Whatever happened to beef in Cuba? For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the secret services of the US, Russia, China and Cuba decide, by mutual accord, to declassify documents that reveal the hidden details of an intelligence operation that took place over a quarter of a century ago and featured a humble Cuban inventor at its core. Ricardo Figueredo Oliva’s mockumentary Operación Alfa (O lo que le pasó a Benito Manso(Operation Alfa [Or What Happened to Benito Manso]) is a one-of-a-kind delight and prefigures the recent sonic attacks at the US Embassy in Havana. Sexo, historias y cintas de vídeo (Sex, Stories and Videotape) tackles an officially taboo subject head-on, tracing the history of prostitution in Cuba, from the time it was a Spanish colony to the present. The film is as bold and defiant as its subject demands; timely in its gender equality, inclusive in its sexual orientation. Jose Martí said it best: There’s no other way to cure ills than to extinguish their causes.