The multi-faceted musician performs songs anchored in his beloved Cuba, followed by a screening of the unforgettable film that reconstructs the life of the island during the Batista era.
The Pedrito Martinez Project celebrates the solo debut of a dynamic and multifaceted artist whose meteoric rise and trajectory spans two decades. He has performed since the age of eleven with greats such as Lazaro Ros, Mercedita Valdes, Meshell Ndegeocello, Paquito D’Rivera, Giovanni Hidalgo, and Steve Coleman, to name a few. He is largely remembered for the inimitable contributions he made to the band Yerba Buena with Pedrito’s musical vocabulary anchored in the traditional and spiritual rhythms of his beloved Cuba.
Started only a week after the Cuban missile crisis, Mikhail Kalatozov's film I Am Cuba (1964) turned out to be something quite unique — a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist kitsch, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality. The plot, or rather plots, feverishly explore the seductive, decadent (and marvelously photogenic) world of Batista’s Cuba — deliriously juxtaposing images of rich Americans and bikini-clad beauties sipping cocktails poolside with scenes of ramshackle slums filled with hungry children and gaunt old people. Using wide-angle lenses that distort and magnify, and filters that transform palm trees into giant white feathers, Urusevsky’s acrobatic camera achieves wild gravity-defying angles as it glides effortlessly through long continuous shots.
New York City, NY; NYC