 8/30/2019
- by Maria Bakkalapulo
- Rollingstone.com
Tim McGraw is one country music superstar who’s not afraid to break down barriers, and come May 2019 he’ll be making a trek south of the border to Cuba for Tim McGraw: One of Those Havana Nights.
Taking place May 23rd to 27th in Havana, Cuba — a country where individual travel from the U.S. is not currently permitted — the event is being presented as part of a cultural exchange program, which will see McGraw share the bill with Cuban artists including Carlos Varela, Traditionales De Los 50 and Grammy winners Los Van Van.
Taking place May 23rd to 27th in Havana, Cuba — a country where individual travel from the U.S. is not currently permitted — the event is being presented as part of a cultural exchange program, which will see McGraw share the bill with Cuban artists including Carlos Varela, Traditionales De Los 50 and Grammy winners Los Van Van.
- 12/4/2018
- by Jeff Gage
- Rollingstone.com
Havana, April 3 (Ians/Efe) The Cuban band Los Van Van, idol of the island's dancers who regard it as "the salsa train", will give its songs a symphonic sound for the first time, media reports said.
The popular musical group will play four numbers by Cuban musician Joaquin Betancourt with symphony orchestra arrangements during the upcoming 2013 Cubadisco fair, which will take place May 19-26, organizers said.
The symphonic version will respect the rhythmic beat and choruses of Los Van Van, the iconic band founded by Juan Formell in 1969 that has kept several generations of Cubans dancing, said the president of the island's top record fair, Gloria Ochoa.
"This musical experiment shows once again the versatility of.
The popular musical group will play four numbers by Cuban musician Joaquin Betancourt with symphony orchestra arrangements during the upcoming 2013 Cubadisco fair, which will take place May 19-26, organizers said.
The symphonic version will respect the rhythmic beat and choruses of Los Van Van, the iconic band founded by Juan Formell in 1969 that has kept several generations of Cubans dancing, said the president of the island's top record fair, Gloria Ochoa.
"This musical experiment shows once again the versatility of.
- 4/3/2013
- by Amith Ostwal
- RealBollywood.com
It’s Cuba! Where else would The Havana International Film Festival’s Opening and Closing Night take place except in The Karl Marx Theater? Opening with music by Cuba’s greatest salsa group, Los Van Van, the 34th edition is still headed by its founder and Fidel Castro’s teacher in Communism, Alfredo Guevara, who dedicated this edition to the new generation of filmmakers which represents the future of cinema. The 10 day festival showcased a broad range of new and not-so-new films from Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Peru and fellow Caribbean nations, Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, Curacao and others whose cinema is being aided by their governments and whose youth is creating a new international cinema with the support of Europe and even, sometimes, Asia.
While this edition paid homage to the youth, also present and recalled were the members of the generations from the ‘60s like Aldo Francia, Chileans Miguel Littin, Patricio Guzman, Jorge Sanjines, Fernado Birri, Fernando Solano, Cacho Pallero, Santiago Alvarez, Glauber Roch, Carlos Diegues, Leon Hizsman, Juaquim Pedro, Tomas Guierrez Alea, Mario Handler, Walter Achugar and many others who in the years ‘67 and ‘68 were themselves inspired by such luminaries as Joris Ivens. Together they were the originators of the phenomenon El Cine de America Latina or New Latin American Cinema influenced mainly by Italian neorealism and other movements of social cinema. Its function was to go against U.S. models and to illuminate the troubled realities of Latin America in the hope of restoring cinema of the continent. Its key moment was the meeting of Latin American Cinema 1967 , which had its impetus in the Chilean Aldo Francia , the Cinema Club of Viña del Mar , the Cuban Alfredo Guevara, the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Film (Icaic) and the Argentine Edgardo Pallero.
Illuminaries such as Annette Benning whose film The Kids are All Right was screening there and Hawk Koch, president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, wrote fan letters to Fidel and Raoul and then mixed and caught up with the top critics and journalists of Latin America and festival participants in the gardens of the Hotel Nacional. Miguel Litten and spouse, the parents of Chile’s Christina Littin, one of Chile’s current top producer/ distributors, were often seen there. Their presence reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Clandestine in Chile about the time when Miguel disguised himself to reenter Pinochet’s Chile from whence he had been exiled. So many stories of exile and return mark the modern history of Latin America.
