Sons of Cuba is an extraordinary tribute to the indomitable spirit of the Cuban people and a stinging visual critique of the decrepitude of parts of Havana. Director Andrew Lang follows the story of three 11-year-old boxers training to be champions in Havana’s state boxing academy. Cuba leads the world in amateur boxing; its giants of the ring have been garlanded with 63 Olympic medals, 32 of them gold.

Influenced by Cubism and one of the initiators of the Cuban avant-garde movement, she recreates very personal themes, expertly using color in windows, Cuban fruits, tropical flowers and elements that are easily identifiable as Cuban in nature; the marked coloring is generally delimited by thick black lines which are reminiscent of stained-glass windows of 19th century Cuban colonial mansions.

…what I am relating is not a story,
But an unsullied history - my history.
I have lived an honorable life,
In a style that the world is losing.

To call Cubans cinephiles is a gross understatement: Cinema looms in the national consciousness. It makes sense, then, that if any major art form offers a vivid, frank window into Cuban society, it’s film. Cuban cinema has gathered accolades from around the globe; a glance at the list below reveals awards and honorable mentions for a great number of films. Before the revolution, Cuban cinema existed in a diluted form controlled by the U.S. film industry.

It would be much too risky to list the “best books” of Cuban literature, considered one of the richest in the Americas. Instead, we prefer to suggest a number of titles that we believe are essential reading in order to gain an understanding of the culture and idiosyncrasy of the Cuban people.

Imagine yourself in front of a 16th-century fortress facing the Malecon in Old Havana, Cuba. The fortress occupies a vast expanse of land with a wall that extends the length of the fortress, surrounded by a deep moat, once legend to have been filled with crocodiles. The fortress is comprised of underground tunnels, old dungeons and hundreds of ancient cannons. It is rumored to have been built to resist pirates, buccaneers and corsairs. Every evening, since the 18th century, there is a symbolic firing of the cannons at 9pm.

For approx a month now, a delightful herd of elephants and a strange plague of revolting insects have seemed to capture the interest of Habaneros. “I wonder where the elephants are today.” “Did you already see the roaches?”

Anyone who climbed around, crouched under, or peered above the herd of inflated metal elephants that made its way around Havana during the first week of the 2009 biennial is familiar with the work of Jose Emilio Fuentes Fonseca (also known as JEFF). His name was on the tip of the tongues of those who visited with the elephants—along with those who murmured about their gargantuan size or wondered just how they’d been ...

His photographs are everywhere: in offices, government agencies, and some homes, yet Fidel Castro has not been given to posing for painters, nor have the Cuban authorities encouraged the representation of their leader through any other means than photography.

This week, this majestic dame of a city plays hostess to the 30th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema. Hundreds of film producers, actors and participants alike have flown in from across the globe, mostly from South and Central America, though there have been eminent European and American visitors here too, with names such as Mike Leigh and Benicio del Toro crowning the list of heavyweights who are familiar to Western audiences.

Many like to picture Cuba as a humorless place under Fidel’s watch, in spite of the long tradition of “choteo”—clever Cuban banter—and despite the plethora of jokes about the socialist economy and social problems. There is the one about the Canadian tourist in Havana who enters a record store and asks if they have the song “Morir de amor” (To die of love) by The Fabrisa Sisters “en 45 revoluciones” (in 45 revolutions/a 45 rpm record).

Who dreamed of me? Who named me? Or was it me that dreamt? I've always suspected That I was Shadow's child.

which has over 4000 pictures of Cuba. His book, from which these pictures are taken, was published in 2005 by Corazon Press. The book is available through the publisher at corazonpress.com. It is a 120 page 12"x12" hardcover coffee table book with 2006 duo-tone images; $65 USD. Also available through Air Leaf Distributors and at select book stores. Contact Mr. Kenny for information on buying prints of his work through

Habaneros of the 1940s and early 1950s lived with their ears glued to the radio. Cuba ranked first among all Latin American countries in per capita radio ownership, and its capital city was largely responsible for this figure. In playwright Virgilio Piñera's classic drama about this period, Aire Frío, a working-class household that can't afford an electric fan in the summer heat nonetheless owns a radio.

In this fascinating first-ever portrait of an unusual relationship between two enigmatic world leaders, author and historian Robert Wright writes of three critical days when Canadian politics played on the international stage.

