Cuban Cinema Series Returns To Miami Dade College After 17-Year Hiatus

Alejandro Riós knows the power movies have. 

As a film critic in Cuba, he witnessed the threat cinema posed to the government’s communist regime. 

Riós recalls the boldness of three young filmmakers—Ricardo Vega, Jorge Crespo and Juansi—who were invited to showcase their work at the University of Miami in the 1980s, but  the Cuban government forbade them from attending.

Their response?

They created El Informe, a three-minute satire film questioning why they couldn’t go. 

Inspired by creators like those brash filmmakers, Riós ached to create a platform that highlighted the talent of directors who were unafraid to expose the political realities of the Caribbean island.

So in 1993, he created the Cuban Cinema Series. 

For more than a decade, Riós, who retired as the College’s Hispanic media specialist in 2018, presented monthly Cuban films at the Wolfson Auditorium.

But the series died after 2007 when Riós started hosting La Mirada Indiscreta, a show that analyzes Cuban cinematography on AmericaTeVe. 

Seventeen years later, the program has been resuscitated. In January, the Miami Film Festival announced that the Cuban Cinema Series, led by 71-year-old Riós, was making a comeback.

It will be an offshoot of the festival and will be sponsored by ArtesMiami. 

“It feels like the perfect time to announce the Cuban Cinema Series,” said James Woolley, MFF director, in an MDC press release. “With a newly renovated Koubek Theater as part of the Miami Film Festival Family, we have an outstanding venue to showcase beloved classics for the whole community.”

The CCS rebooted on Jan. 26 with the screening of 1979’s El Súper. 

Directed by León Ichaso and Orlando Jiménez Leal, the film follows the life of Roberto, a Cuban exile struggling to adjust to his new life as a building superintendent in New York City. 

It continued on Feb. 29 with the screening of 8-A, a 1993 documentary that highlights the trial and execution of General Arnaldo Tomás Ochoa Sánchez, the highest-ranking general of the Cuban revolution, also directed by Leal .

At the MFF, Riós will lead “Spotlight on Cuba,” a program featuring nine modern Cuban films, such as Oceans Are The Real Continents, a black-and-white film by Italian director Tommaso Santambrogio. It shines light on the pain associated with separation using three separate storylines and is set in San Antonio De Los Baños, Cuba. 

The CCS will resume on May 16 with a screening of El Caso Padilla (The Padilla Affair), a documentary that showcases the trial of Heberto Padilla, a poet who criticized the Cuban Revolution. This year’s series will conclude in July. 

“It’s important to keep on the torch of Cuban Cinema,” Riós said. “You will have to go back to cinema—with good or bad films—to reveal the truth about what has been happening in Cuba for the past 65 years.”

All movies in the Cuban Cinema Series are shown at the Koubek Center, 2705 S.W. Third Street. 

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