Cuban Voices

BY MAGGIE OLIVE KLEIN

KONKLIFE STAFF WRITER

Tropic Cinema, our local cinema, is proudly presenting Cuban Voices, a celebration of Cuban film! The four-day event will take place from Thursday, November 18th to Sunday, November 21st. It was inspired by Key West’s annual Film Festival, and is a unique opportunity for viewers to appreciate and explore the film culture and history of Cuba, our neighbor 90 miles away! The event will showcase a collection of five films, and attendees will also get the chance to see some of the filmmakers in person, and engage in a Q&A with them. 

Derek DeBoer, a Key West native, is the organizer and emcee of the event. He has worked in film production and has traveled to Cuba many times. After studying film in New York, he moved to Havana for further studies, and ultimately forged friendships in the artistic communities there. DeBoer has been creating a plan for the event for quite some time now, intending to represent the vastly talented creatives of Cuba. He states, “Tropic Cinema is trying to foster an organic film conversation. We are so close to Cuba, we feel like we should be more involved with them and give them a platform to exercise their creativity.” 

Cuban Voices will begin on November 18th with a FREE outdoor screening of The Buena Vista Social Club, a historic documentary by Wim Wenders’, on Eaton Street right in front of the Tropic Cinema. The street will be shut down for the event, so all are welcome to bring seating and enjoy the film. The movie begins at 7:30 PM, and concessions will be available inside the Theater!

At 1:30 PM on Friday and Saturday, presentations of two contemporary Cuban films, Sergio & Sergei (2017), and The Last Rafter (2020), will be featured. The cinematographer of the former film, Alejandro Menendez Vega, and the co-directors of the latter, Carlos Rafael Betancourt and Oscar Ernesto Ortega, will be present for a Q&A in the Tropic’s Carper Theater after the viewings. The Q&A will be moderated by the emcee of the event, Derek DeBoer. The event will continue after these screenings, both Friday and Saturday, at 6:30 PM, with outdoor screenings at the Key West Lighthouse. There will be two seminal features of post-revolution Cuban cinema, with Soy Cuba (1964, d. Mikhail Kalatozov) on Friday, and Death of a Bureaucrat (1966, d. Tomas Guitierrez Alea) on Saturday. 

Concluding on Sunday, November 20th, the event will have encore screenings of both The Last Rafter and Sergei & Sergio in the Tropic’s Carper Theater. DeBoer feels very strongly about the works they are to exhibit. He states, “These are great examples of Cuban cinema, with very different tones. They are setting a baseline for future Cuban film, and they lay out some really seminal foundational pieces of Cuban cinema, and show some contemporary stuff as well.” This sounds like an event that is not to be missed. 

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]