JULY 2011 For information and registration, please go to the conference website. ---- MARCH 2011 For information, please contact Emmanuel Pereira: melodicrhythmATgmail OCTOBER 2010 SEPTEMBER 2010

Friday, September 24, 2010 at 4 PM

Book presentation: Cultura y letras cubanas en el siglo XXI

Araceli Tinajero Editor Associate Professor, City College of New York and The Graduate Center, CUNY Presenters: Odette Casamayor Cisneros Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut at Storrs Rachel Price Assistant Professor, Princeton University Moderator: Mauricio Font Director, Bildner Center The Graduate Center, Skylight Conference Room, 365 Fifth Avenue (@ 34th Street) Please make sure to pre-register by sending an e-mail to cubaproject@gc.cuny.edu. About the book: The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 opened new debate over the processes that would transform Cuba’s situation. Ever since, there have been a series of discussions that center on the changes taking place in the cultural, artistic, economic, social, demographic, political, and structural environments in Cuba. Intellectuals from different academic disciplines (art, anthropology, history, literary studies, and sociology) develop such ideas in the essays that comprise this book, which covers a variety of themes, including comic books, Cuban art photography, film, rock, historiographies, and the presence of the former Soviet Union in Cuba, as well as literature. For more information on the book, click here. About the Speakers: Araceli Tinajero is a Mexican scholar and the author of Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano, El lector de tabaquería, El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader. She is presently co-editing Technology and Culture in Twentieth Century Mexico. Her Kokoro, el Japón en mi corazón is forthcoming. Odette Casamayor Cisneros is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Literature and Culture at the University of Connecticut/Storrs. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Havana, and obtained her PhD in Arts and Literature from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), París. In 2003, her essay, “Negros de papel. Algunas apariciones del negro en la narrativa cubana después de 1959,” won the Juan Rulfo literary essay award, which is granted by Radio France Internationale. She is currently writing a book about Post-Soviet Cuban literature and ethics. Rachel Price works on Cuban literature and culture; media and literature; and comparative imperialisms. She is currently completing a book tentatively entitled The Object of the Atlantic, about the emergence of a post-romantic aesthetics of concretude in Brazil, Cuba, and Spain in the wake of changes in empire and capitalism in the 1890s. She has published articles on José Martí’s haunting of Cuban Republican literature among others. JULY 2010 Dear all, As a reminder, paper proposals are due at the end of July for the Bildner Center's 2011 conference, Cuba Futures Symposium. If you have not already submitted a panel proposal, this is your chance to submit your own paper proposal.  The conference runs from March 31 to April 2nd, and is a great opportunity to hear about all kinds of recent Cuba-related research as well as connect, or reconnect, with colleagues. Also, Bildner is showing "The Sugar Curtain" (El telón de azúcar) This will be the second screening in the Bildner Center / Cuba Project's Summer 2010 Cuban Film Series. Professor Jerry Carlson, The City College & CUNY Graduate Center, is the curator for the Cuban Film Series and will also be presenting the films. DATE: Thursday, July 22, 2010, 6:00 PM LOCATION: Segal Theater, The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue (@ 34th Street) About the Film: Director: Camila Guzmán Urzúa Year: 2005 Run time: 80 minutes Synopsis: The Sugar Curtain is an autobiographical documentary that portrays the “golden years” of the Cuban Revolution through the eyes of the filmmaker and her former classmates, who grew up during the 1970’s and 80’s. The film recounts this generation’s childhood and explores what happened later when the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe ceased to exist and Cuba’s economy collapsed. With clear and sensitive language, the film is a deep-rooted collective autobiography, from the intimacy of everyday life of this generation of Cubans. Winner of the Havana Film Festival, Latin American Film Festival, San Sebastian International Film Festival, and other awards. To reserve, email cubaproject@gc.cuny.edu. For information about the upcoming films in this summer’s Cuban Film Series and for information about all upcoming events, please visit www.bildner.org (click “Events”). APRIL 2010 April 24. University of Surrey, UK. Dept. of Theater and Dance Symposium: Cuba(n) Moves: Performance, politics and the popular. April 19-25. Festival de Cine Pobre, Gibara, Cuba April 16-May 30. Centro Wilfredo Lam, Havana. Exhibit: The Keloids Project. April 16-23. Havana New York Film Festival April 15. CUNY's Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, #9206. NYC. 4pm Talk: " From Colonial Masters to Immigrants: Spaniards in 20th cent Cuba", By Consuelo Naranjo. (in Spanish) April 13. Florida International U., Miami FL.  2pm @ Graham Center Panther Suite Lecture: " Los Laberintos the la Elite Politica Cubana en la segunda decada del siglo." By Haroldo Dilla, visiting professor at the University of Puerto Rico and former researcher at the Centro de Estudios de America (CEA), in Havana. (in Spanish) April 7. University of Miami. 5:30pm. Whitten Learning Center 1989. Lecture: Black Magic. Ritual Spanish and African Tongues in Cuba and Miami, by Armin Schwegler (UC-Irvine). April 6. Yale University. New Haven, CT 12pm @ MacMillan Center, Latin American Studies (#208) Lecture: " Medical Diplomacy: Fifty Years of Cuba's Soft-Power Politics"  by Julie Feinsilver (author of Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad and visiting researcher at Georgetown U.) ---- MARCH The San Diego Latino Film Festival takes place between Thursday March 11, 2010, and Sunday March 21, 2010. Cuba always has a presence in the festival, whether directly or indirectly; to a large extent thanks to the passion for Cuba of the president of its executive board and guest programmer Gonzalo López. This year, only one film from the island has made it to San Diego, Mirta Ibarra's Titón, a memory of her husband Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.  In addition, we have the latest film by Cuban American filmmaker Leon Ichaso, Paraiso, along with his previous about a Nuyorrican poet, Piñero; along with three documentaries, one British: Sons of Cuba, and two North American: Chevolution, and La Clave (ok, La Clave is not about Cuba, but about the other wing of one musical bird)... Program, location, schedule and other information can be found in the San Diego Latino Film Festival website. Here are links to each of the aforementioned films, in chronological order of screening: LA CLAVE (dir: Mariella Sosa. Miami/PR 2009) Sunday, 3/14, 1:30 pm. Screen 7. TITON (Dir: Mirta Ibarra, 2009)- Sunday, March 14, 3:30 pm, Screen 6 PARAISO (Dir: Leon Ichaso, 2009)- multiple times, check schedule PIÑERO (dir: Leon Ichaso 2002) Sat. March 20, 3:30 pm (screen 6) SONS OF CUBA (Britain, dir: Andrew Lang 2009)-Sunday, March 21, 1pm, Screen 6 CHEVOLUTION (Trisha Ziff, 2009) Sunday, March 21, 5pm, Screen 3 (See review on The Guardian) --- JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2010 (links to programs are on the titles)

