CUBA Propaganda Pt 2

old posters from a former propaganda artist's house

cuban flag image-play

random box on the side of the highway

tourists taking photos of the che monument in santa clara, city of che

VOLVERÁN! cienfuegos, plaza josé martí

more baseball stadium deco--'the cuban sport, by way of victories'

más pelota-

cuban sport, well-being, health, happiness, solidarity

baseball and film festival

The 31^st annual International Festival of New Latin American Films started two nights ago in Havana, and we went to the inauguration, where we heard Chucho Valdéz play piano and this famous woman sang, and then an old man gave an extremely long speech and then a very strange Argentinean film was played, <<Los secretos de sus ojos>>. Today someone told me that apparently that film is supposed to win the festival. Personally, I thought it was a little too much, but these are my impressions from it:

-Argentinean accents are obnoxious. They sound like they are trying to speak Italian.

-The camera angles were very strange. I was impressed, however, by their effect, even if I felt it was trying a little too hard at times. Somehow the frames managed to convey to me an image of the world where loneliness and monsters reigned, even before the movie was explicitly about these things. In the beginning of the film, when things still looked like it could just be a normal love story, I started to feel a terribleness welling up inside me—a knowledge of the world as terrible—and by the end of the film, I realized that this was intentional. I guess that’s a pretty impressive feat.

-Too much. It turned out to be a monster story inside a love story inside a detective story inside an age story inside a love story. Meta to the gazillionth power, too long, I thought it would end about ten times but there would be another plot twist and after all that revelation about monstrosity and loneliness the message was simple and trite: time doesn’t kill love. Of course, after 25 years and 2.5 tortuous hours of those twists, murders, and sadness, the two people who truly love each other from the start of the movie get together. Now what’s the point of that untruth?

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Yesterday I went to a Cuban baseball game—Industriales (Havana’s team) against Holguin (visiting team). It cost 1 peso (about 5 cents), the stadium was relatively empty (it was a big stadium), but the people who were there were pretty emotionally invested. There were two groups of people with clankers and trumpets who would play music like a little cheer squad. When good things happened some people who get up and start shaking their asses. Everyone was very supportive of the team, in a way that felt like family, even though Industriales lost 7-8.