Photos from our Closing Distances/Cerrando Distancias 4 Documentary tour with U.S. filmmaker, Andrés Caballero:
Closing Distances 4 U.S. Documentary Tour brings U.S. filmmaker Andrés Caballero to Cuba, March 11 - 18, 2016
The Americas Media Initiative organizes groundbreaking U.S. documentary film tour; First-time partnership with Cuba’s Asociación Hermanos Saíz
Burlington, VT – For the fourth time, a U.S. documentary program will tour Cuba. Closing Distances/Cerrando Distancias 4, which takes place March 11-18, 2016, and will bring documentary filmmaker, Andrés Caballero and his film, Gaucho del Norte to Cuba. The observational documentary produced by Capital K Pictures and co-directed by Sofian Khan, follows the journey of a Chilean sheepherder from the Patagonia to Utah.
Alexandra Halkin, Director of the Americas Media Initiative (AMI), a non-profit that works with Cuban filmmakers, organized the tour in partnership with the Asociación Hermanos Saíz (AHS), the most important youth cultural organization in Cuba that has Centers throughout the island. The tour will be screening Gaucho del Norte with Q&A sessions in Cienfuegos, Santa Clara, Caibarien, Cienega de Zapata, Matanzas and Havana. Mr. Caballero will also be interviewed on the Cuban national talk show, Lente Joven.
In spring 2012 AMI launched its pioneering Closing Distances/Cerrando Distancias U.S. Documentary tour with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and was the first time that the MoMA did an official program in Cuba. Since then, the Closing Distances tours have screened seven U.S. documentaries and engaged with Cuban audiences in Cienfuegos, Camaguey, Holguin, Bayamo, Guantanamo, Baracoa, Pinar del Río, the Sierra Maestra Mountains and Havana. Interviews and portions of the presentations have been broadcast on Cuban National Television, reaching millions of people throughout the island. AMI is the only U.S. organization that Cuba has allowed to screen U.S. documentaries in the island’s provinces.
Andrés Caballero is a public radio producer, journalist and documentary filmmaker. He co-directed Gaucho del Norte, a documentary about immigrant sheepherders in the American west. He recently produced the Military Voices Initiative series for StoryCorps, recording the stories of US military personnel who served in post 9/11 conflicts. He is a former producer at LatinoUSA and a former NPR/Above the Fray fellow, where he reported stories from Cameroon and the Central African Republic. His work has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, PBS, and Germany’s Deutsche Welle. Most recently Mr. Caballero received a MacArthur grant for his current film in production, The Interpreter that looks into the experiences of Iraqi and Afghan interpreters, and the American veterans they worked with, as they seek to rebuild their lives.
Closing Distances/Cerrando Distancias 4 will screen Gaucho del Norte, which follows a year in the life of a Patagonian sheepherder recruited by an Idaho rancher to work in the lonely deserts and mountains of the American west. The nomadic three-year journey takes Eraldo Pacheco and his herd of more than a thousand sheep through the ups and downs of breathtaking landscapes and a psychologically demanding lifestyle in complete isolation. Back at the ranch, newly arrived Peruvian sheepherder, Jhonny Quispe, struggles to adapt to an American dream different to the one he imagined. Gaucho del Norte was broadcast on PBS America Reframed and has been screened at various film festivals including, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and the American Documentary Film Festival.
Alexandra Halkin is a documentary filmmaker and Founding Director of AMI. Ms. Halkin, a Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, has been working on documentary projects in Cuba for over two decades. AMI focuses on the distribution and promotion of Cuban independent and community media in collaboration with Icarus Films in New York. Closing Distances/Cerrando Distancias 4 is funded in part by the Ford Foundation.
