Cultural Gala Pays Homage to Iberoamerican House in Holguín

By Amauris Betancourt.

Colombian Folk Group Tequendama.

A cultural gala held last night in the Eddy Suñol Theater payed homage to the Iberoamerican House founded 19 years ago.

The internacional spectacle included Colombian Folk Group Tequendma, the Barbadian-British reggae singer Magnet Man and the local tradicional music group Los Guayaberos as well as the Spanish Ballet from Holguín.

For more pictures view: http://mauroflash.blogspot.com/2012/10/gala-homenaje-la-casa-de-iberoamerica.html


Photography Exhibit “Holguín: 50 years of Revolution”

By Manuel García Verdecia.

A great poet once said: The eye sighted is no eye because you see it; / it is eye because it sees you. And these verses are useful, extrapolating them, for my referring them to the photographer's art: it is not because we see his photographs; it is essentially and significantly because we bear out he sees. Seeing means will, sensitivity, awareness of a perspective and a utility. The photo exhibit, which is being opened to everyone’s wanting-to-look-at-it eyes, is meant to pay homage to the most decisively turning point in our country's history, the triumph of the olive-green Revolution. The young photographer Amauris Betancourt climbs so a higher step in his short but well en-route career, which already includes no few achievements.
A conscientious look is observed in the photographer works; mindful of what it happens in the ever-changing daily life, of the gestures revealed in men in his acting on earth. The exhibit is made up of 50 photos picked up after a hard work of decanting, very complex if it is taken into account that a reporter's work piles up images with an almost exponential increase. It grows up with the passing of days due to the tuning of his perspicacity, the familiarity with the occupation and the rooting of an ineffable need of catching instants. But, as he had to arrange sort of a panorama to show, rather than the art of the photographer, the art to produce a country during half a century – it does not mean leaving out quality while choosing –, because the artist has imposed strict boundaries.
However, Amauris succeeds. Different contingencies, one way or another, of a group of human beings are portrayed here while making an effort and displaying their potential in divergent uneven existence paths: work, study, art, sports, recreation. That is, the assortment of life. Taking a good look three subjects are dealt with and brought once and again to the surface repeatedly making up the exhibit’s spinal cord. In the first place, human groups. Even though there are some excellent photos dedicated to personalities of the culture – Mario Kindelán, Silvio, Nicolás de la Peña, Estela, Solás, Frank Fernández –, priority is not set on individuality, but on the movement of human groups. This is noteworthy because it is a decisive aspect of the process we have lived these years. Some men joined to others, linked, performing on in a common purpose. Another aspect is the endurance of life. Beings striving, making the most of it in an assignment: at the installation of a nickel belt conveyor or some high-tension lines or a theatre stage, the baseball stadium or the classroom. But there are always people doing, assuming their jobs in strive with life. The third subject, no less interesting, touches on gestures synthesizing an existence's significant element. The sports hero to the shade of another greater hero, with equal meditative attitude; the hands of the reporter fixing the data that will become later the news touring the world over; the artistic director or the audio technician paying attention meticulously to what he does; the barber fulfilling scrupulously his role while reflecting the elapsed time; the elementary school student sleeping with a watchful flag in her cheek; the rude hand holding the trimming hook in the break amid work.

They are, in my opinion, the higher instants of the exhibit, for its warmth and depth in picturing the man in his daily life and, at the same time, in his greatness. Amauris defines very accurately his subjects. He uses properly framing to expose what he aims at and to avoid undue ambiguities. He likes the contrasts of lines, as well as the shades of light revealing the dynamics of the photographed object. In short, he knows how to demonstrate the intentionality that moves him, because without it there is no art.

Let's congratulate the artist for this photographic exposition, well balanced and expressive in its broadest sense. This shown art makes justice to the event he pays homage to. I said it already in the beginning: “The eye sighted is no eye because you see it; / it is eye because he sees you”, he sees us; he sees everything and he sees it sympathetically, with delicacy, with a man’s attentive feeling.

The Jose Marti Publishing House Releases Book on Holguin

By Jose Miguel Avila / Wednesday, 24 December 2008 / editorweb@radioangulo.icrt.cu

(Dec. 23) The Jose Marti publishing house has just released the chromed book ‘De Cuba Holguin’ which portrays views of that eastern Cuban province.

The book stands out many features of that gorgeous Cuban site that Christopher Columbus baptized as the most beautiful land human eyes have ever seen.

Its geography, flora, fauna, history, culture and tourism values are targeted in the pages of this text.

Its authors, poet and narrator Lourdes Gonzalez Herrero and photographer Amauris Betancourt Gomez, through chronicles and reports written very minutely along with pictures very accurately chosen, take the reader to enjoy a text that describes the places in Holguin noone dares to miss.

The book, which was printed in Colombia by the Graficas de la Sabana printing house, was edited by Mayra Fernandez Peron, corrected by Maritza Vazquez Valdes, and designed and composed by the also Holguin expert, Andro Liuben Perez Diz.

