Screening:
Friday, April 28, 12:15 PM, Charles 2
Saturday, April 29, 9:30 PM, Charles 2

On March 28th, 1999, the Baltimore Orioles became the first Major League Baseball team to play in Cuba since Fidel Castro took power. Later the same year, the Cuban National Team traveled to the U.S. to play the Orioles at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Filmmakers Michael Skolnik and William O'Neill took this opportunity to make a documentary film. They assembled their own Cuban and American "teams" of nine members each. They made a film not about the baseball games and not about politics, but rather about the individuals that these games affected using baseball as the metaphor for their relationship to each other. This film attempts to bridge the gap that has existed between the United States and Cuba since the days of Kennedy, by telling the story of the lives of eighteen people.

Tidbit:
La Esquina Caliente premiered in December 1999 at the Latin American Film Festival in Havana, Cuba, where it was honored with a Special Jury Prize. This is the first screening of the film in the U.S.

Bios:
Michael Skolnik has been working on and off-Broadway for the past seven years, since the age of fourteen. He Executive Produced the off-Broadway hit, Athol Fugard's Hello & Goodbye in 1997 at Theatre Off-Park in NYC. Following the production, he and co-director William O'Neill created Equal Opportunity Productions (EqOp) in 1997 to bring theater back to the public classrooms of AmericaSince then, Skolink has gone on to co-head an independent film company, Kicked Down Productions, where O'Neill serves as the CEO.

William O'Neill founded the William O'Neill Foundation to bring arts back to the lives of young people in America. Equal Opportunity Productions is a program of the O'Neill Foundation. William has been actively involved in charity work involving the youth of America, including Change for Kids, Broadway Cares: Equity Fights AIDS, and the recent Black August Hip-Hop event in New York City.