IN CINEMA

Thursday, July 26th at 7PM

TEÓFILO

Ethan Higbee, 2025, 85 min., USA

“Everyone has a price, but everyone’s price isn’t money,” says former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson halfway through the documentary TEÓFILO, the definitive life story about Teófilo Stevenson, Cuba’s most historic athlete and undoubtedly the greatest boxer to never fight for money. Tyson continues later on, “Loyalty, it’s hard to find that stuff…I think he was under the impression that if he came to America they (boxing promoters) would use him like a whore.” And that sums up Stevenson, a man so loyal to his country, its leader Fidel Castro and its socialist system, that taking the millions promoters offered him to turn professional would have been a betrayal to that system and to the people of Cuba whom he valued more than currency. The mantra Stevenson would famously retort interview after interview was “What’s a million dollars compared to 8 million Cubans.” To understand his loyalty you must understand that Stevenson was born with the Cuban revolution, a country boy from the sugar producing lands in eastern Cuba, and was 7 years old in 1959 when Fidel Castro’s rebel army rolled into Havana and overthrew the authoritarian regime of Fulgencio Batista. Nearly ten years later, under the tutelage of a Soviet trainer Andrei Chervonenko, Teófilo Stevenson’s deadly right hand had made him the second most popular man on the island behind Fidel Castro. Commentaries from Alberto Guerra, Mike Tyson, Nadia Comaneci and George Foreman.

fidel castro with muhammed ali, 1966

Post-screening discussion and Q&A with Director Ethan Higbee

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Tickets: $15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price