The first day of the Havana festival was devoted to Eictv, the international film school that Gabriel Garcia Marquez founded in 1986 with his Nobel Prize money on land donated by Cuba. Today it is headed by Rafael Rosal who in his own country, Guatemala, set up the first infrastructure for a film industry – a film school, a film festival and production facilities.
Eictv has a student body from everywhere in Latin America, Europe and even from North America. Last year as the emissary for Woodbury University in Burbank CA, I brought them their first agreement with a U.S. institution and exchanges between students and staff have already begun, bringing TV documentary filmmaker Rolando Almirante for a second time to teach documentaries.
Eictv’s event at the Festival de Cine Nuevo en Habana is Nuevas Miradas, 12 chosen projects whose producers and directors present themselves to the industry and compete for three awards.
Coincidently with the lateness of this blog which I wrote from the Palm Springs International Film Festival -- some of Eictv’s staff’s and students’ films were among Psff’s 22 Latino projects vying for the Cine Latino Prize being offered by Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara. This fact along shows a new unity of purpose among the Latino countries and their festivals (Cuba, Guadalajara and Palm Springs, which as part of the Coachella Valley, has the largest Latino population in the United States.) Among the 22 candidates for Psff’s Best Iberoamerican film were Clandestine Childhood (Argentina/ Brazil/Spain) by Benjamín Ávila, who was the coordinator of Fiction at Eictv and screenwriter Marcelo Muller also participated in Eictv; La Voz Dormida (España) of the emerging filmmaker Benito Zambrano, and 7 Boxes (Paraguay) co-directed by Juan Carlos Maneglia, a student in many of the workshops of Eictv. Eictv considers this exchange of ideas and talents as globally important.
The winners of Nuevas Miradas should be watched as one or several reach fruition. Last year The Visitor (Chile) won and has since raised the budget for a feature length film debut.
The projects, Un Viejo Traje, Moora Moora directed by Australian Rhiannon Stevens and produced by Chilean Esme Joffre, Tus padres volverán directed by Uruguayan Pablo Martínez and produced by Virginia Hinze, Cocodrilos tomando el sol, Cuerpos Celestes by Mexican director Lorena Padilla and producer Liliana Bravo, Revolución de las polleras by Bolivian director Sergio Estrada and producer Valeria Ponce received recognition and free software from Assimilate.
The documentary, Un Viejo Traje (aka The Old Suit), by Cuban director Damián Saínz (a student of Eictv) and producer Viana González received a $2,000 prize.
Fiction project, Cocodrilos tomando el sol, directed by Colombian Carlos Rojas and the Venezuelan producer Carolina Graterol, received a $1,000 prize and a course in directing at Eictv.
A film package for those interested in Cuban film programming
Ann Cross, a Scottish woman married to a Trinidadian is always in Havana. She programs the best selection of current Cuban features for U.K. distribution. This year she gave me this list of her favorites and many people concurred with her.
Y sin embargo (aka Nevertheless) by Rudy Mora also won the Beijing Film Festival prize which is surprising in that it is about school children challenging the school system, and challenging any systems in China (and perhaps in Cuba as well) is highly problematic. The child actors are exceptional. The type of burlesque comedy is typical of Cuba. Produced and Isa (international sales agent) is the Cuban government film group Icaic.
Irredemediablemente Juntos (aka Irredeemably Together) by Jorge Luis Sanchez Gonzalez is brave and challenging. Purportedly about classical music and Cuban music and the conflict between the two, it is really about race and the synthesis between black and white, Cuban and European Classical is reached in the story.
Cresciendo en la musica is about teaching music to children.
El sangre en la casa, en la escuela y en la calle (aka Blood in the House, in the School and in the Street) is a British-Cuban coproduction about Matanza, a town just outside of Havana where Cuban music roots are.
La piscine (aka The Swimming Pool) by Calvo Machado might not stand alone in the U.S. but would be good in a package.
