MikePadgett.com

Buena Vista Social Club

— All rockumentaries should be like this: memorable film on the great cultural discovery of the late 90s.”

• Director: Wim Wenders
• Germany, 1999
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Ry Cooder visited Cuba in 1996 to record sessions for an intended Afro-Cuban collaboration. The Africans never made it out of Mali leaving Cooder and World Circuit’s Nick Gold high and dry. What followed was pure serendipity: within three days Juan de Marcos González managed to put together an extraordinary collective of musicians whose output became the Buena Vista Social Club album.

Cooder has been a frequent collaborator on Wenders’ films and the latter agreed to shoot the documentary on digital in 1998, with the former becoming a sort of central character. One might argue that with such colourful subjects against the dilapidated, colonial Havana backdrop, the film could have made itself.

The digital format gives the documentary a welcome rawness and interviews with each of the main Buena Vista players sets the scene for a triumphant coda in which these humble old gents gaze in awe at New York, most having never before left Cuba. A deserving Oscar winner even if rather uneven at times.