STAGING CINEMA: PERFORMANCE, THEATER, AND CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN FILM
2025-05-30 14:15 (America/New_York) | FL
In contemporary Caribbean documentary/hybrid/expanded cinema, incorporating performance is more than an aesthetic choice—it is a tool for reckoning with history, collective memory, and political struggle. Whether through theatrical staging, direct address to the camera, or the incorporation of live performance, artists and filmmakers use performance as a means of processing trauma, reclaiming agency, and reshaping dominant narratives.
This panel brings together THFF25 filmmakers Joseph Hillel (Koutkekout), Natalia Lasalle-Morillo (En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I)), and Génesis Valenzuela (the live performance A Freedom Struggle: Looking for Lucrecia Perez) to discuss how theater and performance function in their work. How does performance offer a way to navigate political upheaval, displacement, violence, and historical trauma? What is the relationship between performance as catharsis and as resistance? How does collective creation in theater translate to film? And how do artists balance the tension between theatricality and the real in storytelling?

SHORTS BLOCK: A FEVER DREAM WAITING FOR THE RIGHT BUILDERS
2025-05-30 15:30 | FL
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Urban space is at the centre of these four films, formally attentive explorations of various intersections of gentrification, migration, and empire, from Chicago to Miami, Bangalore to London.

FOR THOSE THAT LIVED THERE
By Shawn Antoine II | 6 mins | 2023 | USA
Amidst the ivy-draped remnants of once-notorious public housing projects, For Those That Lived Thereweaves a visual tapestry, navigating the poignant impacts of gentrification, the displacement of Black legacies, and emerging migrant narratives. Against Chicago’s ever-evolving skyline, this evocative exploration immerses audiences into the soul of a neighborhood transformed.
NO SE VE DESDE ACÁ (YOU CAN’T SEE IT FROM HERE)
By Enrique Pedráza-Botero | 20 mins | 2024 | Colombia, USA
Much like the people it is about, No se ve desde acá is suspended in that stasis between arriving and finding belonging, moving associatively through observational vignettes in contemporary Miami, juxtaposed with a disruptive collection of video and sound archives that range as far back as the 1930’s, revealing an obsession with American individualism and collective uncertainty as questions arise for immigrants about cultural identity and economic opportunity.
RADICLE CITY
By Arjuna Keshvani-Ham | 12 mins | 2024 | India, UK
Radicle City is a cinematic essay which imagines a future in which Bangalore’s gardens no longer exist. Narrated as a poetic address by a voice who has grown up in a city without trees, the film’s hybrid documentary and fictional narrative recovers and reinterprets footage of an unknown walker’s journey along a park that marks an old line of colonial segregation in the city. This is an old border with new lines: today the city is India’s “silicon valley”, an IT hub at the heart of a network of global capitalism, an incubator for the apparatuses of Modi’s digital technocracy and one of India’s most unequal and divided cities. Moving restlessly back and forth between past and possible future, the film is at once an investigation into the city’s complex colonial entanglements and their afterlives, and an elegy to the city’s gardens, fragile spaces of resistance in a metropolis which threatens their destruction.
OKAY KESKIDEE! LET ME SEE INSIDE
By Rhea Storr | 20 mins | 2025 | UK
Okay Keskidee! Let Me See Inside is a personal account of Black community spaces in the UK, focusing on the Caribbean diaspora. By visiting the site of the former Keskidee Center that is now luxury apartments, the film considers the conditions which allowed this historical space to thrive. The film explores the reasons why gathering in physical space is difficult because of the premium cost of space and the often free labor or government funding needed, both of which are scarce. We see the architecture of surrounding developments driven by rampant capitalism. Can the digital realm replace a physical community presence and produce an accessible archive for a new generation?

YOU DON’T GET FREEDOM, YOU TAKE FREEDOM: CARIBBEAN ACTIVIST CINEMA 1978–1985
2025-05-30 17:15 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

In keeping with its ongoing commitment to presenting heritage works of Caribbean cinema, both during its annual festival and as part of its year-round programming, Third Horizon is honored to present a retrospective of restored films at this year’s Festival. Entitled You Don’t Get Freedom, You Take Freedom: Caribbean Activist Cinema 1978–1985, the retrospective comprises four films, all recently restored works, themed around labor and workers’ rights.
Three of the films are documentaries, collaboratively made works of non-fiction, originally shot on 16mm and being presented at THFF25 in beautiful digital restorations. While they were made independently of each other, the films all share a concern for the rights of laboring people, within the context of often exploitative, neocolonial hegemonic power structures. They also reflect the often creative ways in which working people organize to agitate for their rights and for better employment and working conditions.
The final film that rounds out the retrospective is the recent restoration of West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (1979), directed by the late Mauritanian French filmmaker Med Hondo.
This screening is supported by: Dutch Culture USA at the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, The Netherland-America Foundation & The Miami Workers Center

