Cuba is famous around the world for many things, from its music to its politics, but is perhaps not so famous for its sport. In fact, shortly after the revolution … Continue reading Running For The Revolution – The Power and Politics of Sport
Arturo Sotto’s “Breton is a Baby” is a discursive documentary which explores a subject you don’t often hear discussed in relation to Cuba – its sheer strangeness. Titled partly as a joke around Andre Breton, the French poet who founded the movement in 1924, the films’s premise is that “Surrealism is part of Latin America in a highly organic manner”, and after watching this film, you won’t disagree.
Miriam Rodero, Nov 2021 This year, Havana Glasgow Film Festival will be dedicating Saturday 20 November to the films of Arturo Sotto. The screenings kick off with Amor Vertical (1997), … Continue reading Arturo Sotto’s ‘Vertical Love’ and ‘Mantis Nest’ – Journeys of Escaping
This summer has been one of glory for Cuba, and with 7 gold, 3 silver and 5 bronze medals, Cuban athletes reached an amazing 14th place in the Tokyo 2020 … Continue reading Cuba, the Olympics and Juantorena
It’s been quite a year – and that’s an understatement. The entire world seems to have virtually ground to a halt, and time stood still, in the face of the … Continue reading Havana Glasgow Pandemic Festival
“We are Cuba!” is about the complex situation that the Caribbean island has lived in during the last 30 years. It is an account of how the criminal US blockade, … Continue reading Book Review: We Are Cuba by Helen Yaffe
The 1960s were the Golden Age of Cuban filmmaking, where filmmakers were swept up in the fervour of creating a new society, and the Cuban film institute ICAIC eager to … Continue reading Coffee and Contradictions
Fernando Pérez is Cuba’s most celebrated living filmmaker, one whose body of work over the last 30 years provides a vivid portrait of Cuban society. Cutting his teeth making documentaries for … Continue reading Over the Wall
Science fiction is one of the most fertile and consistently popular literary genres, with its roots often in a Utopian impulse, a wish for transformation and improvement. This is a … Continue reading Another World is Possible
La Pelicula de Ana (Ana’s Film) was a highlight of our first ever Havana Glasgow Film Festival. This satirical look at the conditions of Cuban film production may be set … Continue reading Sisters Doing It For Themselves
The theme of this year’s Havana Glasgow Film Festival, is ‘Extraordinary Cuba’, and we will be examining the ways in which this fiercely independent island nation is truly extraordinary, in … Continue reading Extraordinary Cuba – An interview with Michael Chanan
by Angus Reid for the Morning Star Havana Glasgow Film Festival – the only Cuban film festival in the UK – is aimed at enabling exchange at all levels between Scotland … Continue reading Havana Glasgow Film Festival 2019
Hace calor en La Habana – Roberto Chile Havana Glasgow Film Festival’s come a long way in five years – so far, that this year the festival went as far … Continue reading Havana Glasgow Film Festival 2019 Review
This year, Havana Glasgow Film Festival are hosting an edition of the festival in Havana, for the very first time. Here we will be showcasing the best in Scottish film, … Continue reading Nae Paseran in Havana
A Cuban Food Revolution Cuban chef Dani Acosta serves up a typical Cuban dish to the good people of Kinning Park Complex in Glasgow. At the first event of HGFF … Continue reading HGFF 2019 Podcast Episode 1 – Cuban Food
A couple of years ago, I was explaining to the editor of an esteemed music mag (I won’t say which one) that a gig review I’d written would take a … Continue reading From Strawberry and Chocolate to Fraternity Park
Image -Tomás Gutiérrez Alea “The world is already filmed, it’s now a matter of changing it.” Guy Debord – Society of the Spectacle In the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, … Continue reading The Point is to Change It
Por Craig Williams | Glasgow Live | Traducido por Cubanos en UK La próxima semana se celebra el regreso del Havana Glasgow Film Festival (HGFF) en su quinta edición desde … Continue reading Havana Glasgow Film Festival regresa a Glasgow para su quinta edición
As I See Cuba is an ambitious exhibition running at Glasgow’s premier photography gallery, Street Level Photoworks, pairing the work of top Cuban photographer Roberto Chile and Glaswegian photographer Dougie … Continue reading As I See Cuba
Alberto Korda with his iconic photo The Cuban Revolution provided some of the most iconic images of the 20th century, none more so than that of Che Guevara, whose image … Continue reading Portrait of a Revolutionary
This year, Havana Glasgow Film Festival is actually going to Havana, bringing Scottish films and DJs to the city in the spirit of cultural exchange. Here, Glasgow-based journalist Brian Beadie … Continue reading 12 Great Scottish Films
This year we’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Cuban film institute ICIAC, which arose in the aftermath of the revolution to improve Cuban society, and help educate … Continue reading 12 Great Cuban Films
This year, Havana Glasgow Film Festival examines the career and legacy of the most acclaimed and influential Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, with screenings of his films and a documentary … Continue reading Memories of Titón
As someone who attended one of our events at our most succesful Film Festival to date a few weeks ago, or someone who likes to know what we are up … Continue reading Thanks for your support!
This year’s edition of Havana Glasgow Film Festival took as its theme women in film, an apt subject given how womens’ roles in the film industry have dominated the last … Continue reading Havana Glasgow Film Festival 2018
Civic Reception at Glasgow City Chambers! – 7 November 2018 Thank you everyone for the support, it was a beautiful night. #civicreception #passporttocuba #HGFF18
This weekend sees the centenary of the birth of Margaret Tait, a filmmaker and poet who has gone from being one of the most marginalised Scottish filmmakers, working on the … Continue reading Happy Birthday Margaret Tait
This year Havana Glasgow Film Festival’s closing film is Patricia Ramos’ prize-winning El Techo (On the Roof), which has been acclaimed as one of the most interesting recent Cuban films. … Continue reading A Roof With a View
Fernando Birri was one one of the most important figures in Latin American cinema, an Argentinian filmmaker who left behind a legacy of trailblazing films, as well as inspiring generations … Continue reading A Very Old Man With Enormous Influence
Fernando Birri is one of the most important directors in Latin American cinema, but one of the least known in Europe and the US, because of the uncompromisingly radical nature … Continue reading Probably the History of an Angel
Cuba has a long, rich literary tradition, extending from Jose Marti through Alejo Carpentier, the founder of magic realism, to the ‘dirty realism’ of Pedro Juan Gutierrez. However, in … Continue reading Hello Hemingway
Sara Gomez – Image by Agnès Varda Women have had a long, complex and much-contested relationship with cinema, one that has exploded over the course of the last year with … Continue reading She's Gotta Have It – Pioneering Women Filmmakers
Sara Gómez is a crucial figure in the history of both Cuban cinema and women’s filmmaking, if one who has been marginalised, thanks mainly to her early asthma-related death at … Continue reading Sara Gomez: A black filmmaker able to achieve the mystery and silence of the true classics
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the death of one of the most important figures in Cuban cinema, Humberto Solas. Solas would extend the range of Cuban cinema at … Continue reading The Revolutionary Cinema of Humberto Solas
The Cuban revolution was one of the defining moments for early ’60s politics, one whose repercussions would echo throughout the decade. Fidel Castro’s example would be held up as an … Continue reading Memories of Underdevelopment
Luis Alberto Garcia Meeting His New Fans Havana Glasgow Film Festival has just celebrated its third edition, with its most concise, focused programme, attracting its largest audience yet. This was … Continue reading Havana Glasgow Film Festival 2017