The text has come out in Spanish, English, French and German -one thousand copies in each language- to give the reader the chance of widening his/her information required when it comes to Holguin, whose tourism industry ranks third in the country, besides being one of the most important regions in Cuba for its culture, population, natural resources and history.

The net of bookstores of ARTEX company is selling the book ‘De Cuba Holguin’ at eight convertible pesos (CUC).

Cuban Troubadour Threatened by High Tide

By Leandro Estupiñan.

Photos: Amauris Betancourt.

Alta Marea (High Tide), a cultural gathering, is a proposal in the Trouba House in Holguín city headed by troubadour Fernando Cabreja. It is already 10 year old and started off in Moa. When Cabreja and his family decided to settle down in Holguín, they did not only take the color and the memory of their city as well as the mania of the trouba and the compromise to promote cultural highlights through radio programs along with, , but also brought down on their shoulders some significant projects they had created.

In his 25 years of artistic life, Cabreja has won respect over so much for his compositions as for his work as an unrelenting cultural promoter. He has kept alive the Trouba Viva Meeting against all odds. And still now, this space, forged to promote trouba and troubadours from all over the country, goes on in Moa. His commitment to Moa ties him up to keep it on.

Alta Marea, on the other hand, definitely made it to Holguín. It is linked to his passion for literature and poetry, and for local writers. That half-way sickly devotion took him to found a space thought to join friends, to fuse poem and song. Alta Marea is named after the title of one of his songs, included in the recently Como una luna en pie (Like a standing moon) CD.

Still in Moa, he was able to invite guests like poets Alex Pausides and Vladimir Zamora. Now, inviting guests is not a problem because he benefits from living in a provincial capital city.

The gathering is on Thursdays, at the dying afternoon as Sindo Garay would say. The last guests have been writers Rolando Bellido, Lourdes González and Delfín Prats. The environment is pleasant. And it would be better if fans could put apart routine and meet there enthusiastically to have a ball for a while listening to Life trouba music and true poetry.Sponsored by ARTEX (a Cuban art promoting institution), and the Book Provincial Center, the gathering was inaugurated in Holguin last October 2, with guest poet José Luis Serrano.

Poet Jose Luis Serrano.

Cabreja was then already anxiously expecting the results of his concert at the Pablo de la Toerriente Brau Cultural Center, in Havana. It was done in the famous A guitarra limpia cultural gathering, which was meant then for a CD recording.

The CD was launched last November 22 in a fortunate moment for any troubadour: in a concert by Silvio Rodríguez. Thus, next to one of his teachers and in the place where he was given a hand to make his work known, Cabreja launched his 13-track CD.

The classics of his work are there, compiled as a symbol to his honest creative work, to his sensibility, to his worries, and to his vocation as a cultural promoter, because he had invited singing guests such as Ivette Rodríguez, from Baguano municipality and Edelis Loyola, his wife. She confessed that Cabreja had courted her without empty speeches. And so it seems to be the troubadour: An enemy to schemes or, as one of his songs reads: A prisoner to illusion.

Photo Contest Awards around the New Trouba Music

The photo contest jury members around the New Trouba Music (Homage to El Plátano, allias from a a recently dead photographer who devouted part of his live to photographing trouba singers), integrated by photography director Raúl Rodríguez and the photographers Julio Larramendi and Alain Gutiérrez, after checking 23 participants's works, wishes to subscribe, first of all, the quality of the images as a serious approach to the photographic memory of Cuban Trouba Movement perceived by various photographers.

Troubador Silvio Rodriguez attended the photo exhibit.

The jury wishes to acknowledge this contest is an evidence of the efforts accomplished by the Pablo de la Torriente Brau Cultural Center to encourage and to spread out the artist's works from all generations and trends in the New Cuban Trouba. The photo contest shows too, the assortment and quality in the Island’s photographic world, and fosters involvement and historic documentation of concerts, gatherings and other types of events where Cuban troubadours play a starring role.

Cuban movie actor Jorge Perugorría.

The jury agreed unanimously, granting the following rewards, mentions and acknowledgment:

First: Picking up out of all sent photos those depicting the spirit of the Trouba Movement in an attractive and original way to be exhibited (jury selection). Such a decision favored the following photographers:

Joseph Ignacio Vázquez López

Yordanka Caridad Almaguer Delgado

Enrrique Smith Soto

Carolina Vilches Monzón
Alejandro Bueno García

Ricardo Rodriguez.

Jose Meriño.

Second: Granting mentions to the following photographers, due to the aesthetic and moral values as well as the treatment of the contest theme:

Amauris Betancourt Gómez

J. Gonzalo Vidal A.

George Daniel Villa Hernández
Third: Granting the three following awards according to the contest's bases:

Because he rescues and he keeps alive the memory of a generation and of a musical movement in a unpublished image, the third award is granted to:

Joseph Michael Carassou Morales
Because he gets across and is able to sum up in a single image the troubadour's passions and his greatness, the second award is granted to:

Kaloian Santos Cabrera.

Because of the subtle remark and simplicity of the image and the excellent general plane to suggest a message, the first Prize is granted to:

Richard Pérez de la Rionda

Rene Pérez Massola, Art in the Lens

By Amauris Betancourt.