SWEET SUGAR RAGE
By Honor Ford-Smith, Harclyde Walcott | 56 mins | 1985 | Jamaica
MAY 30, 5:15PM – Purchase Ticket
In the documentary Sweet Sugar Rage, being presented at THFF25 in a new, extended restoration, Sistren Collective, a popular Jamaican women’s troupe, uses improvisation and theater as consciousness-raising tools for both rural and urban audiences. Their performances speak directly to the daily experiences of women—the least empowered workers, who labor long hours for low wages with no benefits or rights to organize for better conditions. Using role-play and interviews with female cane workers, the collective develops dramatizations which analyze social issues and pinpoint their concerns.
OEMA FOE SRANAN (WOMEN OF SURINAME)
By At van Praag, Nadia Tilon & Luna Hupperetz | 56 mins | 1978 | Suriname, The Netherlands
MAY 30, 5:15PM – Purchase Ticket
Oema Foe Sranan (Women of Suriname) portrays the lives of four women, who relate the history of Dutch (neo)colonialism in Suriname and racism and being disenfranchised in the Netherlands using personal stories. The film was produced by Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms in cooperation with LOSON (the Dutch national organisation for Surinamese people), in the framework of political struggle, as a sign of solidarity between Surinamese and Dutch people, who transfer a collective message about the socio-political situation in Suriname and the Surinamese community in the 1970s. The film centers on the hope for a better future, and liberation from foreign influence.

KOUTÉ VWA (LISTEN TO THE VOICES)
2025-05-30 20:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Maxime Jean-Baptiste

Country: French Guiana, Belgium, France
Language: French Guianese Creole, French w/English Subs
Duration: 76 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Hybrid

Melrick, a 13-year-old boy, spends his summer vacation with his grandmother Nicole in Cayenne, French Guiana. His presence and his desire to learn how to play the drum brings back the specter of Lucas, Nicole’s son, also a drummer, who died in tragic conditions 11 years earlier. Faced with the grief that haunts his family and Lucas’s best friend’s desire for revenge, Melrick seeks his own path to forgiveness.
A Q+A with Audrey Jean-Baptiste, co-writer of Kouté vwa, will follow the screening.

SHORTS BLOCK: WHY DOES THE AIR TREMBLE?
2025-05-31 10:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Filmmaking as process is at the heart of these five films, memorably imaginative attempts at working through a variety of themes, and towards new ways of understanding.
A Q&A with filmmakers whose work appears in this program will follow the screening.

NOBODY’S WORD
By Camara Taylor | 13 mins | 2025 | Barbados, Jamaica, UK
A family convenes exactly 500 years after Charles V grants permission to Lorenzo de Gorrevod “to import 4000 Africans into New Spain.” The King’s act marks the escalation of a rupture, with its origins in 1492, that remakes the world and reverberates into the present. This apparent “start of slavery” becomes an occasion to tell the story of one family’s implication across time and space. In nobody’s word, the family archive is digitised and disintegrated in order to reframe accounts, destabilise claims, and inhabit spaces between fact and fiction, questioning the narrative impulses that inform the stories we tell.
LOS CONJURADOS
By Humberto Gonzalez Bustillo | 9 mins | 2025 | Venezuela
A lone cyberflâneur stumbles upon a hidden corner of Google Maps, a forgotten place unfolding in the static. Shadows pace aimlessly, paths dissolve into nowhere, and figures flicker in and out of existence—fragments of untold stories. A shattered, distorted voice lingers, unrelenting, signaling borders and exile, both imagined and imposed. Still, the search goes on, endless.
LA SELVA OSCURA (DARK FOREST)
By Lucía Malandro and Daniel Saucedo | 15 mins | 2024 | Cuba, Spain
La selva oscura is a record of a long journey connecting two funeral rituals in Cuba: the state burial honoring those who fell in the Angola war and a spiritist ceremony welcoming spirits of the past back into the world of the living. These events, captured by Cuban amateur documentaries filmed in 1987, intertwine to form the core of this film, whose central reflections revolve around loss and oblivion.
NADA FUERA DE LA ISLA: PUENTES (NOTHING OUT OF THE ISLAND: BRIDGES)
By Dalissa Montes de Oca | 16 mins | 2024 | Dominican Republic
Fragmented memories and visions find a home in light and shadows, bridging the gap between the past, the present, and the loss of a mother.
PURO ANDAR
By Luciana Decker Orozco | 13 mins | 2025 | Bolivia
A journey to the underworld begins within our own entrails, shaped by the flesh we consume and the softened crumbs moistened by the saliva of mothers. This film explores the becoming of different times, from the intimate rhythm of digestion to the vast expanse of geological eras: stalagmites formed over millennia, fossilized dinosaur tracks, and the echoes of primordial movements, akin to growling. The film is inspired by the chapter “Puro Andar” from El Pez de Oro by Gamaliel Churata, which states that “we all carry the dead alive; that the dead live.”

