Miami, Dec. 16, 2024 – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Miami Film Festival will resume its Cuban Cinema Series with the documentary film “A Night in the Life” at 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 24, at MDC’s Koubek Center. This next installment in the popular film series pays tribute to legendary Cuban saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera and the generations of musicians he has inspired. The screening is free and open to the public with registration. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles.
Directed by Jorge Soliño, the documentary captures a magical evening on November 8, 2015, when a group of musicians who revere the successful career of D’Rivera gathered to pay tribute to him at the club Habana 305 in Miami. The impromptu jam turned out to be a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Soliño captured the concert not knowing it would become a key piece in the documentary years later. The film also chronicles D’Rivera’s life, from his childhood in Havana, where he proved to be a precocious genius, to the peak of a career that already has a separate chapter in the history of jazz. While studying and training hard to master his instrument, D’Rivera railed against the absurdities and repression of the Castro regime, and eventually had no choice but to leave the island like so many others.
Soliño boasts a filmography that explores emblematic figures, as well as other obliterated chapters of Cuban music, which remains the island’s most important gift to world culture.
WHAT: Cuban Cinema Series Presents “A Night in the Life”
WHEN: Friday, Jan. 24, at 7 p.m.
WHERE: MDC’s Koubek Center
2705 S.W. 3rd St.
RSVP for tickets at Miamifilmfestival.com/cuban-cinema-series.