penúltimos días

The Casa Bacardi Film Festival seeks to highlight the experiences of Cuban exiles and members of the Cuban-American community.
Specifically, the festival captures the unique events of these individuals via the medium of filmmaking. Ultimately, its purpose is to promote the inherent creativity of those willing to share their works and to recognize the accomplishments and difficulties of those living in or influenced by the Cuban Diaspora.

FEATURED PRESENTATIONS
CUBAN-AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL
MAY 5 - 9, 2008
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Monday, May 5, 2008

7:00 PM
Fidel Castro: ¿Lo Absolverá la Historia?
Director: Eduardo Palmer Audio - Spanish & English
Subtitles - English 59 minutes

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

7:00 PM
Freedom Flight
Director: Frank Quetglas
Rated – PG 13
Audio – Spanish & English
Subtitles – English 80 minutes

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

7:00 PM
Beyond Borders
Director: Brian Ging
Producer: David Szamet
Executive Producer: Simon Burrow Audio: English 75 minutes

Thursday, May 8, 2008

7:00 PM
Dream Havana
Director & Producer: Gary Marks Audio – English & Spanish
Subtitles – English 81 minutes

Friday, May 9, 2008

7:00 PM
Alamar Express: El Hombre Nuevo
Director & Co-producer: Patrycja Satora
Audio: Spanish
Subtitles: English 57 minutes

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Film Synopsis
Fidel Castro: ¿Lo Absolverá la Historia?

Director: Eduardo Palmer
This documentary asks what was Fidel Castro to the leftists and revolutionaries of the world; what was Fidel Castro to Latin America; and what was Fidel Castro to Cuba? At the end of the documentary the question of “Will History Absolve Fidel Castro” is asked to the persons interviewed such as Andres Oppenheimer (Argentina); Alvaro Vargas Llosa (Peru); Patricia Poleo (Venezuela); Jorge Dominguez; Carlos Alberto Montaner; an ecologist; a peasant woman from Cuba; a doctor from Villa Clara, etc. It is a study about how 50 years of the Castro government has affected Cuba and what the country has experienced.
This will be the premier of this documentary.

Approx. – 59 minutes
Audio – Spanish & English
Subtitles - English
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Freedom Flight

Director: Frank Quetglas
A comedy about a young man who is escaping Cuba on a “Freedom Flight.” Or is it, because there is something not quite right going on. For one thing, the pilot has a beard, smokes a cigar and wears fatigues. He can’t pilot worth a dime and “has not learned to fly in over 45 years.” The passengers are a sidesplitting combination of misfits, militia men and desperates. One wonders where the flight will finally end, if it is not cut short by the comic Strategic Air Command.
Approx. – 80 min.
Rated – PG 13
Audio – Spanish & English
Subtitles – English
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Beyond Borders
Director: Brian Ging
Producer: David Szamet
Executive Producer: Simon Burrow
Beyond Borders moves past the headlines and takes an in-depth look at the hot-button issues of legal and illegal immigration. Beyond Borders explores the psychological forces driving the immigration controversy from both sides of the debate. Anti-immigration activists demand we stop this “illegal alien invasion,” while some pro-immigration forces speak of a Reconquista, a reclaiming of the American Southwest by Mexico. In search of a middle ground, Beyond Borders travels across the U.S. and beyond to give voices to those on the front-line of this issue, including candid interviews with Border Patrol agents, radio celebrities, demographers, the Minute Men, potential migrants, and a host of experts including Noam Chomsky (Distorted Morality) and Gustavo Arellano (Ask A Mexican). Beyond Borders is an entertaining and enlightening film that asks: Is migration a basic human right?

Approx: 75 min.
Audio: English
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Dream Havana
Director & Producer: Gary Marks
In August 1994, more than 33,000 Cubans attempted to escape the island by sea. Two writers, friends since adolescence, are faced with a choice: continue struggling with the hardships of the island or brave the open water on a homemade raft. Ernesto Santana chooses Cuba, Jorge Mota chooses the sea. This is the story of their struggles, their successes and the friendship that binds them. Filmed on location in Cuba, the U.S. and Mexico.

Approx. - 81 min.
Audio – English & Spanish
Subtitles – English
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Alamar Express: El Hombre Nuevo
Director & Co-producer: Patrycja Satora
“Alamar Express: El Hombre Nuevo” documents the story of a group of young Cuban artists striving to create a space for cultural expression in one of Havana’s sprawling suburban wastelands. Their community of Alamar, a Soviet relic of the 1960s, was born out of the failed utilitarian concept of a “model city,” and their people out of the revolutionary ideal of the New Man.
By seeking a future in a country where time stands still, these young artists struggle to transform the cultural desert of Alamar. Using multidisciplinary art, creative performance, and a positive spiritual message, the group tries to awaken their community to a new social reality in Cuba, where artistic expression is one of the last forms of independent thought permitted by the government.
A unique cultural and social phenomenon in Cuba, the group rejects the decades-old concept of a New Man and introduces the world to the Hombre Nuevo, living in the collective spirit of today’s Alamar community. Under the modern-day backdrop of a vanguard Cuban counterculture movement, “Alamar Express” exemplifies the hopes of a struggling nation through the independent voices of some of Cuba’s most unique and talented artists.

Approx: 57 min.
Audio: Spanish
Subtitles: English

CONTACT
Casa Bacardi
Cuban-American Film Festival
Casa Bacardi is located in the building of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies on the University of Miami Campus at 1531 Brescia Avenue, Coral Gables, Florida 33124.

Cost: $8.00 each film. Seating capacity limited. For reservations, please call the Institute at (305) 284-CUBA (2822).

For additional information or details contact Eugene Pons at iccas@miami.edu.