TRUE CHRONICLE OF THE BLIDA JOINVILLE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL IN THE LAST CENTURY, WHEN DR FRANTZ FANON WAS HEAD OF THE FIFTH WARD BETWEEN 1953 AND 1956
2025-05-31 12:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Abdenour Zahzah

Country: Algeria, France
Language: Arabic, French w/English Subs
Duration: 90 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Fiction

SYNOPSIS

1953, colonized Algeria. Frantz Fanon, a young black psychiatrist from Martinique, is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital. As he puts his theories of “institutional psychotherapy” into practice in opposition to the racist theories of the Algiers School of Psychiatry, a war breaks out on his own wards.
A Q+A with Abdenour Zahzah will follow the screening.

SCREENING THE STRUGGLE: CARIBBEAN ACTIVIST CINEMA REGAINED
2025-05-31 14:15 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
This panel explores Caribbean heritage cinema as a tool for resistance, community action, and historical documentation. Centered on the films in the THFF25 retrospective You Don’t Get Freedom, You Take Freedom: Caribbean Activist Cinema 1978–1985, this discussion will examine the socio-political landscapes that shaped these films, the often collective filmmaking practices behind them, and seek to situate the films within the current moment.
Through the perspectives of filmmakers, activists, and researchers involved in the making and restoration of the films—namely, Women of Suriname (1978), Bitter Cane (1983), Sweet Sugar Rage (1985), and West Indies (1979)—we will investigate the material conditions of Caribbean working people, past and present, and the ways these films engaged with themes of (neo) colonialism, capitalism, immigration, and collective struggle. Additionally, panelists will explore the challenges of film restoration, the question of preserving politically radical works, and what it means to reclaim this history for contemporary movements.
This program is supported by: Dutch Culture USA at the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and The Netherland-America Foundation

EN PARÁBOLA/CONVERSATIONS ON TRAGEDY (PART I)
2025-05-31 15:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Natalia Lassalle-Morillo

Country: Puerto Rico
Language: English and Spanish w/English Subs
Duration: 63 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Non-Fiction

SYNOPSIS

En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I) is a reassemblage of the Greek myth of Antigone in collaboration with a cast of non-professional actors who reside in New York City’s Puerto Rican diasporic community. Developed through a multi-year process of collaborative theatrical rehearsal and experimental filmmaking, the work emerged through the cast’s revising, re-writing, and performing of the myth of Antigone inspired by their lived and inherited experiences of migration and belonging. Taking the form of a multi-channel film, En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I) seeks to connect these communities after decades of geographical fragmentation, colonial erasure, dispossession, and cumulative environmental, economic, and political tragedies.
A Q+A with Natalia Lassalle-Morillo will follow the screening.

BITTER CANE
2025-05-31 17:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By Ben Dupuy and Kim Ives | 77 mins | 1983 | Haiti
Filmed clandestinely under the Duvalier dictatorship, Bitter Cane, presented at THFF25 in a brand new restoration, is an incisive documentary interrogation of the exploitation and domination of the Haitian people. From peasant coffee farms in the rugged tropical mountains to steamy foreign-owned sweatshops in the capital, Port-au-Prince, the film takes the viewer on a journey through Haitian history to a deeper grasp of the country’s political economy today. The film explores the Haiti of the 1980s, a perspective that helps the viewer to better understand the crises that wrack the country now. Bitter Cane shows how foreign capitalists were beginning to drive peasants off the land and into the cities, creating giant shanty towns which have spawned crime, dislocation, and anarchy. Today, 40 years later, we are seeing the culmination of this socio-economic upheaval, which has left the country facing its third foreign military occupation in three decades.

BITTER CANE
2025-05-31 17:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Ben Dupuy, Kim Ives

Country: Haiti
Language: Kreyòl, French, and English, w/English subtitles
Duration: 77 mins
Year: 1983
Genre: Non-Fiction

SYNOPSIS

Filmed clandestinely under the Duvalier dictatorship, Bitter Cane, presented at THFF25 in a brand new restoration, is an incisive documentary interrogation of the exploitation and domination of the Haitian people. From peasant coffee farms in the rugged tropical mountains to steamy foreign-owned sweatshops in the capital, Port-au-Prince, the film takes the viewer on a journey through Haitian history to a deeper grasp of the country’s political economy today. The film explores the Haiti of the 1980s, a perspective that helps the viewer to better understand the crises that wrack the country now. Bitter Cane shows how foreign capitalists were beginning to drive peasants off the land and into the cities, creating giant shanty towns which have spawned crime, dislocation, and anarchy. Today, 40 years later, we are seeing the culmination of this socio-economic upheaval, which has left the country facing its third foreign military occupation in three decades.
A Q+A with Kim Ives will follow the screening.
Bitter Cane screens at THFF25 as part of the retrospective program You Don’t Get Freedom, You Take Freedom: Caribbean Activist Cinema 1978–1985.
To read more about the restoration process of Bitter Cane, click HERE.

LA BACHATA DE BIONICO (BIONICO’S BACHATA)
2025-05-31 20:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Yoel Morales

Country: Dominican Republic
Language: Spanish w/English Subs
Duration: 80 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Fiction

SYNOPSIS

A raw vision of love in a hostile Caribbean city, Bionico’s Bachata is a mockumentary that follows a hopeless romantic, addicted to crack, who must take control of his life if he wants to marry the woman he loves.
A Q+A with Yoel Morales will follow the screening.

