The first venue for this jazz concert was the Casa de La Cultura Plaza in downtown Havana, which is still home to many music and jam sessions that take place to this day.
Created in 1960 by a joint effort of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the Instituto Nacional de la Industria Turística and the cultural organizations of the government, the International Ballet Festival of Havana was added to the plans of massive diffusion of arts started after the Cuban Revolution on 1 January 1959.
This Festival, which currently is held in alternate years, is one of the oldest worldwide, and meets at different venues in the Cuban capital and in other cities.
The event organizes several contests in categories such as fiction medium- and short-length films, first-timers, documentary, animation, scripts and posters, though the major attraction of the whole event is the Official Section Contest, in which some 21 feature films compete for the Coral Award.
[4] Every year Havana plays host to the Habanos Cuban Cigar Festival in the month of February.