In the story told by La Noche Eterna, a poet and a young Evangelical man from the countryside, who have both recently arrived at the prison, meet an older actor who had been imprisoned after he was accused of trying to assassinate Fidel Castro. The actor ushers them into the social world of the prisoners, showing them how to resist the authorities’ attempt to re-educate them. To enliven the prisoners’ evenings, he convinces the warden that screening films would be a more effective means of teaching inmates about the benefits of socialism and creates a cinema inside the prison. La Noche Eterna is based on the true story of Cuban writer and former political prisoner Néstor Díaz de Villegas. In 1974, Díaz de Villegas was sentenced to six years in prison at the age of 18 for writing a poem. Prior to his imprisonment he had already been subjected to censure several times for his nonconformist attitudes, which were deemed by the revolutionary government to be “ideologically divergent.” “Ideological diversionism,” a term introduced by Raúl Castro in the early 1970s, functioned as a legal and moral category that criminalized dissent. It was applied to Cuban citizens considered to be too intellectual, to youths who showed interest in American popular culture and music, to those presumed to be gay or lesbian, and to religious people whose faith prevented them from performing political obedience. Fusco will be present for a post-screening conversation with novelist, art critic, and scholar Pablo Baler, Professor of Latin-American Literature, Visual Arts, and Creative Writing at California State University, Los Angeles