The global success of Buena Vista Social Club revealed the extraordinary power of Cuban music to captivate audiences around the world. Yet Cuba's cultural identity extends far beyond its musical traditions. CUBA: Through the Looking Glass seeks to expand that conversation by exploring the island's contributions to the visual and decorative arts, where architecture, craftsmanship, and color play an equally compelling role.

When we talk about George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1778–1860) we tend to leap from one dazzling highlight to another: the child prodigy who, at age ten, performed a Viotti concerto in Paris before an audience that included Thomas Jefferson, to the electrifying 1803 Vienna premiere of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47—the fiery work later rededicated as the “Kreutzer” Sonata after the famous falling-out between the two musicians.

Charlottesville, a city that once aspired to be a center of learning and culture, now bears the shame of this desecration.

This is my tribute to Humberto Calzada: Cuban, American, painter, friend, brother in all the ways that matter. A man who understood that sometimes the only way to go home is to create it, brush stroke by brush stroke, until the canvas holds everything you remember about love.

The Piccirilli Factor will be part of the Fall 2025 Film & Video Series at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY. The screening is scheduled for Tuesday, October 7, 2025, at 6 PM, in Manhattan.