The Cuban Cinema Series Miami Film Festival A new season will open on December 5 with the screening of the documentary My Cubawithin the framework of the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Celia Cruzreported the University of Miami-Dade County.
Directed by Cuban producer and composer Oscar Gómez, the film reflects a 2001 concert in which Celia Cruz, the Spanish Emilio Alberto Aragón, better known as ‘Miliki’, and recognized figures of Cuban music in exile such as Willy Chirino and Albita Rodríguez, climbed onto a stage installed without prior notice on Calle Ocho in Miami, a central enclave of the Cuban diaspora, a report from EFE.
Gómez, with a career linked to some of Cruz’s best-known albums and winner of several Grammy awards, filmed My Cuba based on materials from the concert and conversations between the icon and ‘Miliki’ about the city of Havana and the musical evolution of the Cuban diaspora.
The documentary also incorporates testimonies from artists such as Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval and the late writer Carlos Alberto Montaner.
The screening, which will be followed by a discussion with the director, will take place at the university’s Koubek Center, the usual headquarters of the Cuban Film Series, a program created in 1993 by critic Alejandro Ríos and considered one of the most constant spaces for the dissemination of Cuban cinema outside the island, the Spanish agency states.
The Celia Cruz centenary programming is integrated into a line of work that seeks to document the cultural memory of the Cuban exile and promote free access to historical and contemporary productions.
The singer, who died in 2003 at the age of 77, maintains a central influence in the Cuban community in South Florida and continues to be a reference for new generations of musicians.
In 2024, the US Treasury chose her as one of the five women honored in the ‘American Women Quarters’ series, designing a commemorative coin with her image, she recalls. EFE.
