Steven’s Cuba Blog

Faces of Cuba - footage and interviews from The Island

I’ve been doing some video work at home for an unrelated project, and came across some footage that I shot just over a year ago in Cuba. I wanted to use it as the beginning of a documentary about Cuba, a sort of question and answer session with everyday Cubans I’d met. It was an effort to document Cuba from the perspective of the people who live there.

As these things tend to do, it got buried behind other projects and work that I later focused on. Instead of letting the video collect dust, though, I’ve decided to put it all up here. The three posts below contain most of the footage, lightly edited.

The questions were very straightforward and apolitical - jobs, activities, plans. Dreams. The footage is mostly shot while traveling or walking around a city.

Lastly - and most importantly - I’ve decided to release all of the footage into the public domain. You can take the video, remix it, edit it, use it for your own purposes, etc. It belongs to the Public Domain. It would be cool if you could drop me an email or a comment if you do decide to use it for your own work, though - just to satisfy my curiosity.

You can download the entire clip (ignore most of the captions; they’re no longer valid) here at the Internet Archive.

Arabs in Cuba

Being of Iraqi-Assyrian descent, it’s understandable that I was caught by surprise walking down the Prado in Havana and seeing arabic script on some signs, or noticing the moorish influences on so many of the buildings.

But the arab influence in Cuba goes beyond merely architecture; indeed, Arabs had a part to play in many chapters of Cuba’s history.

While Havana’s Arab community is not large by any standard, they have their own “union” and community centers, museum, mosque for those who practice Islam, and even an Arabic restaurant (which I haven’t tried yet). You can even easily take Arabic lessons - for free, something that I can’t do almost anywhere else.

Violence drives Palestinians from homes - to Cuba
Arabs in Cuba - from the earliest times
The Arabs of Havana

technorati tags:cuba, havana, arabs

Call to Cuban bloggers, writers and students

I’ve started building an arts and culture web aggregator specifically related to Cuban arts, culture and social life. We’re looking for a few good women and men living in Cuba to write posts about cultural events, parties, concerts, expositions and other happenings in and around all of Cuba.

You’d be expected to write, on average, one article per week - it could be anything from a paragraph mentioning some upcoming concert in a town near you, to a lengthy review of some cultural event you attended. It is important to note that this site will remain completely non-political and non-commercial. There will be no advertising or promotion on the site, and it is funded independently.

Even if you don’t know the first thing about writing, don’t worry - your entries don’t need to be perfect, and they will be corrected for grammar and spelling. You can post in english or spanish; we will take care of translating for you. Don’t have access to the web, but have an email address? No worries - we’re going to be set up to that you can post your entries via email as well.

We’ve already got a surprising number of Cuban writers and bloggers on board, but we’d like to reach more people, especially in the smaller cities across Cuba. This is a volunteer position at first, though we are working out the idea of eventually contracting the most proficient and prolific writers, and supplying media equipment such as digital cameras, computers, and audio equipment.

If you or anyone you know might be interested, please email me at steven [at] ahoracuba.com.

Havana - Tickr

Watch the video

Sueño de Cuba

Brett Gaylor - whom I met at the Montreal Videologgers meetup - has a beautiful little video clip from when he visited Cuba back in 2003.

It’s incredible to look at this and remember that just a couple of months ago I was walking those very same streets, getting ready to leave the wild island that so warmly welcomed me into its heart for over two months.

I love video.