Binchi by Eduardo Galano is about the 2 classes clashing in prison.
At the top of Ann’s list and on top of many others’ lists is Melaza.
What I saw and liked
It was also a time for me to catch up of Latin American cinema I have missed. My favorite was Chilean film Jueves a Domingo (aka from Thursday to Sunday) by Dominga Sotomayer. This road trip by a young couple and their 7 year old son and 11 year old daughter tells a story through the daughter’s eye of a loving family’s vacation and their father’s decision to move from Santiago to the countryside. We never know what he is getting away from (Pinochet?) but we see what is supposed to be a vacation transforms the family’s wholeness. The loving light touch of Sotomayer reminds me of Eric Rohmer’s four films of the seasons.
Lucie Malloy’s Una Noche was mobbed by the Cuban public wanting to see this film about two young defectors from Cuba; the police were called to break up the crowd and the overflow had a special screening set up. We hear that the young woman star who defected with her costar on the way to the Tribeca Film Festival and who landed up in Las Vegas is now in “exile mode” bewailing how she misses her family. La probrecita!! Yet another exile story. Had she waited a month, travel from Cuba would be legal. Una Noche is now here in Palm Springs as well, competitng for the Cine Latino Prize.
Other films I saw and liked
El Limpiador and Ombras were both without subtitles (as was Pablo Lorrain’s closing night film No) and so I could only watch a part of them. However I did see El Limpiador here in Palm Springs and was impressed with its simplicity and its authenticity and loving heart. A low tech take on a mysterious illness killing people in the Peruvian city of Lima, the film was simple, sometimes funny and in the end very satisfying.
A film which divided the audience neatly between men and women was the Brazilian feature Brecha Silencia (aka Breaching the Silence) about domestic violence from which 3 siblings barely escape. The subject of violence toward women was also the subject of a short which showed in every public screening. Called Ya No, this short Latin American backed PSA brings public awareness to the unacceptable violent behavior of men toward women often found in schools, in dating, and in homes.
Desde de Lucia playing in Palm Springs also takes on the subject of bullying, this time in a bourgeois Mexican school and centering on a teenage girl who has recently lost her mother.
Taken by Storm
The next segment of the festival was taken up with Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival (t+tff). Emilie Upszak, Artistic Director of t+tff, whom I had met in Havana last year through Icaic’s Luis Notario, and Bruce Paddington the founder and exec director of t+tff were in Havana with a delegation of filmmakers and their films. Since I had missed them all during the extraordinary experience I had at t+tff, I got to see Storm Saulter’s Better Mus Come which has been picked up by the new African Diaspora film distributor for U.S. Affrm (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement).
Storm is Jamaican and took film courses at L.A. Film School, that large private film school on Sunset near Vine, across from the Arclight Theater, where many foreign students go and where many vets go seeking to learn filmmaking. Storm, however, had been making films since he was a kid using super 8mm and at the ripe old age of 27, he has since formed a collective in Jamaica called, the New Caribbean Cinema. His new fiction feature Better Mus Come screened at Trinidad + Tobago film festival and showed here in Havana as well. He will be announcing an international sales agent and a U.S. distributor very soon.
What fun and interesting days and evenings and nights I had with the t+tff folks.
We heard live music, I danced salsa with a Puerto Rican Actor/ Director who dances salsa and has a short in the festival.
Salsa in Havana seems to be losing steam. Reggaeton closes every dance event as the drunken, monotonous final act before going home. However in Jamaica it is transforming itself into Dancehall (what could be more sexual than that except for sex itself?). There is also Rumba, the traditional dance of Afro-Cubans. It is now taking new forms as the newest generation of Cuba takes the stage. Woodbury faculty, in Havana on a hosted tour with the Jose Marti Cultural Institute, led by my friend Cookie Fischer were invited to the top of the Lincoln Hotel on the night the world was to end (remember the Mayan calendar prediction?) and we danced the night away to the live music of Septeto Nacional a 70 year old group. Son was my dance of choice there. For those of you who want to see Cuba before the transition is over, now is the time. You can travel legally from L.A. and Miami, Mexico or anywhere else in the world with a general license. Take advantage of it Now as it is going to get more crowded with tourists. For us film folk, we get a privileged perch, so plan on next December taking in a week of films plus another week or two to see a country whose land and people are unique in Latin America and the Caribbean.
