8vo Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre Humberto Solás: el oceo.

When a movie is not made; then it is made music, o leisure time; it is looked; otherwise memory pictures are taken.

8vo Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre Humberto Solás: artes invitadas.

The Non-Budget International Gibara Movie Festival attracted many different arts.

Visual arts.

Cuban and international music.

Handicraft.

8vo Festival Internacional de Cine Pobre Humberto Solás: gastronomía.

Gastronomy was well served. Roast porks were never out of sight.

8th Low Budget Film Festival Humberto Solás: Main Characters

Photos: Amauris Betancourt.

Sergio Benvenuto Solás, Low-Budget Film Festival director.

Spanish Esmeralda Grao, composer, singer and actress.

Osvaldo Montes, sound track composer.

Juan José Ortiz, UNICEF rep in Cuba.

Nelson Rodriguez, film editor and National Cinema Award.

Reynaldo Gonzalez, script jury member Cuban National Literature Award.

Low-Budget Film Festival Blessed with Concert by Kelvis Ochoa

Text and photos: Amauris Betancourt.
Translation: Juan Carlos Dominguez Taño.

The popular Cuban musician Kelvis Ochoa played at the opening concert of the 8th Humberto Solas International Low-Budget Film Festival, held at the Da Silva Plaza in the city of Gibara. Prior to the concert, the traditional mass parade of participants and the people in Gibara took place in the also nicknamed “White Village of the Crabs.”

The Festival has also scheduled theoretical forums, professional meetings, plastic arts exhibitions, and the presentation of movie-works contending for the prizes as well as many other attractions such as the gathering with Nelson Rodriguez, whom the current Festival edition is devoted to. Elia Solas, Sergio Benvenuto Solas and journalist Joel del Rio are invited to the gathering.

The Da Silva Plaza will also welcome - starting this Tuesday night – the presentation of the works brought by the International Festival of the Childhood and the Youth of Madrid, Spain, due to the fact this year’s event in Gibara is dedicated to the youngest generations.

And right in that same square, singer M Alfonso will perform, as a way tom make music travel to several other places of the coastal city that bewitched Humberto Solas where he shot some of his best films.

The International Low-Budget Film Festival Opens Today in Gibara

Text and photos: Amauris Betancourt.                                                                                                   Translation: Juan Carlos Dominguez. 

A press conference at the House of Culture in the Cuban eastern city of Gibara marked the opening to the 8th edition of the Humberto Solas International Gibara Low-Budget Film Festival. But the traditional official opening will start at 19:00 (Havana time) with a parade from the Culture Square to the Calixto Garcia park, right across from the Jiba movie-theater.This highly competitive event at the also nicknamed ‘White Village of the Crabs’ is the headquarters to the Movie Festival that spreads to all Eastern Cuban provinces.

This time some 160 works coming from the United States, Chile, Spain, China and other nations, will be competing in different categories such as short movies, feature films, experimental works, rough cut project and scripts, documentaries, animation and videoart.Theoretical sessions, exhibitions and concerts are included too as part of this edition devoted to children and adolescents.

A panel on drama and alternative movie, and the concerts by Kelvis Ochoa, David Blanco, Rochy and Diego Gutierrez stand out among the most expected events.

Reynaldo Gonzalez, National Prize of Literature, and Tomas Piard are among the personalities that make up the jury, along with other international figures who would make a decision on the best works presented in the competition.

The closing ceremony will close the current edition a day before the festival comes to an end next April 24 with the prize awarding gala.

Gibara's dwellers.

Sierra del Cristal, 80 years Protecting Nature

By Amauris Betancourt.

Sierra Cristal, Northeast in Holguín province, has turned officially 80 years old last Monday April 12 as a Natural Park, since 1930. The Park shelters the flora and fauna species that favor the human being's existence.

The Natural Park, known at present as Pico Cristal Natural Park after the name of its highest elevation (1 231 meters), hosts natural treasures in biodiversity and is a resourceful means to protect the environment.

Natural parks help regulate the climate and work as biological controllers and as shelters to animal species. Pico Cristal spreads over four municipalities ( Mayarí, Sagua of Tánamo, Frank País and Segundo Frente ) and two provinces ( Holguín and Santiago de Cuba ). Pico Cristal Natural Park makes one of the 253 Protected Areas all over the country. The Cuban scientific community and people interested in environment topics payed a visit to the Park yesterday to honor the Park´s birthday.

The Hill of the Cross and the City of Holguín

By Maylin Betancourt Verdecia.

Photos: Amauris Betancourt.

Translation by Juan Carlos Dominguez.

There are stories that seem to be too old to always be remembered, but the need to remind them becomes a must from time to time. Then a tiny goblin called memory comes back from its trip to the past. It comes closer, filled with traditions, with a scent to roots and preceded by a mystic whisper warning, each step it makes, that "the nation that forgets its history runs the risk of getting lost."

The climbing of 458 steps serves to notice why Holguin people praise that much the Hill of the Cross, just as a symbol. Everything looks better from up there. Imagination meets no border and even some people assure sadness goes away while looking all around.

The truth is that a few people know the mount was baptized as the Hill of the Cross back on May 3rd, 1790, because that day Fray Francisco Antonio de Alegria climbed the Bayado Hill, as it was then called, to place a wooden cross on the top. Since then, the cross has remained there and has become a jealous guardian safeguarding the city of Holguin.

And to honor that event, Holguin holds every year the popular May Pilgimage Festival, which begins precisely with a pilgrimage by Holguin dwellers climbing up the hill to make offerings, to beg for prosperity in the times to come, or to have fun.

Anyway, anyone coming to Holguín, nicknamed also the Cuban City of the Parks, for the first time, cannot miss the sweet challenge of climbing it.

Photos

Cuban Salsa Orchestra NG la Banda Gives a Concert in Holguín

By Amauris Betancourt.

The Cuban popular orchestra NG la Banda closed, last Sunday in the Calixto García park, the celebrations for the 465th anniversary of the San Isidoro de Holguín settlement that gave birth to this present-day city.

The Tosco, NG la Banda director nicknamed so popularly, congratulated the Holguin people as he made them dance with his music acknowledged nationally and internationally for 22 years now since it was founded and whose birthday agreed with the very day of the concert in Holguín that lasted until this Monday’s early morning.

PHOTOREPORTAGES

Holguín: The City of the Parks, the City we Love
By Maylín Betancourt Verdecia.
Photos: Amauris Betancourt.

Each city has its history; pages marked by that unerasable footprint that smell of past, present and future. My Holguín's parks are as old as the city itself and have borne witness to the going back and forth of all the Holguín generations.

When thinking of them I can not help bringing to mind the joy, sadness, friendship, dreams and loves its benches have warmed. The first parks –the San Isidoro Square or now Julio Grave de Peralta Park and the Parade Ground nowadays Calixto García Park, were born in 1720 to become the heart of the city.

Today we have many more and, as in the beginning, they still are the most important urban places. They have it right to say that the one visiting Holguín for the first time gets so delighted with the parks and its rhythmically street disposition and coherent organization that they always want to come back for a visit.