SHORTS BLOCK: YOUR HANDS WERE BUILT FROM MEMORY
2025-06-01 10:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Ancestral echoes reverberate across the films in this programme, embodying various forms of resistance and resilience, from the Florida Everglades to a Jamaican sugar plantation to the Amazon rainforest.
A Q&A with filmmakers whose work appears in this program will follow the screening.

REDEMPTON (AN EXPERIENCE IN THREE PARTS)
By Mariana Luiza | 3 mins, 10 mins, 16 mins | 2023 | Brazil
Is it possible to redeem a nation that once sought to exterminate the majority of its people?
In 1911, Brazil presented an audacious plan at the First Universal Congress of Races in London: to become a predominantly white nation within a century, exterminating Black and mestizo people within three generations, and transforming into a fully white country by 2012. The painting Ham’s Redemption (1895), by Modesto Brocos, exhibited during the congress, symbolized Brazil’s racial whitening ideology.
Over 110 years later, Redemption critically examines Brazil’s whitening policy, providing a counter-colonial response. The film, presented in three acts, revisits this history through archival imagery and symbolism, exposing the lasting impact of eugenicist ideologies. At its core, it challenges the narrative of Ham’s Redemption, replacing the imposed vision of racial erasure with one that honors ancestral knowledge and the resilience of Black and Indigenous communities.
HIJA DE FLORINDA (FLORINDA’S DAUGHTER)
By Shenny De Los Ángeles and Amanda Morell (iiritu) | 12 mins | 2025 | USA
Through a series of black-and-white tableaux, this poetry film follows the journey of Young Naomi in Everglades, Florida. She learns from Florinda, her grandmother, about the ancestral practices of caring for the land and nurturing grief in the face of environmental challenges. As the story unfolds, we grow to understand Florinda’s indigenous teachings of controlled burns and the importance of embracing fire rather than suppressing it. As the prescribed burns ignite from Florinda’s hands, an archival portal is birthed.
REDEMPTON (PART II)
By Mariana Luiza | 3 mins, 10 mins, 16 mins | 2023 | Brazil
LAS, FIYA (LAST, FIRE)
By Kat Anderson | 25 mins | 2024 | Jamaica, UK
Las, Fiya (Last, Fire) is a fictional short film that uses the horror genre to explore the subjects of ancestral trauma, dispossession, and the power of return/retrieval. Shot largely on an existing sugarcane farm in Jamaica, the film weaves historical methods of harvesting sugarcane and sugar production with the cinematic concept of the “origin story”. At the film’s center is Lil, a solo traveller, who is led by a spirit to a rural cane farm and reborn as a super-villain. A trans-dimensional evil entity preys upon a group of unsuspecting tourists, with their fate being revealed in a final heightened scene, where all are gathered on the cane farm for “reaping time.”
REDEMPTON (PART III)
By Mariana Luiza | 3 mins, 10 mins, 16 mins | 2023 | Brazil

SUGAR ISLAND
2025-06-01 12:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Johanné Gómez Terrero

Country: Dominican Republic, Canary Islands
Language: Spanish w/English Subs
Duration: 90 mins
Year: 2024
Genre: Fiction

SYNOPSIS

Makenya leaves behind fun and dancing with her friends in search for work, after an unwanted pregnancy confronts her with sudden adulthood. The teenager lives alongside her grandfather and mother in the Batey, a Dominican-Haitian community of sugarcane workers. The mother is a servant of the Mysteries within the 21 divisions of Afro-Dominican spirituality, and the grandfather is an activist for pension rights. The mechanization of the sugar industry threatens to displace them without compensation. Meanwhile, in a parallel and Afro-futuristic dimension, Makenya reunites with her friends. In a theatrical exercise, they read documents from the colonial era, recall the black uprisings on the island, and recover ancestral knowledge that forms a sort of anti-racist and decolonial manifesto. Photo by Dilia Oviedo.
A Q+A with Johanné Gómez Terrero will follow the screening.

RECKONING AND REPAIR: REPRESENTING TRAUMA AND (POST)COLONIAL VIOLENCE
2025-06-01 14:15 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
How can cinema serve as an act of healing, and/or reckon with the consequences of violence? This panel explores the ways filmmakers engage with the long-term psychological effects of colonialism, state violence, and personal loss. Rather than focusing on direct representations of violence, films like Kouté vwa, True Chronicle of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, and Twice into Oblivion center on the aftermath—the lingering trauma, the institutional responses (or lack thereof), and the individual and communal processes of healing.
From the genocidal killing of Haitians in the Dominican Republic in 1937 to Frantz Fanon’s psychiatric work in colonial Algeria to a mother’s grief in French Guiana today, these films meditate on violence and trauma within particular (post) colonial contexts. They also raise ethical questions: How do filmmakers depict trauma without re-traumatizing their audiences or their subjects? What does it mean to tell stories of pain while leaving space for catharsis, resistance, or repair? This conversation will examine the role of cinema in confronting historical violence while fostering new possibilities for healing.