While this edition paid homage to the youth, also present and recalled were the members of the generations from the ‘60s like Aldo Francia, Chileans Miguel Littin, Patricio Guzman, Jorge Sanjines, Fernado Birri, Fernando Solano, Cacho Pallero, Santiago Alvarez, Glauber Roch, Carlos Diegues, Leon Hizsman, Juaquim Pedro, Tomas Guierrez Alea, Mario Handler, Walter Achugar and many others who in the years ‘67 and ‘68 were themselves inspired by such luminaries as Joris Ivens. Together they were the originators of the phenomenon El Cine de America Latina or New Latin American Cinema influenced mainly by Italian neorealism and other movements of social cinema. Its function was to go against U.S. models and to illuminate the troubled realities of Latin America in the hope of restoring cinema of the continent. Its key moment was the meeting of Latin American Cinema 1967 , which had its impetus in the Chilean Aldo Francia , the Cinema Club of Viña del Mar , the Cuban Alfredo Guevara, the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Film (Icaic) and the Argentine Edgardo Pallero.
Illuminaries such as Annette Benning whose film The Kids are All Right was screening there and Hawk Koch, president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, wrote fan letters to Fidel and Raoul and then mixed and caught up with the top critics and journalists of Latin America and festival participants in the gardens of the Hotel Nacional. Miguel Litten and spouse, the parents of Chile’s Christina Littin, one of Chile’s current top producer/ distributors, were often seen there. Their presence reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Clandestine in Chile about the time when Miguel disguised himself to reenter Pinochet’s Chile from whence he had been exiled. So many stories of exile and return mark the modern history of Latin America.
The first day of the Havana festival was devoted to Eictv, the international film school that Gabriel Garcia Marquez founded in 1986 with his Nobel Prize money on land donated by Cuba. Today it is headed by Rafael Rosal who in his own country, Guatemala, set up the first infrastructure for a film industry – a film school, a film festival and production facilities.
Eictv has a student body from everywhere in Latin America, Europe and even from North America. Last year as the emissary for Woodbury University in Burbank CA, I brought them their first agreement with a U.S. institution and exchanges between students and staff have already begun, bringing TV documentary filmmaker Rolando Almirante for a second time to teach documentaries.
Eictv’s event at the Festival de Cine Nuevo en Habana is Nuevas Miradas, 12 chosen projects whose producers and directors present themselves to the industry and compete for three awards.
Coincidently with the lateness of this blog which I wrote from the Palm Springs International Film Festival -- some of Eictv’s staff’s and students’ films were among Psff’s 22 Latino projects vying for the Cine Latino Prize being offered by Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara. This fact along shows a new unity of purpose among the Latino countries and their festivals (Cuba, Guadalajara and Palm Springs, which as part of the Coachella Valley, has the largest Latino population in the United States.) Among the 22 candidates for Psff’s Best Iberoamerican film were Clandestine Childhood (Argentina/ Brazil/Spain) by Benjamín Ávila, who was the coordinator of Fiction at Eictv and screenwriter Marcelo Muller also participated in Eictv; La Voz Dormida (España) of the emerging filmmaker Benito Zambrano, and 7 Boxes (Paraguay) co-directed by Juan Carlos Maneglia, a student in many of the workshops of Eictv. Eictv considers this exchange of ideas and talents as globally important.
The winners of Nuevas Miradas should be watched as one or several reach fruition. Last year The Visitor (Chile) won and has since raised the budget for a feature length film debut.
The projects, Un Viejo Traje, Moora Moora directed by Australian Rhiannon Stevens and produced by Chilean Esme Joffre, Tus padres volverán directed by Uruguayan Pablo Martínez and produced by Virginia Hinze, Cocodrilos tomando el sol, Cuerpos Celestes by Mexican director Lorena Padilla and producer Liliana Bravo, Revolución de las polleras by Bolivian director Sergio Estrada and producer Valeria Ponce received recognition and free software from Assimilate.
