PARAISO
Deutschland/Kuba 2003 – Director: Alina Teodorescu – Original language: Spanish – Subtitles: German – Length: 96 min.
A couple of old plastic bottles and a few pieces of driftwood are enough for them. They create instruments and music – powerful, vibrating, explosive; the rhythm of young Cuba.
Paraíso is not about the European cliché of Cuba. It is not about romantic old cars and Buena Vista Social Club. It is about a group of young men. Around singer Yasel they have formed the band Madera Limpia (Pure Wood). They live in the eastern Cuban village of Guantánamo, where there is nothing going on, except for rain, sex and poverty.
And yet, this young band is playing the music of the street. Rapid, hot and aggressive. The pulsating Changüi mixed with rap and hip hop – on wooden instruments. “Our music” says Puro, the man at the trés-guitar "you have to dance, to feel – in order to hear it." In personal confessions to the camera, the musicians explain what they think about life: love, infidelity, sex, money and success. "My priority in life is to live; while I live I can have illusions, dreams of getting what I lack, and what I lack is everything. While I live, I can do it", says Yasel.
Mixing black-and-white images from music videos with the color of everyday life, this film is an amazingly authentic close-up of Cuban reality, capturing both the "vida loca" and the boredom and frustration on the island. All this is shot on DV and super 8 images, blown up to 35 mm, transforming the film’s texture into poetics.
German title: Paradies. Writer: Alina Teodorescu, Sorin Dragoi. Camera: Sorin Dragoi, bvk. Sound: Hubert Bartholomae. Editing: Alina Teodorescu. Music: Madera Limpia. Production: Teo-Film. Producer: Sorin Dragoia, Alina Teodorescu.
