In Offering to Yemaya: Goddess of the Sea, Bacallao allows his audience a measured glimpse into the world of Santería, a religion brought to Cuba by Africans who had been captured and transported to the Caribbean as slaves.

The film documents a Santería ceremony in which worshippers pay tribute to Yemaya, the mother of all the Orishas, or deities of Santería. “I decided to do something about Santería because I needed to know more about this. That was my feeling, like, ‘Oh, I need to do something there.’” Aware that he stood a chance of alienating viewers who might find images of the ritual overwhelming, Bacallao made careful choices about what to film and what to cut. “For me it was so fascinating to be there inside of the ritual, but I realized for many people it’s too much. So I cut out many scenes. I showed some part of the ritual, and for me, it was enough.” His strategy for achieving this level of accessibility is to take an economical approach: “You don’t try to say too much,” he says. “I think this is the challenge: to be specific with the audience but at the same time not be superficial. A good story is a story people will understand.”

In the seemingly chaotic style of Cuban documentary tradition, vivid performances showcasing the musical power and intense political character of the movement swing back and forth with a deceptively motley crew of Cuban Hip Hoppers who tell the seldom told tale of the continuing marginalization of Black culture by the Cuban political and cultural hierarchy with remarkable clarity and passionate conviction. With acute irony, Bacallao depicts the eventual demise of the movement’s authenticity and message with the usurpation of the Hip Hop Festival leadership by members of the infamous Asociación Hermanos Saínz, the government institution mandated to co-opt the sharp angry edge of artistic expression, undermining and eventually eliminating its essential intention of social criticism.

An ageing zoo-keeper, unable to bring himself to poison the zoo’s last lion, decides to bring the animal home and take care of it himself. His family, struggling already to make ends meet, balk at the idea at first – until they realize that the scheme might persuade the state to grant them a new and better house. Certain the additional hardship will pay off in the future, the family welcomes the beast into their home - with desperately tragic consequences.

How does this story translate for mainstream American viewers – many of whom were too busy celebrating the collapse of the Soviet Union to notice the devastating knock-on effect it had in Cuba?

It is estimated that 2 million Cubans live in the diaspora.

The largest and most organized community resides in the States, holding all sorts of important positions from Senators to school bus drivers.

Since the Coup d’état of General Batista in 1952, groups with different political orientations have clashed and there are uncountable victims.

Ricardo Bacallao, a Cuban Filmmaker, received his MFA in film from NYU. While living in Madrid and Berlin, Ricardo participated several times in the Berlin Film Festival, including being selected as the first Cuban representative to the festival's Talent Campus in 2003 and 2004.

In 2010, a segment Ricardo produced for CUNY TV's magazine show Nueva York won a New York Emmy Award. Since that time, he has been working as a freelance director, DP, producer and editor of documentary shorts both commercially and for air on venues such as CUNY TV, HITN, and at New York based exhibition spaces.

Ricardo Bacallao is finishing his first feature film "The Uncle's Request".