The documentary, Un Viejo Traje (aka The Old Suit), by Cuban director Damián Saínz (a student of Eictv) and producer Viana González received a $2,000 prize.
Fiction project, Cocodrilos tomando el sol, directed by Colombian Carlos Rojas and the Venezuelan producer Carolina Graterol, received a $1,000 prize and a course in directing at Eictv.
A film package for those interested in Cuban film programming
Ann Cross, a Scottish woman married to a Trinidadian is always in Havana. She programs the best selection of current Cuban features for U.K. distribution. This year she gave me this list of her favorites and many people concurred with her.
Y sin embargo (aka Nevertheless) by Rudy Mora also won the Beijing Film Festival prize which is surprising in that it is about school children challenging the school system, and challenging any systems in China (and perhaps in Cuba as well) is highly problematic. The child actors are exceptional. The type of burlesque comedy is typical of Cuba. Produced and Isa (international sales agent) is the Cuban government film group Icaic.
Irredemediablemente Juntos (aka Irredeemably Together) by Jorge Luis Sanchez Gonzalez is brave and challenging. Purportedly about classical music and Cuban music and the conflict between the two, it is really about race and the synthesis between black and white, Cuban and European Classical is reached in the story.
Cresciendo en la musica is about teaching music to children.
El sangre en la casa, en la escuela y en la calle (aka Blood in the House, in the School and in the Street) is a British-Cuban coproduction about Matanza, a town just outside of Havana where Cuban music roots are.
La piscine (aka The Swimming Pool) by Calvo Machado might not stand alone in the U.S. but would be good in a package.
Binchi by Eduardo Galano is about the 2 classes clashing in prison.
At the top of Ann’s list and on top of many others’ lists is Melaza.
What I saw and liked
It was also a time for me to catch up of Latin American cinema I have missed. My favorite was Chilean film Jueves a Domingo (aka from Thursday to Sunday) by Dominga Sotomayer. This road trip by a young couple and their 7 year old son and 11 year old daughter tells a story through the daughter’s eye of a loving family’s vacation and their father’s decision to move from Santiago to the countryside. We never know what he is getting away from (Pinochet?) but we see what is supposed to be a vacation transforms the family’s wholeness. The loving light touch of Sotomayer reminds me of Eric Rohmer’s four films of the seasons.
Lucie Malloy’s Una Noche was mobbed by the Cuban public wanting to see this film about two young defectors from Cuba; the police were called to break up the crowd and the overflow had a special screening set up. We hear that the young woman star who defected with her costar on the way to the Tribeca Film Festival and who landed up in Las Vegas is now in “exile mode” bewailing how she misses her family. La probrecita!! Yet another exile story. Had she waited a month, travel from Cuba would be legal. Una Noche is now here in Palm Springs as well, competitng for the Cine Latino Prize.
Other films I saw and liked
El Limpiador and Ombras were both without subtitles (as was Pablo Lorrain’s closing night film No) and so I could only watch a part of them. However I did see El Limpiador here in Palm Springs and was impressed with its simplicity and its authenticity and loving heart. A low tech take on a mysterious illness killing people in the Peruvian city of Lima, the film was simple, sometimes funny and in the end very satisfying.
A film which divided the audience neatly between men and women was the Brazilian feature Brecha Silencia (aka Breaching the Silence) about domestic violence from which 3 siblings barely escape. The subject of violence toward women was also the subject of a short which showed in every public screening. Called Ya No, this short Latin American backed PSA brings public awareness to the unacceptable violent behavior of men toward women often found in schools, in dating, and in homes.
Desde de Lucia playing in Palm Springs also takes on the subject of bullying, this time in a bourgeois Mexican school and centering on a teenage girl who has recently lost her mother.
Taken by Storm
The next segment of the festival was taken up with Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival (t+tff). Emilie Upszak, Artistic Director of t+tff, whom I had met in Havana last year through Icaic’s Luis Notario, and Bruce Paddington the founder and exec director of t+tff were in Havana with a delegation of filmmakers and their films. Since I had missed them all during the extraordinary experience I had at t+tff, I got to see Storm Saulter’s Better Mus Come which has been picked up by the new African Diaspora film distributor for U.S. Affrm (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement).
