322 Union Ave.
Brooklyn, New York 11211
Program:
Vladimir Ceballos, Maldito Sea Tu Nombre, Libertad, VHS, 60min., 1994
Beginning in 1989 and up to the mid 1990s groups of young Cuban rock enthusiast [‘roqueros’ or ‘frikis’] were severely repressed by Castro’s regime, which saw their music and aesthetic tendencies as expressions of individualism and “disidencia” against communist ideals. In response to the police’s harassment and incarceration of this sub-culture, a significant number of these ‘roqueros’ decided to inoculate themselves with HIV to live their short lives inside the far less policed sanatoria created by the Cuban government to contain the epidemic. Maldito Sea Tu Nombre, Libertad is a raw and urgent document of this phenomenon. Shot secretly over a weekend in 1994 with borrowed equipment this tape presents one of the few existing testimonies of a complex social tragedy that responded to political repression utilizing death by AIDS as an entrance to freedom.
The film will be introduced by Dirty Looks LA director Clara López Menéndez.
Vladimir Ceballos is a film and video editor based in Providence, Rhode Island. He directed the documentary Maldito Sea Tu Nombre, Libertad in 1994 in Cuba.