LavenderRed_Cubabook

‘Gay Cuba’
Two Cuban-backed documentaries about changing attitudes on the island towards
same-sex love and gender variance—which in turn deepened that change—opened
in theaters on the island in the mid-1990s.
“Gay Cuba” released in 1996 was a project of Cuba’s Félix Varela Center (CFV).
Activist Sonja de Vries—raised in Amsterdam and now living and organizing in Kentucky—wrote
and directed the documentary, which objectively struck a blow against the
political blockade of Cuba by U.S. imperialism.
“Gay Cuba” is a series of interviews—a radio host and a singer/poet, an artist and a
gay male elected union general secretary, a feminine male factory worker and a journalist,
an HIV-positive doctor and an interpreter, soldiers and teenaged law students—who
offer personal anecdotes and individual observations about attitudes towards same-sex
love in Cuba.
The interviews are interspersed with archival footage of the revolutionary seizure of
power. The sound track incorporates the music of world-renowned Cuban musicians
Pablo Milanés and Silvio Rodríguez.
The Cuban Women’s Federation (FMC) hosted the opening screening of the documentary
in Havana in 1994. The same year, the FMC invited an organization named
“U.S. Queers for Cuba” to visit the island, the group’s co-founder de Vries told Workers
World.
“‘Gay Cuba’ was shown at the Havana International Festival of Latin American Cinema
to public and critical acclaim,” wrote scholar Larry R. Oberg.
The documentary turned its cameras onto the audiences of “Strawberry and Chocolate”
(Fresa y chocolate), another film made with the help of the Cuban state. “Gay Cuba”
captured some of the enthusiastic responses of Cubans who had just seen “Strawberry
and Chocolate”—a 1993 film about a heterosexual communist and a homosexual Cuban—at
the Yara cinema.
“Fantastic!” a filmgoer who described himself as a heterosexual, masculine male exclaimed.
“If I could have a friend like that I would!”
Jorge Perugorria, a lead actor in “Strawberry and Chocolate,” said in this documentary:
“‘Strawberry and Chocolate’ is the story of an encounter … between a communist militant
and a homosexual, and how their friendship develops out of this encounter. What
‘Gay Cuba’ 69