Three films at the 40th-annual Miami Film Festival, opening Friday, March 3, and continuing through Sunday, March 12, at various venues throughout the city, offer a view of the costs of those battles for some artists and, implicitly, for the country — but also hope.
Nicolás Reynoso and director Emilio Oscar Alcalde during the filming of AfroCuba ’78 Miami Film Festival photo
Two of the films made it to Miami Film Festival thanks to the support and patronage of ArtesMiami, a decades old organization founded and lead by FACE's past Chair Aida Levitan.
The films are:
AfroCuba '78 (5:45 p.m. Saturday, March 4, at Silverspot Cinema, 300 SE Third Ave., Miami) tells the story of a once-promising jazz group, a never-released album, the breaking up of the original band, and the resulting scattering of some of its members.
Bebo (7 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, at Silverspot Cinema, 300 SE Third Ave., Miami; streaming begins at noon, Monday, March 6) offers a view of the life in exile of the pianist, arranger, and bandleader Bebo Valdés, a towering figure of the Golden Age of Cuban music, in Sweden. In disagreement with the path of the Revolution, he left the country in 1960. He died in Sweden in 2013 without ever returning to Cuba.