SHORTS BLOCK: DEPOSITED IN THIS LAND OF STRANGERS
2025-06-01 17:15 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Employing a variety of cinematic forms and strategies, the five films in this programme engender lingering, often poetic diasporic dialogues—between here and there, then and now.

BISAGRAS
By Luis Arias | 16 mins | 2024 | Senegal, Brazil, USA
“Bisagras” is a film exploring the enduring here and elsewhere of black consciousness. Finding a connection through the film’s emulsion and my skin, Bisagras holds my experience as a person of Afro-Caribbean descent during a visit to the House of Slaves in Gorée Island, Senegal and the port of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. In these places I dare to imagine my ancestors’ history of the journey of African slaves to America and draw a line that goes through me.” – Luis Arnías
WE DEH HERE
By Maybelle Peters | 7 mins | 2025 | UK
We Deh Here traces the relationship between Scotland and Guyana through photography, sewing, genealogical research, and matrilineal lines. Combining stills of historical sites in Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands with audio conversations between the artist and her mother, the film investigates and speculates on their interconnection as an expression of British and Scottish colonialism.
BLUE HEART
By Samuel Suffren | 15 mins | 2025 | Haiti
Marianne and Pétion live in Haiti and wait impatiently for a call from their son in the USA. As silence sets in, their fears and worries grow, revealing the fractures in their own lives. The promise of the American dream now seems to elude them, as the line between hope and reality becomes increasingly blurred.
YOULOGY/NO GHOSTS
By Darryl Daley | 8 mins | 2023 | UK
Youlogy / No Ghosts explores cyclical motifs of arrival and departure through the artist’s grandmother’s migration to the United Kingdom and her posthumous return to Jamaica, creating a transcendental frame where memory and time merge. In this speculative space, the film navigates beyond the confines of mortality, reimagining a future where inherited stories resist linearity.
A RIVER HOLDS A PERFECT MEMORY
By Hope Strickland | 17 mins | 2024 | Jamaica, UK
“The original premise of a river holds a perfect memory was based on a series of labor protests in January 2016, St Elizabeth, Jamaica that highlighted the complex, racio-colonial capitalist logics that continue to shape the use of Black River. Rivers fascinate me for myriad reasons: they hold within them the poetics of collapsed time and diasporic memory, alongside complex flows of resource and labor extraction. Spending time researching reservoirs and industry in the North of England and rivers with my extended family in Jamaica, the more these worlds seemed to swirl and eddy together.” – Hope Strickland

WEST INDIES: THE FUGITIVE SLAVES OF LIBERTY
2025-06-01 19:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By Med Hondo | 116 mins | 1979 | Mauritania, Algeria, France
Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty, presented at THFF25 in a new restoration, proved a watershed event for African cinema—the continent’s first musical as well as a sui generis amalgam of historical epic, Broadway revue, Brechtian theater, and joyous agitprop. Using an enormous mock slave ship as the film’s only soundstage, Hondo mounts intricately choreographed reenactments and dance numbers across his multipurpose set to investigate more than three centuries of imperialist oppression. The story traverses the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and the Middle Passage; jumps across time to depict the effects of official French policy upon the colonized, the enslaved, and their descendants; and surveys the actions and motivations of the resigned, the revolutionary, and the powers that be (along with their lackeys). No mere extravaganza, West Indies is a call to arms for a spectacular yet critical cinematic reimagining of an entire people’s history of resistance and struggle.

WEST INDIES: THE FUGITIVE SLAVES OF LIBERTY
2025-06-01 19:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
By: Med Hondo

Country: Mauritania, Algeria, France
Language: French w/English Subs
Duration: 116 mins
Year: 1979
Genre: Fiction

SYNOPSIS

Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty, presented at THFF25 in a new restoration, proved a watershed event for African cinema—the continent’s first musical as well as a sui generis amalgam of historical epic, Broadway revue, Brechtian theater, and joyous agitprop. Using an enormous mock slave ship as the film’s only soundstage, Hondo mounts intricately choreographed reenactments and dance numbers across his multipurpose set to investigate more than three centuries of imperialist oppression. The story traverses the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and the Middle Passage; jumps across time to depict the effects of official French policy upon the colonized, the enslaved, and their descendants; and surveys the actions and motivations of the resigned, the revolutionary, and the powers that be (along with their lackeys). No mere extravaganza, West Indies is a call to arms for a spectacular yet critical cinematic reimagining of an entire people’s history of resistance and struggle.
We are pleased that THFF alumna filmmaker Annabelle Aventurin, who oversaw the restoration of West Indies, will be present for a special introduction to the film.
West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty screens at THFF25 as part of the retrospective program You Don’t Get Freedom, You Take Freedom: Caribbean Activist Cinema 1978–1985.