Not many photographers arriving in Cuba manage to elude the island’s exuberant natural scenery and spectacular colonial architecture. Postcard-perfect beaches, clear cobalt seas and buildings of exceptional beauty and splendour will usually take hold of the photographer’s lens. However, if it’s not the island’s natural wonders or its eclectic and diverse urban landscapes that attract the camera, it’s inevitably the gregarious and gesticulating inhabitants who seem to live more outdoors than in their own homes.

Towards the end of the 1980’s, Cuban art reached something of a cross-roads as the relationship between individual artists and the institutional system came under strain. At this time the position of the government towards certain artists whose works raised questions and doubts regarding Cuban culture and society was widely perceived as having reached the limits of its tolerance which, prior to this time, had been very open and accepting towards artistic expression.

This drawing was inspired by the most stunning and beautifully written novel published in Cuba in the last ten years, "Cien Botellas en una Pared" by the prizewinning young Cuban novelist Ena Lucía Portela. Published in 2002, it has been translated into French, but not yet into English. It paints a sharp, compelling tragi-comic picture of the heroine's progress from school in the 1980s to maturity in the 1990s, against the background of a mansion long given over to multi occupation in Havana's louche but still distinguished Vedado district.

Águedo Alonso lives in a beautiful house-cum-studio in the vicinity of Club Campestre, approx 30 km from Havana, surrounded by the vivid colours and the imbricate shapes of the exuberant tropical vegetation he loves so much. His intimate parlour quickly reveals our host's affections--photographs of his children and grandchildren, furniture made of plant fibres, miniature antiques from all over the world, lamps of different styles and epochs, and paintings and installations representative of each stage of his production.

There were no Hollywood stars or attendant paparazzi. Hype, glamorous red carpet photo shoots and posh after-parties were also nowhere to be seen at the 5th International Cine Pobre Festival, in the eastern Cuban town of Gibara this past April. But don't take Cine 'Pobre' too literally—while even many Cubans may struggle to find this picturesque fishing village on a map, the International Low-Budget Film Festival has ...

During the first two weeks of December, a virulent plague takes hold of Havana. Immunisation is impossible and there’s no option but to surrender. The consolation is that there are so many fellow-sufferers with whom to compare notes on symptoms, cures and pulling extended sickies from work.

Theatrical performances were organized in the Island as early as the 17th century during the Corpus Christi and patron saint's day festivities then held in every Cuban town. The 19th century was a brilliant period in romantic theatre, while popular or vernacular theatre was very well received by audiences.

Bold, beautiful and provocative, they stare confidently out of the page with an irresistible mixture of humour and seduction. Havana in the 20s and 30s was one of the world's smartest cities, as glamorous and important as London, Paris or New York, and Massaguer's illustrations capture perfectly the mood of those heady Havana decades.

It was a great surprise when we walked into Raúl Cordero’s studio, whose location in a central avenue of El Vedado offers a splendid panoramic view of a district where art nouveau, art deco, grandiloquent eclecticism and sober rationalism blend together in a nonconflicting shape—in the words of novelist Alejo Carpentier—‘the style of a styleless city’.

He has a number of very distinct styles of work. He is most well known for his work with small walking human figures cut out of the bodywork of old cars, water tanks full of holes or containers made of the most varied types of materials. These anonymous little men, sometimes monochrome, sometimes multicolored, which follow the route traced out for them by the artist-demiurge—some in the opposite direction—rapt in thought, alone in the crowd or drawn together in their loneliness, ...

…In Alicia Leal’s work, in which one can appreciate the appropriation of medieval color theory, spatial layout and a decorative delight in fabrics, floors and curtains reminiscent of Matisse, women play a central role, either providing refuge as in the recurring image of the Virgin of Charity, patron saint of Cuba and eternal protector of mariners and fishermen syncretised with the sensuous Ochún of Afro-Cuban religions; in the poignant Death of Martí...

What have you got in your fridge, right now? Prosciutto, black olives, clotted cream, Parmesan, smoked salmon, strawberries, Dom Pérignon? A long-forgotten, green-furred can of something that ceased to be fit for human consumption decades ago, a bottle of vile-smelling solidified milk and some distressing-looking wizened objects, obviously organic but now unrecognisable? Your clothes? ...