One of the highlights of this year's Havana Book Fair was Lecturas en La Red (books on the network): an impressive digital collection of electronic books available for reading and download at the fair.

Interesting video clip from the film Buena Vista Social Club of Eliades Ochoa in his hometown of Santiago de Cuba.

Watch this clip from the Buena Vista Social Club film of Omara Portuondo and the late Ibrahim Ferrer perform 'silencio' – magical!

Five years ago, the cross-border collaboration of the Cuban artistic trio known as the Merger would have been unthinkable.

With an aesthetic and conceptual contribution that covers diverse forms of expression, young artists Pedro Pablo Bacallao and Claudia Corrales irrupt onto the network of visual creation in Cuba. Their most recent solo shows, inaugurated at Havana's Provincial Center for Visual Arts and Design, reveal a firm intention of analyzing contemporary society starting from a critical standpoint expressed on multiple supports.

Cuban fiction film will premiere this year fourteen films of different genres, approaches, styles and aesthetic aspiration. At present, Cuban film is on the right track. I dare to say so especially after looking at some years back. I consider that Cuban film, characterized by its diversity and richness, has opened a wide range of tendencies and approaches. Many proposals are being made by the young, while acclaimed directors are taking us by surprise with their current projects.

Leading actors from stage and screen will join Alice Walker and Rene Gonzalez on stage at the Voices For Cuba concert on Friday 7th March at the Barbican Centre.
Frances de la Tour, Susan Wooldridge, Charlotte Cornwell, Adjoa Andoh, Sam West and Jonathan Pryce will read from the letters and poems of the Miami 5 and their families.In the presence of some of the family members themselves, the actors will bring to life the moving exchanges between the Cuban men and their loved ones back home during their long years of incarceration.

Artists from around the globe came together this weekend at José Antonio Echeverría complex, in Havana, to participate in the first international meeting of world music, the Havana World Music Festival.

We have 2 pairs of tickets to give away to go to the Voices for Cuba show with Eliades Ochoa and Omara Portuondo at the Barbican in London on Friday 7th March 2014, courtesy of promotors Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

Beneath Bruce Garrett's under-confident, overweight exterior, the passionate heart of a salsa king lies dormant. Now, one woman is about to reignite his Latin fire. Spotlight hits, sweat drips, heels click – Nick Frost IS Cuban Fury. Also starring Chris O'Dowd and Rashida Jones. From the producer of Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead and Paul.

Dragon dances on the streets of Chinatown along with other celebrations, have become annual events in Havana to mark the Chinese Lunar New Year. Cuba once had the largest Chinese population in the Americas outside of San Francisco, California. Very few remain today, but Chinese culture still exerts a strong and visible influence on this Caribbean island.
Early every morning – in parks all over Havana – Cubans gather to practice the Chinese so-called "soft" martial art, T'ai Chi. Many doctors here recommend it to their elderly patients.
Various forms of traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture are also widely available from the Cuban National health service.
Another popular pastime is Wushu or Kung Fu. Cuba's links to China go back to the middle of the nineteenth century when the first boatload of immigrants landed here in 1847.
Historian Theresa Maria Li is a director of the Chinese Cultural Center in Havana.
"This was a time when the battle was on to end the slave trade and the option was to bring in Chinese peasants. They arrived in massive numbers and were assigned to work in the sugar plantations as well as the tobacco and coffee fields." Theresa Maria Li, Cuban Chinese Historian said.
Around 130 thousand Chinese were shipped here to work as indentured labor in the fields-and they were often treated as badly as the slaves.
There are still Chinatowns in Havana and several other Cuban cities-and some of their clubs and societies have managed to survive. But these were mainly developed by later immigrants who arrived in the 20th century.
Very few ethnic Chinese Cubans remain. Almost all of the original laborers shipped here during the 19th century were single men who ended up marrying former slaves. Today their presence can be seen in the thousands of Cubans who have Afro Chinese ancestry.
In recent years the two countries have forged strong economic and political ties. China is Cuba's second largest trade partner after Venezuela. But it's a history which goes well beyond commercial and ideological ties.

Courtesy of World Circuit

Carlos Acosta is exploring a life beyond ballet. Pig's Foot is the novel he created as he escaped into his own world of story telling whenever he had spare time in his hectic schedule of rehearsals and performances. The idea for the novel began with its title. Acosta imagined a tiny hamlet in a remote part of Cuba, somewhere between the Sierra Maestra and El Cobre. Apparently he never read a book before the age of 25, but then discovered the Latin American greats, especially Gabriel García Márquez. This novel reveals that inspiration, with its magical realist overtones. The village of Pata de Puerco (Pig's Foot) evokes Macondo in Marquez's ‘100 years of Solitude' – a place of incredible characters, and strange happenings and a village "where anything is possible".

Foreign and Cuban rock bands will come together on the stage of the fifth Brutal Fest 2013 Rock Festival, to take place February 14 to 24 in Cuba.

Eliades Ochoa and Omara Portuondo, two of the stars of the Buena Vista Social Club are flying in for a special one-off concert at one of London's biggest arts venues, the Barbican Centre.