Cuban America

Streaming video - 2011

For the past 50 years the Cuban immigrant group has established a historical importance, political significance, and economic influence on the city region of Miami. Cubans fleeing in exile, political turmoil, and economic hardship not only made a mark on a cosmopolitan region but an explosion. Such a historical, political, economic, social, and cultural phenomenon of the Cuban Diaspora has shifted the character of a city and placed Miami in the frontiers of international cities globally and the "Latinization" of the United States. But how was it done? And why is it important?. In CUBAN AMERICA, Independent documentary filmmaker Adelin Gasana, a non-Cuban African-American, went deep into the heart of the Cuban Diaspora in the Great...er Miami Region to answer these questions. As an immigrant-turned-U.S. citizen of another nationality Gasana delivered an external outlook through various Cuban voices of the experience of living in a Disapora and the community?s hard work of building a metropolitan community by rebuilding their emigrant lives in solidarity. For over two years he interviewed Cuban-Americans of all ages, gender, race, socioeconomic class, professions, and communities in Miami-Dade County determined to construct a well-balanced overview of the 5-decade story of the Cuban-impact of Miami. What he found out principally is the human story element of an immigrant Diaspora?s foundational mark on a major, growing American city, the tragedy of exile and fleeing a beloved homeland, nostalgia that reshaped itself in the construction of a cultural enclave, and the tension between race and class lines in the largely diverse Cuban immigrant population.. This documentary film will explore the continuing CUBAN AMERICA story as a concentrated exile group's impact on transforming a sleepy, tourist town into a major, metropolitan community. A detailed look into the complex experience of Cuban-Americans of who they are, how they came to be, where they came from, where they are going, what they did, what they are doing and, more importantly, why they are will be portrayed. Insights, views, commentary, and varying perspectives are spoken only from, students, lawyers, professionals, teachers, entrepreneurs, former and active politicians, activist organizations, authors, public intellectuals, professors, artists, and Cuban-American residents of Hialeah, Little Havana, Westchester, Kendall and other areas in the Greater Miami region where Cuban-Americans predominantly reside.. more