Storm is Jamaican and took film courses at L.A. Film School, that large private film school on Sunset near Vine, across from the Arclight Theater, where many foreign students go and where many vets go seeking to learn filmmaking. Storm, however, had been making films since he was a kid using super 8mm and at the ripe old age of 27, he has since formed a collective in Jamaica called, the New Caribbean Cinema. His new fiction feature Better Mus Come screened at Trinidad + Tobago film festival and showed here in Havana as well. He will be announcing an international sales agent and a U.S. distributor very soon.
What fun and interesting days and evenings and nights I had with the t+tff folks.
We heard live music, I danced salsa with a Puerto Rican Actor/ Director who dances salsa and has a short in the festival.
Salsa in Havana seems to be losing steam. Reggaeton closes every dance event as the drunken, monotonous final act before going home. However in Jamaica it is transforming itself into Dancehall (what could be more sexual than that except for sex itself?). There is also Rumba, the traditional dance of Afro-Cubans. It is now taking new forms as the newest generation of Cuba takes the stage. Woodbury faculty, in Havana on a hosted tour with the Jose Marti Cultural Institute, led by my friend Cookie Fischer were invited to the top of the Lincoln Hotel on the night the world was to end (remember the Mayan calendar prediction?) and we danced the night away to the live music of Septeto Nacional a 70 year old group. Son was my dance of choice there. For those of you who want to see Cuba before the transition is over, now is the time. You can travel legally from L.A. and Miami, Mexico or anywhere else in the world with a general license. Take advantage of it Now as it is going to get more crowded with tourists. For us film folk, we get a privileged perch, so plan on next December taking in a week of films plus another week or two to see a country whose land and people are unique in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- 3/15/2013
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Black history month is here -- and though it may be a U.S. celebration, the United States isn’t the only country in the Americas with black achievements and cultural contributions to commemorate.
While many people in the United States view Latinos as a race, the societies of Latin America are multicultural and multiracial. More people of African descent live in Brazil than any country in the world besides Nigeria. Another 8 million African-descended people live in Colombia, and millions more in the Caribbean countries of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela, Panama and elsewhere.
As Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. told Latina.com, “The real Black Experience, in terms of numbers, is all throughout the Caribbean and Latin America… There were 11.2 million Africans who came to the New World in the slave trade and of that 11.2 million, only 450,000 came to the United States.”
So, to kick the month off,...
While many people in the United States view Latinos as a race, the societies of Latin America are multicultural and multiracial. More people of African descent live in Brazil than any country in the world besides Nigeria. Another 8 million African-descended people live in Colombia, and millions more in the Caribbean countries of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela, Panama and elsewhere.
As Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. told Latina.com, “The real Black Experience, in terms of numbers, is all throughout the Caribbean and Latin America… There were 11.2 million Africans who came to the New World in the slave trade and of that 11.2 million, only 450,000 came to the United States.”
So, to kick the month off,...
- 2/1/2013
- by The Huffington Post
- Huffington Post
Sao Paulo, Aug 29 (Ians/Efe) Ricky Martin, Julieta Venegas, Los Van Van and other Hispanic artists captivated their Brazilian audiences with a powerful, variegated dose of Latin music at a series of concerts in Sao Paulo.
In one of the local public's most eagerly awaited concerts this year, Ricky Martin took the stage Friday night at Credicard Hall in Sao Paulo, his first appearance in the country since announcing he is gay and with a show that kicked off his 'Musica + Alma + Sexo' (Music + Soul + Sex) tour of a number of Brazilian cities.
The.
In one of the local public's most eagerly awaited concerts this year, Ricky Martin took the stage Friday night at Credicard Hall in Sao Paulo, his first appearance in the country since announcing he is gay and with a show that kicked off his 'Musica + Alma + Sexo' (Music + Soul + Sex) tour of a number of Brazilian cities.
The.
