HAVANA, Jan. 26, 3004
Sundance Goes To Havana
Redford Holds Private Screening For Family Of Che Guevara
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Robert Redford, at Cuban Institute of Film and Art Sunday, after the screening of his film about Che Guevara, the legendary guerilla fighter who was executed in Bolivia in 1967. (AP)
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Fidel Castro (left) with Che Guevara, in the 1960s. In Cuba, Guevara is revered as a national hero; his image remains in the form of statues, flags and murals across the nation where he once fought. (AP (file))
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Interactive Robert Redford & Sundance Find out more about Robert Redford's long and distinguished career and his Sundance Film Institute.
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Interactive Fidel Castro And Cuba Find out more about the communist country and the fiery leader who led the Cuban Revolution.
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Fast Facts Cuba Learn about the people, economy and history.
"I've come to present the movie I produced about Che," Redford said in brief comments to reporters outside a Havana theater. "I'm very happy to be here."
"The Motorcycle Diaries," directed by Brazilian Walter Salles, and featuring Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal in the lead role, tells of Guevara's travels across Latin America before joining the revolution of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Guevara's widow, Aleida March, and several of their children were seen at the screening of the movie.
Among others seen entering the theater for the screening were Ramiro Valdes, a former commander in Cuba's revolution more than 40 years ago; and Alfredo Guevara, who directs the annual New Latin American Cinema Festival.
Havana was a second stop for "The Motorcycle Diaries," which received much praise and a standing ovation Saturday, at the Sundance Film Festival that Redford hosts annually in Park City, Utah.
The portrait of the Argentine-born rebel as a young man is intended to provide insights in the early stirrings of his social conscience.
The film isn't the first time that Redford has immersed himself in the atmosphere and issues of Cuba during the revolution that put Fidel Castro in power in 1959.
In 1990, Redford starred in Sydney Pollack's "Havana" as a gambler who rolls into town in 1958 hoping to make a pot of money, falls in love, and is changed by the events he witnesses as the revolution explodes.
Redford also visited Cuba for real, in 1988, at which time - according to the New York Daily News - there were reports that he had gone scuba-diving with Castro.
Those reports earned him an interrogation by U.S. Treasury agents upon his return.
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