I have finally finished the documentary I began filming in Cuba in 2008. It will be premiering as part of the Havana Film Festival NY - a great festival of Cuban and Latin American films, which I have enjoyed several times in the past. This year is especially cool because it is included in the larger Sí Cuba Festival, which is bringing many of the top musicians, dancers and artists from Cuba to New York for the first time in decades (since before Bush tightened travel restrictions). For more info about my screening and the festival click this link. Details for my screening are here. Below is a brief description of my film.
La Mitad is the story of a father and a son. Mario Mendez-Peñate was thirteen years old in 1959 when Fidel Castro’s army of bearded revolutionaries rode into Havana and turned his quiet childhood in Miramar upside down. Within months his parents had shipped him off to a boarding school in the United States, and he would never return. Fifty years later, Mario’s son Andrés travels to Havana, following the threads of his Cuban identity through the streets and parks, backyards and beaches, where his father’s childhood memories float like a distant dream.
