By María Luisa Ortega (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

A small enclave in the Caribbean can become a prism which reveals the globalised past and present, the complex dynamics in which human action and nature connect a point on the map with the rest of the planet. This is what happens in the latest documentary by Michael Chanan, Cuba: Living Between Hurricanes. The history of the municipality and port of Caibarién and the present day lives of its inhabitants function as a miniature mirror of other realities: of the history of Cuba from colonial times till today; of the logics of commodity production determined by global markets (colonial crops in the past, tourism in the present); and the response of local communities in different parts of the planet to the effects of climate change and the economic exploitation of the territory through ecotourism and sustainable agriculture. The film is rooted in the identity of Caibarién, the words and experiences of its people, and the cinematic memory of the ICAIC archives. It also shows us the results of the dialogue between academic research – with a script by Jean Stubbs and Jonathan Curry-Machado – and the audiovisual research proper to the medium of film.