Lagrimas negras
Netherlands,
1997, 75 min
Shown in 1998
CREDITS
- dir
-
Sonia Herman Dolz
- prod
-
Kees Ryninks, Carmen Cobos
- cam
-
Melle van Essen
- editor
-
Gys Zevenbergen
- prod co
-
Ryninks Films BV; NPS
- source
-
Holland Film, Jan Luykenstraat 2, 1071 CM Amsterdam, Netherlands. FAX: 31-20-570-7570
- gga award
-
Silver Spire, Film & Video: The Arts
- premiere
-
North American Premiere
OTHER
Is sugar really the sweetest Cuba export? Or is it the rumba, the guaracha and the cha-cha-cha? Cuban popular music, or son, has aficionados worldwide, and this documentary by Sonja Herman Dolz shows why. It’s part road movie about a group of five musicians—La Vieja Trova Santiaguera—touring a Europe populated by wildly cheering fans and part slice-of-life back home as these working-class philosophers talk about life, love and Carlos Marx. “Music heals people,” says Reinaldo, the leader, whose piercingly sweet tenor voice will perform a little beneficial surgery on your heart. “The son is the best medicine.” The “baby” of the group is 62, the oldest (the one with the groovy dance routine) is 84. What medicine! They are a living tradition, a weather-beaten monument to Cuban culture standing amidst the distressed 1950s Chevys that prowl the tropical, son-drenched streets of Santiago de Cuba. The music is distilled from “black tears” (lagrimas negras), the music of blacks and mulattos, descendants of Cuba’s former slaves and colonists. Seamlessly blending Spanish danzón melody and African rhythm and chant, these performers of the son are on a mission of enlightenment to a capitalist world littered with neon billboards and golden arches. Somebody’s got this embargo thing all wrong. It may be illegal to sell medicine to Cuba—yet they are sending medicine to us.
—Miguel Pendás
FACTOID #111
Both parents of TV star Mariska Hargitay attended the Festival, but not at the same time. Actress Jayne Mansfield attended in 1966 on a lark, and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay attended in 1989, having appeared as himself in György Szomjas’s film Mr. Universe.