Feb 12-14. New Traditions in Black Performance | Williams College (Massachussets)

Feb. 11-21. Havana's International Book Fair

This year's fair features Russia as its guest country. For a guided tour of this year's program, I recommend the selections made by Cuban writer and Russian literature expert Jorge Ferrer, in his blog, El Tono de la Voz.

Feb 11-13: 8th Conference on Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at Florida International University, Cuban Research Institute.

DOWNLOAD FULL PROGRAM DOWNLOAD REGISTRATION FORM

Jan 30-31: "The 1950s in the Caribbean" at UCLA

Download Full Program Download UCLA campus map

Jan 28-29:  "Collecting Cuban Art" at Tulane U. Stone Center for Latin American Studies

A two day symposium featuring Antonio E. Fernandez "Tonel", Holly Block, Al Nodal, Sandra Levinson and others. It is part of the ongoing Cuba Si! series of talks and exhibits on contemporary Cuban art, taking place in New Orleans this winter and spring 2010.

JANUARY 13. Film Screening: Sons of Cuba (dir: Andrew Lang)

Wed, Jan 13 at 7:30 PM (free) @James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall 1409,  UCLA campus Sons of Cuba is set in the legendary Havana Boxing Academy, and this is no ordinary institution.  This academy is a boarding school that hand picks nine-year-old boys, and turns them into the best boxers in the world.  The results have been stunning: Cuba has dominated Olympic boxing for the past quarter of a century. The boys’ duties extend far beyond the ring.  They are groomed not only as world-class fighters, but also to be international symbols for their country, dubbed by Castro: "the standard bearers of the Revolution." Sons of Cuba follows the stories of three young hopefuls through eight dramatic months of training and schooling as they prepare for the biggest event of their lives: Cuba's National Boxing Championship for Under-12's.   During the season, crisis strikes: Fidel Castro, the boys' leader and inspiration, is taken ill, and all of Cuba's Olympic boxing champions defect to the USA, leaving the boys contemplating a future which is altogether different from the one they have been taught to believe in.[Note:  Many of the boxers are Afro-Cuban and, as was the case in the United States in the past and to some extent still today, boxing (athletics) is often seen as a way to “make it;” an avenue out of poverty.] This film won multiple awards, including Best Documentary at Los Angeles Latin American Film Festival 2009 and Best Documentary at Rome Film Festival 2009. For more information about the film, please visit the film's website at http://www.sonsofcuba.com.  (The filmmaker’s notes are very interesting ). More info on this screening HERE