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A film whose crowdfunding campaign was featured on this site in 2012, is now out! Titled "Black and Cuba," and directed by Robin J. Hayes, professor at The New School, the timely (in light of recent improved USA-Cuba relations) feature documentary follows a group of "outcast" African American students at Yale University, who take a field trip to Cuba to see "how revolution lives," and to get inspiration in order to pursue their own black resistance reading group.

You can now rent or buy it via Vimeo On Demand here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/34256.

Details follow below (trailer underneath):

The award-winning documentary "Black and Cuba" is now available on Vimeo on Demand after a successful run at film festivals throughout the US and in Berlin. Directed by Dr. Robin J. Hayes, the film follows a diverse group of street smart students who feel like outcasts at their elite Ivy League university, band together, and adventure to the enigmatic island of Cuba, whose population is 60% Black. Black and Cuba arrives on the heels of the Obama administration’s efforts to thaw US diplomatic relations with Cuba and ease travel restrictions to the socialist country for Americans.

By illuminating how African Americans from communities such as Harlem and the South Bronx experience Cuba, this documentary reveals a perspective on the US-Cuba conflict that is rarely seen in foreign policy circles.

“Freedom to travel to Cuba is particularly important to African Americans,” asserts the film’s director Robin J. Hayes, a professor at The New School, “The cultural and political ties that bind Afro-Cubans and African Americans have been critical to civil rights activism in both countries.”

The film is produced by Progressive Pupil, a non-profit which aims to “make Black studies for everybody” by creating interactive media and documentary films. A national audience engagement strategy is currently under way that brings the documentary’s discussion of Cuba and how racial discrimination is an international human rights issue to high schools, college campuses and community-based organizations.

Trailer below.

Robin J. Hayes

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