- 8/29/2011
- by Leon David
- RealBollywood.com
San Jose (California), Aug 25 (Ians/Efe) Cuba's Los Van Van, dubbed 'the Rolling Stones of salsa', will perform in Los Angeles Sep 15.
The concert was originally set for Aug 4, but had to be postponed when Us authorities refused to issue a visa for one of the band's members, a press release said.
Los Van Van has found another musician to replace the drummer barred by the State Department.
Founded in 1969, Los Van Van has forged a new style of salsa that incorporates Afro-Cuban, funk, hip hop and rock elements.
The concert was originally set for Aug 4, but had to be postponed when Us authorities refused to issue a visa for one of the band's members, a press release said.
Los Van Van has found another musician to replace the drummer barred by the State Department.
Founded in 1969, Los Van Van has forged a new style of salsa that incorporates Afro-Cuban, funk, hip hop and rock elements.
- 8/25/2011
- by Leon David
- RealBollywood.com
AudioPlayer.setup("http://www.nerve.com/files/players/audio/player.swf", { width: 350 }); What Are You Listening To? Three New Yorkers take off their headphones and chat. By Austin Duerst Lauren, 28 What are you listening to right now? I listen to a lot of Spanish music, like Julio Venegas, and I like old-school stuff, like salsa. Do you have a Spanish background? Yeah, I dance salsa and speak Spanish. I lived in Cuba so I like a lot of Cuban music, like Silvio Rodriguez and Los Van Van. I really have broad tastes though — I also listen to a lot of Broadway musicals and Top 40 hits. There's a twenty-two-year old in the production office where I work who also keeps me clued in to all the hipster bands. Listen: "Ojalá" by Silvio Rodriguez MP3 AudioPlayer.embed("audioplayer_1", {soundFile: "/files/media/features/what-are-you-listening-to/06_30_11/1.[...]...
- 7/1/2011
- by Austin Duerst
- Nerve
Colombian pop star and other Latin American artists called for a free Cuba.
By Gil Kaufman
Juanes performs in Havana, Cuba on Sunday
Photo: Sven Creutzmann/ Getty Images
The Obama administration has been hinting at a possible thaw in the half-century standoff with Cuba, and on Sunday, Colombian pop star Juanes did his best to further the cause by headlining a massive concert for peace in Havana's famed Plaza de la Revolución.
Playing in front of several hundred thousand fans at the Peace Without Borders concert, Juanes bucked the authoritarian regime led by the Castro brothers by chanting, "Cuba libre! Cuba libre!" ("Free Cuba!") before segueing into a call for "One Cuban family! One Cuban family!" He was appealing to the many Cuban exiles who, according to The Miami Herald, had criticized the show because they feared it would appear to lend support to the authoritarian communist Castro regime. In an ominous and telling sign,...
By Gil Kaufman
Juanes performs in Havana, Cuba on Sunday
Photo: Sven Creutzmann/ Getty Images
The Obama administration has been hinting at a possible thaw in the half-century standoff with Cuba, and on Sunday, Colombian pop star Juanes did his best to further the cause by headlining a massive concert for peace in Havana's famed Plaza de la Revolución.
Playing in front of several hundred thousand fans at the Peace Without Borders concert, Juanes bucked the authoritarian regime led by the Castro brothers by chanting, "Cuba libre! Cuba libre!" ("Free Cuba!") before segueing into a call for "One Cuban family! One Cuban family!" He was appealing to the many Cuban exiles who, according to The Miami Herald, had criticized the show because they feared it would appear to lend support to the authoritarian communist Castro regime. In an ominous and telling sign,...
- 9/21/2009
- MTV Music News
From the opening title announcing this documentary as a production of cinembargo films, "Great Day in Havana" won over the audience at its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival with its revelations about a city and people that few Americans are intimately familiar with.
A natural for cable, video, fests and limited theatrical engagements where there are audiences for such fare, "Havana" is an unabashed cinematic valentine to the artists and residents of the city, with some pointed commentary about U.S. policy toward the communist country. Structured around a "magical day" with 11 artists, in which the various neighborhoods of the city are illuminated in the process, "Havana" was years in the making and includes liberal use of producer-director Casey Stoll's still photographs in evocative montages.
