The Havana Film Festival New York (HFFNY) has become an internationally recognized film festival celebrating Latin American cinema with new full-length features, documentaries, short films, classics and animation from Cuba, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America. This program is renowned for premiering award-winning films as well as the work of emerging filmmakers.

Going on its fourth year of sponsorship, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies is proud of the 8th Havana Film Festival in New York at the Ida K. Lang Theater in Hunter College and The Quad Cinema. Rarely seen and new independent films from and about Latin America including Cuba and Puerto Rico were premiered, including “Ladrones y Mentirosos” directed by Ricardo Mendez and Poli Marichal. The Center for Puerto Rican Studies will support the upcoming 9th Havana Film Festival in New York which will be from April 11-17, 2008.

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies is happy to announce that two days of the 9th Havana Film Festival in New York will be dedicated to showcasing and discussing the many documentary films that have been supported by El Centro.

Latino Art Now! A Conference

The “Latino Art Now!” conference is in the planning stages for the spring 2008 semester. This conference is being co-hosted by The Center for Puerto Rican Studies, the Inter-University Program for Latino Research based at the University of Notre Dame, the Americas Society, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and the Association for Hispanic Arts. Noted arts scholar and educator Tómas Ybarra-Frausto chairs the organizing committee. This is a follow-up conference to the highly successful, “Assessment and Valuation of Puerto Rican, Chicano, Latino and Hispanic-Caribbean Art” conference organized and held at Hunter College in May 2005.