Women In Theatre June 11 2025
2025-06-11 10:30 - 12:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Women in Theatre, una iniciativa de Simbios Art Corp en colaboración con el Koubek Center, te invita al workshop “El poder del movimiento”, guiado por Jalymar Salomón.
Más que una clase de baile, este taller ofrece un espacio seguro para mover el cuerpo y dejar fluir las emociones. El objetivo es trabajar la respiración consciente y el movimiento intencional para ayudar a regular nuestras emociones.
$15 (includes breakfast)
Wear comfortable clothes to move freely
Free Parking

¡Tómate una copa y escribe mejor!
2025-06-11 18:30 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Celebramos 10 años de esta tertulia literaria única con el poeta Carlos Pintado
El encuentro será en la mansión del KOUBEK CENTER el 11 de junio, a las 6.30pm
Tema de la noche: “Diles que no me escriban“ – un juego con el cuento “Diles que no me maten“ de Juan Rulfo.
Embriaga a tu editor interno y déjate llevar por las palabras. Te damos un tema, escribes durante 10 minutos, compartes si quieres, y brindamos (las copas las invita la casa). Luego, repetimos.
Conduce Carlos Pintado, poeta cubanoamericano galardonado con el Premio Paz de Poesía y autor de más de 30 obras publicadas, cuyas colaboraciones han llegado a escenarios como Yale University y el Curtis Institute of Music.
Estacionamiento gratuito!

LA HORA DE NO DORMIR
2025-06-28 15:00 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
La obra que te enseña a soñar
Sinopsis
Llegó la hora de dormir, pero la pequeña Luly tiene muchas cosas más interesantes de qué ocuparse. Su mamá, cansada, espera con ansias concretar la última tarea del día: dormir a su hija. ¿Lo logrará? Entre cuentos y canciones, ambas deberán vencer a monstruos, sombras peligrosas, ovejas descarriadas y al enorme desafío de despedirse “hasta mañana”
¿Es posible enseñar a un hijo a dormir? Un abordaje lúdico sobre las situaciones que aparecen a la hora de ir a la cama. Una obra musical donde las canciones, el baile, la actuación y el clown se unen a través del lenguaje teatral y el multimedia.Una estética inspirada en la cultura pop que despierta la imaginación de los más pequeños, para que aprendan a soñar.
La obra está dirigida a niños y niñas de entre 3 y 8 años. Elegimos este público como destinatario, ya que los temores nocturnos sobre los cuales trata la obra afectan especialmente a esta la franja etaria, según lo plantean los especialistas en psicología infantil.
¡ULTIMA FUNCIÓN!
Sábado 28 de junio – 3 pm
Koubek Center
Actúan:
Micaela Castelloti como Mamá
Anagabriel Marcoccia como Luly
Ficha Técnica
Autora: Anahí Berneri
Adaptación y Dirección: Josefina Pieres
Música original: Sebastian Bianchini
Ilustración: Alita Olivari
Producción: Simbios Art Corp y Koubek Center
Escenografía y Vestuario: Micaela Kornasiewicz
Dirección Vocal: Kika Pulido
Coreografías: Lauren Gaspard
Asistencia de Dirección: Jesika Marcano
Social Media: Martina Manuele
Prensa: Bea Urgelles
Fotos: Josefina Pieres

Cine y Literatura
2025-07-24 19:00 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
La Feria del Libro de Miami del Miami Dade College, el Consulado de la República Argentina en Miami y la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española invitan a la proyección del filme De navíos, ron y chocolate, con la presencia de la directora venezolana Malena Roncayolo y la escritora Elisa Arraiz.
A partir de finales del siglo XVIII, inmigrantes italianos y franceses, principalmente corsos, comenzaron a establecerse en Venezuela, siendo Carúpano su primer asentamiento. Estas oleadas migratorias se extendieron por el oriente del país, el estado Bolívar, el Zulia y algunas zonas andinas, dedicándose principalmente a la agroindustria del cacao, el café y la caña de azúcar, y más tarde, a la extracción de oro. Los corsos realizaron valiosos aportes al desarrollo de las ciudades y puertos, y sus descendientes han destacado en la cultura, la ciencia, la economía, la política y la diplomacia venezolana. Este documental explora las regiones de Venezuela donde se asentaron, así como sus lugares de origen en Córcega y Marsella, revelando las semejanzas culturales y el mestizaje entre ambos pueblos.
Adriana Bianco
Actriz, escritora y periodista argentina. Radica en Miami. Graduada de Filosofía y Letras, tiene un posgrado en Literatura latinoamericana por la Sorbonne de París. Ha publicado Borges y los otros(Planeta, Argentina), Aventuras de Lupita y Beto (Editorial Progreso, México) y Miami habla (escrito con Rafael Cerrato; Miami). Ha recibido varios galardones por su labor periodística. Tiene una destacada trayectoria como actriz en Argentina. Recibió en 2004 el Premio Cóndor de Plata. También le fue concedido el Premio de la Municipalidad de Buenos Aires y el de La mujer y el cine. Entre otras películas, ha actuado en El ojo que espía (1952), Mi marido hoy duerme en casa (1955) y El primer beso (1958).
Malena Roncayolo
Malena Roncayolo ha trabajado en la industria audiovisual durante 32 años como guionista, directora de arte, productora y directora de largometrajes, documentales, comerciales, videos artísticos y contenido institucional. Tras Casa Tomada, un mediometraje premiado internacionalmente, dirigió Pacto de Sangre, su primer largometraje. Dirigió y produjo una serie documental para televisión de seis partes sobre inmigración, dos documentales internacionales sobre arte y dos documentales sobre derechos humanos y violencia contra la mujer. Su largometraje documental ¿Premio Nobel de la Paz? recibió reconocimiento en el Festival de Cine de Terror de Italia. También dirigió la película para televisión La Gloria de Mamporal y el largometraje Acosada en Lunes de Carnaval. Es guionista, directora y productora del largometraje documental De Navíos, Ron y Chocolate. Su trabajo se ha presentado en festivales de Venezuela, España, Francia, Italia, Filipinas, Argentina, Brasil, Colombia y Estados Unidos, donde ha ganado premios y reconocimientos. Actualmente trabaja como guionista y directora del proyecto La Chica del Tiempo, que se encuentra en desarrollo para su producción en México o Colombia. Es coautora del guion de largometraje “Zuass, se fue la luz”. Recientemente escribió otro guion de largometraje titulado “La Conspiración del 202”, y produjo y dirigió dos documentales: “Oro de Sangre” y “Salvando a Citgo”.

