Superhits

In late August I wrote a post titled “What I see around me” which, illustrated with pictures of several billboards, showed the signs that surround me.  These posters, television propaganda and political murals in workplaces form part of the visual inventory of the obligatory.  Images quite different from what we select when guided by our own interests and tastes. An exploration of the documentaries and films that are circulating at the moment, through alternative distribution networks, shows the distance between what the official media shows us and what we really want to see.

I put together a short list of “Underground Superhits,” which circulate today thanks to flash memory and CDs.  Among the most attractive topics is what happened in the Eastern European countries during the collapse of socialism. However, the common denominator of these images and stories that we enjoy today in a semi-clandestine way, is that they were not disclosed or were treated very poorly in the Cuban news. Hence our desire to see what they have not wanted to tell us; to know the other side of the official version they kept secret from us.

Here is the list:

– You Will Love the Leader Over All Things [North Korea]

– The Battle of Chernobyl

– The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the End of the Russian Tsars

– Socialism, the Earthly Paradise

– The Truth of the Sinking of the Kursk Submarine

– The Ouster of a Dictator: Slobodan Milosevic

– The Massacre at Katyn