Cuba in the age of Obama

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Cuba in the age of Obama (Cuba nell'epoca di Obama)

original title:

Cuba nell'epoca di Obama

directed by:

screenplay:

cinematography:

editing:

Giovanni Stivali

country:

Italy

year:

2011

film run:

270'

format:

colour

status:

Ready (21/07/2011)

festivals & awards:

The documentary is divided into two parts, 2:15 hours each, and tells of an island that has been for fifty years a controversial rebel. The first part features a one thousand kilometer trip from Havana to Guantanamo: a journey inside the Country, its ways of life and contradictions, stopping in Santa Clara, where the myth of Che Guevara was born, in Bayamo, the Island’s first proud capital city, and in Santiago, the cradle of the Revolution’s mystic. A final stop is at the sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, strongly innovative.
In the second part of his documentary, Minà met in Havana the students of the University, also attended by 40.000 foreign students, as well as those of the Latin American School of Medicine (that produces the Third World Countries’ future doctors), of the Art School, of the School of Cinema (where Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez teaches creative writing), and of the famous Ballet School, led by the historic étoile Alicia Alonso.
It is practically a report aimed at knowing better the heirs of the Revolution’s great elders and the new Latin American society that yearns for democracy after years of being crushed by neo-liberal economy.
Such an effort to understand Cuba – as recently stressed by Oliver Stone – was seldom carried out, though the Revolution has been ruling the Country for fifty years and, in spite of a long, anti-historical embargo, has survived against all odds. “To travel over one thousand kilometers eating up roads inside the Island bound to the Oriente Province, from Havana to Guantanamo, while also meeting its young people, seemed to me – Minà explained – to be the best way to read Cuba more in depth than I had done in forty years.”
Considering the extent of the work, as well as its depth and the editing of stories that are generally independent one from another, the Art Direction of Giornate degli Autori – Venice Days has decided to present Cuba in the age of Obama in four parts, one hour each, to be released in four days, September 6, 7, 8, and 9. Each release will be introduced by a brief meeting with protagonists and witnesses of the to this date insurmountable incomprehension between Cuba and the Unites States. This impossible dialogue is perhaps about to change, after former President Jimmy Carter’s recent visit to Havana, where he met Raul Castro, and Fidel Castro as well. A meeting between two 85-year-old leaders possibly convinced that the era of incomprehension may be over.