Come Fly With Me
2025-08-09 20:00 - 22:00 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
“COME FLY WITH ME/ “ven a volar conmigo”
From “Sinatra to Bennett”
Featuring – Louis Amanti & Jazz orquesta
Sabado 9 de Agosto
Teatro: Koubek
2705 SW 3rd Street
Miami, FL 33135
Phone: +1 (305) 609-1754

Waiting for Snow in Havana
2025-08-14 19:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
NACAE and President Alicia Godoy Giró are pleased to invite you to meet the award-winning creators of Waiting for Snow in Havana, A New Musical in development in New York City.
The team, bred in Miami, will bring you into their process of adapting a National Book Award-winning memoir about A Cuban child’s Operation Pedro Pan Journey into a Broadway bound musical.
Join us to be swept into its atmosphere, listen to a few songs and be a part of its transformation.
Free Parking and Event with RSVP

Fashion Sustainability Lab: 2 days Workshop with Celia Ledón
2025-08-23 14:00 - 2025-08-24 14:00 | Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Join visual artist and costume designer Celia Ledón for a two-day immersive workshop on sustainable fashion and creative reuse. Through hands-on techniques like cutting, resewing, embellishing, and painting, participants will transform donated garments into unique wearable pieces — culminating in an informal mini runway presentation.
Perfect for youth (ages 15–30), artists, and curious beginners looking to explore fashion as art and activism. No previous experience required — just your imagination!

All materials provided
Hands-on learning + final showcase
Space is limited – register today!

Celia Ledón is a Miami-based visual artist, costume designer, and art director known for her bold, avant-garde work at the intersection of installation, performance, and wearable art. A graduate of the Higher Institute of Industrial Design (ISDI), she uses sustainable practices to raise awareness about climate change and the impact of fast fashion.
Her work has been showcased at major venues including the Kennedy Center, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Saddler’s Wells Theater (London), and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), as well as exhibitions across the U.S., Europe, and New Zealand.
Celia has an extensive career in costume design and art direction for theater, dance, and film, with award-winning projects in music videos, commercials, and feature films. She is a resident designer at Teatro El Público and Ludi Teatro, and collaborates with leading arts organizations like the Kennedy Center, FUNDarte, and Miami Light Project.
August 23 & 24 | 2–6 PM | Koubek Center
Koubek Center – 2705 SW 3rd St, Miami, FL
Fashion Sustainability Lab – Taller Intensivo gratuito de 2 Días con Celia Ledón
Acompaña a la artista visual y diseñadora de vestuario Celia Ledón en este taller práctico de moda sostenible inspirado en el streetwear. Durante dos días, los participantes explorarán el reciclaje creativo, la personalización y la transformación de prendas con materiales reutilizados.
El laboratorio culmina con una mini pasarela para mostrar las creaciones.

Aprende técnicas cómo cortar, volver a coser, pintar, decorar y estilizar
No se necesita experiencia previa – abierto a jóvenes (15 +) y principiantes
Se proveen todos los materiales. ¡Solo trae tu creatividad!

23 y 24 de agosto | 2–6 PM
Koubek Center – At Space (Miami)
Taller gratuito!

Noir Week Miami
2025-08-29 18:30, 2025-08-30 11:00 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Narts Foundation, Miami Book Fair y el Koubek Center presentan la primera edición de Noir Week Miami, un atrapante festival literario y cultural que se desarrollará del 26 al 30 de agosto de 2025, y que pondrá el foco en el fascinante universo del género negro y policial.
Durante cinco días, el público podrá disfrutar de una programación que combina presentaciones de libros, debates, talleres, fotografía, moda, música, gastronomía y cine, culminando con una intensa jornada el sábado 30, donde más de10 escritores iberoamericanos compartirán sus obras, ideas y experiencias con el público.

