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Buena Vista Social Club
May 13, 2016, 6:00 PM
$15
Overview:
- 6:00 p.m.: Party with Cuban food by A Taste of Sunshine in Maine and a cash bar
- 7:15 p.m.: Film screening
- 9:00 p.m.: Live music by Primo Cubano
With a small film crew, Wim Wenders accompanied his old friend Ry Cooder, who had written the music for Paris, Texas and The End of Violence, on a trip to Havana. Cooder wanted to record his material for Ibrahim Ferrer’s solo album at a studio there, following the recording of the first Buena Vista Social Club CD, which had not yet been released.
Wenders immersed himself in the world of Cuban music. Over several months, he observed and accompanied the musicians: first at home in Havana; then, weeks later, in April 1998, on their trip to Amsterdam for the first public performance of the band, who had never played together outside a studio; then in July 1998, to their triumphal concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall. He thus followed the old heroes of the traditional Cuban Son music on their path from being completely forgotten to becoming world famous within the period of just a few months.
“I thought, I’ll shoot a documentary,” Wenders has said, “and here we were, about to witness a fairy tale that no one could have imagined in this form.”
The music documentary became a cinematic sensation and an international success. Along with an Academy Award nomination for best documentary, this ebullient movie won the same category at the European Film Awards, the German Film Prize in Gold, Germany’s Golden Camera, and the Grand Prize for Film in Brazil, as well as numerous other awards.
In Spanish with English subtitles and in English.
(1999, G, 105 mins.)
Tickets: $20 ($15 for Maine Film Center members)