ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Screen Cuba, Take Two
Festival Coordinators TRISH MEEHAN and DODIE WEPPLER introduce some of the highlights of Screen Cuba Film Festival 2025
BATTLE OF IDEAS: (L) Tomas Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment (1968); (R) Ernesto Daranas' Behaviour (2014)
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
THE second edition of Screen Cuba: Films to change the world comes to UK cinema screens this month. Celebrating the remarkable achievements of Cuban cinema, the festival again offers a selection of outstanding contemporary films, as well as those produced over the last six decades.
The political importance cannot be overestimated. Cuban film-makers, like the rest of the island, are facing formidable challenges. The blockade against Cuba will undoubtedly deepen under the new Trump administration, and resources and distribution networks will become ever scarcer. These severe conditions are compounded with the island’s recent hurricanes and electricity outages.
It is against these incredibly difficult conditions that the ongoing “Battle of Ideas” continues to take place. Fidel Castro first spoke of the Battle of Ideas in 2001 in the context of the struggle to win hearts and minds over the fight for the return of Cuban child Elian Gonzalez, who was being held in the US without his father’s consent.
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