The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute and the Department of Media & Communication Arts at The City College of New York present
 

Screening of the documentary Mínimo Gorki, directed by Lía Villares (Cuba, 2017)

The screening will be followed by a conversation with movie director Lía Villares; Jerry Carlson, Chair and Professor of the Department of Media & Communication Arts at City College; and Ted A. Henken, Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). A Q&A session with the audience will follow.

About the documentary

Mínimo Gorki is about anti-Castro punk musician Gorki from the iconic band Porno Para Ricardo. It is the first installment of the documentary series Free art vs totalitarian censorship, by Cuban artist Lía Villares, which offers an intimate look at protesting artists in Cuba. On February 2, 2017, the Cuban military counterintelligence carried out a surprise search of the El Círculo house gallery, confiscating all the material of the "Free Art vs. Totalitarian Censorship" series and also stealing all the personal and private information of the artists Luis Trápaga and Lía Villares, including equipment of work and all digital files. Ninetheless, Mínimo Gorki was exhibited for the first time during the #00Bienal in May 2018, at the Hannah Arendt INSTAR Institute of Artivism in Havana.

About Lía Villares

Lía Villares (Havana, 1984) is a Cuban artist, writer, and activist recognized for her commitment to freedom of expression and cultural rights in Cuba. For years, she has been a leading figure in the fight against censorship, using her art and her writing as means of protest. Additionally, Villares has been detained on several occasions due to her dissident activism against the Cuban regime. Her work spans multiple media, including blogs, poetry, and visual art, always focused on issues of human rights and individual freedoms in Cuba. In 2018, through a surprise search by state security forces at her home where she lost all his digital files, and after long being banned from leaving the country, she was expelled from Cuba. Despite these challenges, Villares continues her activities in favor of free art from her political exile in Miami. She is currently a Mellon Visiting Fellow at the Cuban Research Institute in Florida International University (FIU).

Her presentation at City College is possible thanks to the support of the Mellon Foundation, which supports the Mellon Fellowships for Threatened Cuban Scholars at FIU and the fellowship program for Threatened Dominican Scholars at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute.