The 5th edition of the Brutal Fest Extreme Music Festival will start at the Maxim Rock theater, in Havana next February 14 and will take place up to the 24th in all Cuba. The itinerant festival, sponsored by the Brutal Beatdown Records and the Cuban Rock Agency, will have five foreign bands coming mainly from Europe that will share the stage with local bands.

David Chapet, founder of Brutal Beatdown Records and the festival, said that thanks to the success of the previous editions, the festival will take place twice a year starting this 2013. The first one will be in February, Brutal Winter Fest, and the second, Brutal Summer Fest, will be in August, while he added that each of them will have new groups to perform. David also declared that for the first time, there will be bands coming from Finland and Denmark at the time he highlighted the fact that the French band Worn-Out recorded 4 unknown songs in Spanish and English especially for this festival and the Cuban audience.

"I'm never bored, I carry my muse around with me," says Luis Enrique Camejo (b. Pinar del Rio, 1971). He's one of those artists who is always immersed in a whirlwind of thoughts that to invariably lead action. His ideas come from his own life, from art, film, literature… He is an observer. He can discover new concepts while talking, smoking, or taking a sip of coffee, conveying his thoughts in a meditative look, like a mystic trying to unravel the future.

Read the full interview In Conversation with Cuban artist Luis Camejo at http://www.cubanartnews.org/news/en/14-in-conversation-luis-enrique-camejo

If you are looking to buy some last minute Christmas gifts for friends and family – Cuba Solidarity shop has a wide range of Cuban cultural related gifts – Cuban music from salsa to jazz to country music to rumba, classic feature films on DVD including 'Memories of Underdevelopment', Strawberry & Chocolate', 'Death of a Bureaucrat' plus many books including the crime fiction books of Leonardo Padura and the poetry of Nicolas Guillen, and fabulous film posters, plus Cuban coffee and chocolate.

Two Cubans won today (7 December) the title of the World Youth Boxing Championship held in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, where a third boxer grabbed a bronze medal.

Signs of racial discrimination, still present in Cuban society, and the need of strategies to change that reality were debated in one of the 12 permanent working commissions of the National Assembly of the People's Power (ANPP).

Founded in the late 1980s by Professor Rine Leal, a friend and scholar of Piñera´s work, the honorific cathedra dedicated to the study, promotion and spreading of the drama production of Virgilio Piñera, is reopening its spaces and retaking its main work lines this year, after a truce in its existence. This year, Cuban culture has been honoring the life of our most important playwright in his hundredth anniversary.

The Virgilio Piñera Cathedra, linked to the Drama Department from the Theater Art Faculty from the Instituto Superior de Arte (Higher Art Institute, ISA in Spanish), in its new development stage, will keep its study, promotion and spreading task of Piñera´s plays, as a creative paradigm of Cuban contemporary theater plays. From this perspective, it will promote inter-disciplinary researches on different areas of theater creation, thinking, Cuban culture, new writings, history and the development of the main creation lines in Cuban stages and its relationships with the international theater landscape. For that purpose, we will undertake a nurtured program of events, research projects, consultancy, lifting and diffusion of information, among other action lines, all of them headed towards sustaining the dynamic and open character with which Piñera faced his creation and the study, critic and promotion of the work of his contemporaries.

The project "Cultura entre las manos" (Culture in the hands), by Habana Radio station, continues today promoting a practice, dedicated to make a link between the deaf community and heritage, its main promoter stated.

Yalena Gispert, defectologist by profession and worker at the radio station connected with the Old Havana Historian Office, confirmed the initiative as an unprecedented experience in national special education.

Carlos Acosta, leading dancer of the Royal Ballet, called on Cuban ballet
dancers living in Cuba and abroad to work together "to grow and move forward."

"It is time to put the past behind and for Cubans living abroad to come to Cuba
to exchange ideas on new trends in this art to improve itand leave a rich legacy
to our children," Acosta said in a Havana press conference.

The Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI), since it was founded 30 years ago, has always counted on the Cuban brothers because in this Caribbean island there is indeed freedom of religion, said President of CLAI Julio Murray.

In remarks to Prensa Latina, Murray said that those who talk about the impossibility to profess any creed here are those who live abroad and fail to know the reality here.

Cubans enjoy one of the richest and most deeply embedded literary cultures in the world and the West could take a leaf out of their book in how to survive economic hardship, according to researchers at the Universities of Nottingham and Manchester.

A new book out this month by Nottingham's Professor Antoni Kapcia and Manchester's Dr Parvathi Kumaraswami is based on interviews with more than 100 Cuban writers and editors – and challenges the image of the Socialist country portrayed in the West.

The Cuban Music Institute issued a statement this week rejecting the creation of an orchestra in Miami, United States, claiming the name Riverside, which they consider an act of vandalism, violating any respect for the Cuban nation.

FOR two to three years now Cuban cinematography has seen a revival in all genres, but particularly in the documentary category.

Watch this film about the great Cuban bandleader Arsenio Rodriguez who was at his height in the 1940s and 1950s and is credited with developing the traditional Cuban son and by adding trumpets and piano became the godfather of what we now know as salsa which developed further in New York.

"This is an important day for Cubans living in the UK and abroad to join with friends and family to celebrate our diverse living culture and take pride in being Cuban. Come and celebrate with us!"Roberto Molina, artistic director
On Saturday 20th October in London, Cubans and many friends of Cuba will be celebrating that country's National Day of Culture. At Conway Hall the Fiesta will feature Cuban salsa band Omar Puente and Raíces Cubanas plus other Cuban performers and DJ, with authentic Cuban food and bar.

Throughout 2012 Cuba has been commemorating 100 years since the establishment of the Independent Party of Color and the 1912 Massacre as part of its ongoing analysis and debate on current racism in Cuba and actions to be taken to counter it.