Cuba’s love of music, art and culture is renowned, and to encourage exchanges in this area Green Cities Fund has accomplished several outstanding successes.
Green Cities Fund arranged for the Oscar nominated documentary and Sundance Film Festival winning documentary film “Daughter from Danang”, which Green Cities Fund founders helped produce, to be shown at the Havana Film Festival.
Green Cities Fund brought internationally renowned pianist, Idil Biret, to Havana where she performed to much acclaim with the Orquesta Filharmónica Nacional de Cuba, followed by a concert in New York City to benefit the “Send a Piana to Havana” project which donates pianos to Cuban schools and churches and sponsors a piano tuning and repair project at Cuba’s National Music School.
When Cuba’s National Ballet performed in Berkeley, Green Cities Fund founders assisted in finding extras to perform with the ballet, and participated in a dinner with the Ballet’s director, Alicia Alonso.
When gay rights advocate Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuba’s President, and poet/writer Miguel Barnet visited Berkeley, Green Cities Fund arranged a welcome dinner for them at Chez Panisse Restaurant. More recently, Cuban singer/songwriter Carlos Varela was a guest.
Green Cities Fund helped organize the UC Berkeley “Dialog with Cuba” conference, which brought the largest group of academics from Cuba to the United States since the start of the embargo.
Green Cities Fund is currently organizing the first Cuba exhibition of the paintings of well-know American artist, who produced many of her significant works while living in Havana.
Green Cities Fund brought contingent of chefs and food experts from the San Francisco Bay Area to meet and cook with Cuban chefs and organic farmers, as the first step of the “Planting Seeds” Project, which is establishing a teaching cooperative experimental kitchen to encourage permaculture, organic farming, food self-sufficiency and a better diet among Cubans. See:
http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2013/02/26/a-cuban-american-chez-panisse-chef-explores-her-culinary-roots/ and
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22177850/chez-panisse-chefs-encourage-fresh-dining-cuba