First-time filmmakers Laurie Ann Schag and Stoll are native Californians who have abundant appreciation for Cuban culture and have visited the country many times. Schag is a multilingual journalist with her own entertainment marketing and production firm, and Stoll has had his photographs of Cuba published in major daily newspapers and exhibited his work in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Havana.
From participants worrying about tourism disrupting the prominence placed on art for art's sake to those who know that for many Cubans "to leave the island is a dream," "Havana" touches on the city's history in the 1990s, including such seemingly divergent trends as a marked rise in prostitution and a society where in general "women are strong." Meanwhile, the Cold War never really ended and the city has "less stimulation," but the arts and artists are encouraged and supported by the populace. The movie does not dig deeply into political issues that have been hashed out much more dramatically in major news events, though art and everyday reality often merge, and the country's depressed economy and unfriendly superpower neighbor are favorite topics.
Among those Havana artists profiled are musician-composer Carlos Alfonso, painter Israel del Monte, sculptor Asela Diaz, actor Jorge Perugorria, singers Ele Valdes and Carlos Varela and performance artist Tania Bruguera. The filmmakers explore Old Havana, the Malecon seawall and lesser-known barrios of the city, while the outstanding soundtrack features musical contributions by Varela, Isaac Delgado, Pablo Milanes, Company Segundo and salsa group Los Van Van, described as a "daily chronicle" of all things Cuban.
GREAT DAY IN HAVANA
cinembargo films
Producer-directors: Laurie Ann Schag, Casey Stoll
Cinematography-sound: Erika Andersen, Abel Chapa, Edward Lucero, Casey Stoll, Rafael Solis, Lauria Ann Schag
Editors: Laurie Ann Schag, Casey Stoll
Narrator: Yareli Arizmendi
Color/stereo
Running time -- 84 minutes
No MPAA rating...
A natural for cable, video, fests and limited theatrical engagements where there are audiences for such fare, "Havana" is an unabashed cinematic valentine to the artists and residents of the city, with some pointed commentary about U.S. policy toward the communist country. Structured around a "magical day" with 11 artists, in which the various neighborhoods of the city are illuminated in the process, "Havana" was years in the making and includes liberal use of producer-director Casey Stoll's still photographs in evocative montages.
First-time filmmakers Laurie Ann Schag and Stoll are native Californians who have abundant appreciation for Cuban culture and have visited the country many times. Schag is a multilingual journalist with her own entertainment marketing and production firm, and Stoll has had his photographs of Cuba published in major daily newspapers and exhibited his work in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Havana.
From participants worrying about tourism disrupting the prominence placed on art for art's sake to those who know that for many Cubans "to leave the island is a dream," "Havana" touches on the city's history in the 1990s, including such seemingly divergent trends as a marked rise in prostitution and a society where in general "women are strong." Meanwhile, the Cold War never really ended and the city has "less stimulation," but the arts and artists are encouraged and supported by the populace. The movie does not dig deeply into political issues that have been hashed out much more dramatically in major news events, though art and everyday reality often merge, and the country's depressed economy and unfriendly superpower neighbor are favorite topics.
Among those Havana artists profiled are musician-composer Carlos Alfonso, painter Israel del Monte, sculptor Asela Diaz, actor Jorge Perugorria, singers Ele Valdes and Carlos Varela and performance artist Tania Bruguera. The filmmakers explore Old Havana, the Malecon seawall and lesser-known barrios of the city, while the outstanding soundtrack features musical contributions by Varela, Isaac Delgado, Pablo Milanes, Company Segundo and salsa group Los Van Van, described as a "daily chronicle" of all things Cuban.
GREAT DAY IN HAVANA
cinembargo films
Producer-directors: Laurie Ann Schag, Casey Stoll
Cinematography-sound: Erika Andersen, Abel Chapa, Edward Lucero, Casey Stoll, Rafael Solis, Lauria Ann Schag
Editors: Laurie Ann Schag, Casey Stoll
Narrator: Yareli Arizmendi
Color/stereo
Running time -- 84 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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