Martes 26 – Visita escolar con el autor de suspenso y ediciones infantiles, Chascas Valenzuela
Miércoles 27 – Conversatorio sobre cine noir con Luis Bond
Jueves 28 – Taller virtual con Alicia Escardó

En el Koubek Center:
Viernes 29 de agosto – 6:30 p.m. – Inauguración oficial – Teatro Koubek Center
Una velada imperdible con música en vivo, brindis de bienvenida y actividades en los jardines y espacios del Koubek:

Exposición fotográfica Campfire Stories de Alberto Sisso
Espacio VIP
Performance de moda: “Fashion Victim” de Celia Ledón (Cuba)
Ceremonia inaugural en el anfiteatro a las 8:00 p.m.

Entrada libre y estacionamiento valet gratuito con RSVP
https://www.squadup.com/events/noir-week-miami?legacy=0
Sábado 30 de agosto – desde las 11:00 a.m. – Mesas de charlas y debates –Art Space Koubek Center
Un día completo con destacados autores del panorama noir iberoamericano:

11:00 a.m. – “Entre pistas y sospechas”
Con Rafael Guerrero (España) y Hernán Vera Álvarez (Argentina-USA)
12:15 p.m. – “Calles en penumbra: la ciudad como personaje”
Con Pedro Medina León (Perú-USA) y Patricia Suárez (Argentina)
2:30 p.m. – “Femme fatale o mujer vengadora”
Con Mercedes Rosende (Uruguay) y Gastón Virkel (Argentina-USA)
3:45 p.m. – “Suspenso en las series”
Con Chascas Valenzuela (Chile-USA)
4:45 p.m. – “¿Los CSI existen?”
Con Gastón Intelisano (Argentina) y Rodolfo Pérez Valero (Cuba)
6:00 p.m. – “Nombrar lo innombrable”
Liliana Blum (México) presenta su novela Ráfaga roja, en conversación con Alicia Escardó

Entrada libre – Food trucks disponibles en el Koubek Center durante el día con RSVP:
https://www.squadup.com/events/noir-week-miami-1?legacy=0

39 Festival Internacional de Teatro Hispano
2025-09-04 - 2025-09-28 | FL
El aclamado Festival Internacional de Teatro Hispano (FITH) de Miami, presentado por Teatro Avante, Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami-Dade County.
Auditorium at the Westchester Cultural Arts Center, Miami Dade College’s Koubek Center y The Roxy Theatre Group, celebrará su trigésima novena edición con la participación de distinguidas compañías de teatro de América Latina, España y Estados Unidos. El Festival constará de 9 espectáculos de 6 países: Argentina, Chile, España, Estados Unidos, Venezuela-USA y México. Las obras se representarán en español, una con supertítulos en inglés. El Programa Educativo del Festival, bajo la dirección de Beatriz J. Rizk, Ph.D., incluye talleres para niños y un coloquio inmediatamente después de cada estreno.

Viento Blanco
2025-09-05 20:30 - 2025-09-06 20:30, 2025-09-07 17:00 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Teatro Futuro, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Escrita por Santiago Loza, protagonizada por Mariano Saborido y dirigida por Juanse Rausch y Valeria Lois.
Mario mantiene con su madre un hostal en un recóndito pueblo del sur. En otra época Mario supo tener un amigo. Hay un regreso, una despedida y el deseo de Mario de huir para siempre. Entre el mar helado, ardores, cánticos y mucho viento.
Viento Blanco es una suerte de invocación en cuyo recorrido hay erotismo clerical, chinos, animales de mar frío, algo de humor y también una tenue melancolía.
Viernes 5 y sábado 6 de septiembre | 8:30 pm
Domingo 07 de septiembre | 5:00 pm
www.koubekcenter.org
Koubek Center Theatre
2705 S.W. 3rd Street, Miami, FL 33135

Palaboda
2025-09-12 20:30 - 2025-09-13 20:30 | Koubek Center Theater, 2705 SW 3rd Street, Miami, FL, 33135, United States
Un espectáculo creado por La Tirana Producciones e interpretado por Susana Rosado y Jay García
Divertida comedia en la que se cuenta la entrañable historia de Begoñita y Juanmanué, quienes tendrán que ponerse de acuerdo para la ansiada boda que tanto espera ella y de la que tanto huye él. Ella quiere una boda como Dios manda; él no quiere ponerse zapatos porque le aprietan; ella lleva velo porque la estiliza; él no quiere anillo porque se le hinchan los dedos; ella quiere convite con tarta, baile y champán; él quiere que termine pronto para irse a pescar… PALABODA es un divertimento, un rato de risas garantizadas
Viernes & sábado, 12 y 13 de septiembre | 8:30 pm
Domingo 14 de septiembre | 5:00 pm
www.koubekcenter.org
Koubek Center Theatre
2705 S.W. 3rd Street, Miami, FL 33135
