Centella is Coming + Alabbá

Part of the Afro-Cuban Showcase at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC.

Centella is Coming (Centella va venir)

Cuba/Uruguay, 2013 / 12 min.
Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Agustín Peralta Lemes

This documentary short is a poetic and delicate portrait of an elderly man’s practice of Afro-Cuban rituals. Alberto, a peasant from the Sierra Maestra, reveals an intimate rite where coffee, leather, wood, and blood transcend their own material existence to transform into mysticism.

Followed by:

Alabbá               

Cuba, 2010 / 40 min.
Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Eliezer Pérez Angueira

In the 19^th century, three African women arrive by different routes in Cuba as slaves. Devout believers, they congregate in a small wooden building in Havana to practice their religion. The same way Greece conquered the Roman Empire, the African Ña Rosalia, Ma Monserrate and Latua conquer the Hispanicized Cuba of their time, to the extent that today Regla de Ocha (Santería) is the major religion of the island.

“Alabbá is a documentary that narrates the existence of a faith that defines a people; the mystery is that these were women, blacks, and slaves who were able to overcome these three “obstacles” in that moment in history, to leave us a legacy that still endures even in the younger generations.” (cinetecamadrid.com)