Havana Glasgow Film Festival

Cuba, certainly at one point, had nothing to be proud of in its treatment of its queer communities, but things have changed to the point where it’s now one of the most progressive countries on LGBT rights outside of Europe, even if the old myths remain. It has one of the highest degrees of trans visibility anywhere in the world, with gender corrective surgery provided by the health service, and equal treatment in employment law guaranteed.

The Cold War cultivated an atmosphere of high paranoia, and threw up many intriguing stories of
spies, espionage and counter-espionage. One of the most notorious and comic example is the CIA’s reputed, doomed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, through a series of increasingly outlandish manoeuvres that would sound more at home in Austin Powers than James Bond, ranging from explosive cigars, poisoned pens to bacillus-infested scuba diving suits, with optional booby trapped conch.