Alessandro Avenali

CUBA: Vida

Between April and May 2016, during the last months of Fidel Castro’s life, I traveled to the Caribbean Island, so dear to the western culture, which always depicted this land to me as mythical, colorful, carefree, passionate and musical. In the thirty days of my walking from North to South across the whole island, I discovered a poor land, deeply wounded, creative and dynamic, yes, but out of necessity. A place in which music, colors, mojitos and smiles are the only form of escape from a terribly mortifying social, economic and psychological condition. I spoke with local men and women, in their own language, crossing the shimmering and glossy veil of Cuba as told to the West by travel agencies. I shot scenes of true, ordinary life, without any filter, like the people I portrayed.