Today’s Cuban press photography profits from creative times, alongside high aesthetic values. It prevails in art galleries all over the island, in competitive or non-competitive events, devoted to the lens's image. Press photography aesthetic level stands out and outdoes, in numbers, the purely artistic proposals on exhibit these days. Rene Pérez Massola, photoreporter for the Trabajadores Weekly, makes justice to this assumption.

And art is by no means excluded when it comes to photojournalism. The difference lies only upon intention and function. Art photography focuses on the purely aesthetic matter and leans on codes and a language appealing to intellectual sensibility while press photography calls upon objectivity from an unmasked reality. The former, more subjective resulting from human worries, abstracted to praise, to embellish or to criticize, in order to express the soul; the latter, objective to inform and to show with its tools a comprehensible message the best possible way.

However the frontier between these photographic genders fades away sometimes. It seems to come about with this young Cuban photographer who, aided by his web blog where he shows his best pictures – a real fortune and delight for photo-loving people –, that ironically, for one reason or another, do not get published in Cuban papers.

When visiting his blog recently, part of my daily habits, I found a very well interwoven photo-story that served as encouragement and leitmotiv to share it with the net users.

The first assessment dwells on the graphic strength of the photo-report and on the topic – a very common topic were it not for its importance after the disasters brought about
by the hurricane hits – focused on a very common place activity in the island these days: farming recovery, the potato harvest specifically, in honor of the 49th anniversary of the first voluntary work summoned by Che. And speaking of his hurricane images the ones after Paloma in the province of Camagüey are worth looking at.

Convincing photo composition stands out, as well as the right use of planes, the timely change of shooting angles and the use of symbolism to provide a context to his pictures where he avoids commonly shots. It is also worth adding his relevant use of light, contrasts, tones and shades.

And to top it all his photo editing, or rather self-editing, work adds up to it when choosing the right pictures to get across better the message of the story.

Rene Massola’s photography wins over followers continuously. The hits and comments to his work in the blog show it, supported by the appropriate use of new technologies and its associated potentialities. Art and profession get along harmoniously in Massola's lens.

Fernando Gil’s Chidren’s Tutorship

Text and photos: Amauris Betancourt.

The Harlequin I Have Inside, new cultural meeting from the Provincial Center of the Performing Arts in Holguín, has two appointments monthly. It aims at paying homage to artists and fostering the interest for the puppet theater world.

“Gil”–as people prefer to call Fernando Gil Arias- “deserves the attention of all of my city’s cultural institutions,” says Ignacio Figueredo Parra, producer and director of the gathering, and adds “I believe the way a man honors his name as an artist is creating. There are many people who consider him an ACTOR”.

Gil graduates from his native Manzanillo’s teacher’s art school, in the province of Granma. He arrives in Holguin in 1979 to work as an art teacher for the local puppet theater. He founds later the Julio Antonio Mella theater group from the Cuban National Worker’s Union and the children Gil-Aya theater project. Gil, his surname; Aya, the word in Spanish for the one who takes care and teaches children.

Gil treasures the 2005 Holguin City Award. Although he currently works for and directs Holguín's Dramatic Theater since 2001, he has left footprints in television, the puppet theater and the attrezzo world.

Gil evokes his experiences, among good and bad memories, of over 30 years devoted to the stage with an aura of nostalgia. His character as the goat has marked him. Many call him so nowadays. He must interpret once two characters: first the goat and then the cock, but he forgets to change over the mask. His artistic experience and professionalism let him off the hook by taking advantage of the situation for the sake of the spectacle, but the anecdote is still remembered.

Performing arts people utter affection and admiration for Gil: The Puppet Theater from Holguin performs for him, the work The little Martina Cockroach; and he talks about the skills of puppeteers in comparison with theater player: the former must insufflate energy and credibility to the puppet; the latter, must do it directly with his body.
He recalls the Gil-Aya project as one of his most wonderful experiences. Children, according to the project, have an appointment with him and his collaborators in the Alba's ruins, the current homonymous Academy of Plastic Arts. Hundred of children meet there, but only a hundred of them could come in. The entrance of parents or adults is forbidden: children should be picked up four hours later.

The project proves to be quite polemic. Doctors suggest it to parents, but colleagues in art question it. Even so parents and doctors trust the meeting and the gathering earns besides followers, a good reputation from the artistic point of view.

Year Zero and Gods Listen from Codanza Ballet Co. are some of his contributions to the attrezzo world, that’s why Codanza plays for him too with Ode to the Devil; and so does also the Holguín's Chamber Ballet.

Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, José Antonio Rodríguez, Michaelis Cué and Ana María Paredes are included among his masters and friends, among the professionals who he looks up to.

Gil longs for a better future than the present for the puppet theater and for the performing arts in the city. There is a lamentable worn-out in some cultural institutions, he states; and they are no longer up to the aim they were created for as for the technological and artistic state.

The Harlequin I Have inside has had a happy beginning. The following gathering is already looked forward. The city has another cultural space to admire artists and to recreate the Cuban art.