Buena Vista Social Club have released a new video — featuring previously unseen footage — for their classic track, “El Cuatro De Tula.”
The new clip boasts video taken during Buena Vista Social Club’s 1996 recording sessions in Havana, which were filmed by Susan Titelman. The group’s performance of “El Cuarto De Tula” is inch perfect and features laud player Barbarito Torres delivering his one-take solo in real time.
The “El Cuatro De Tula” video arrives ahead of the release of a 25th anniversary reissue of Buena Vista Social Club’s celebrated self-titled album.
The new clip boasts video taken during Buena Vista Social Club’s 1996 recording sessions in Havana, which were filmed by Susan Titelman. The group’s performance of “El Cuarto De Tula” is inch perfect and features laud player Barbarito Torres delivering his one-take solo in real time.
The “El Cuatro De Tula” video arrives ahead of the release of a 25th anniversary reissue of Buena Vista Social Club’s celebrated self-titled album.
- 8/18/2021
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Cuba has just been opened up to Americans, but twenty years ago musician Ry Cooder saw to it that a vanishing music tradition was preserved for posterity. Wim Wenders followed up with this rough & ready documentary that became almost as popular as the best selling album of mambos, boleros and cha-chas.
Buena Vista Social Club
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 866
1999 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 105 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 18, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Compay Segundo, Eliades Ochoa, Ry Cooder, Joachim Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer, Omara Portuondo, Rubén González, Orlando ‘Cachaíto’ López, Amadito Valdés, Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal, Barbarito Torres, Pío Leyva, Manuel ‘Puntillita’ Licea, Juan de Marcos González.
Cinematography: Jörg Widmer
Film Editor: Brian Johnson
Written by Wim Wenders, concept Nick Gold
Produced by Deepak Nayar
Directed by Wim Wenders
Looking for something new and invigorating, in the late 1980s Paul Simon collaborated with South African vocalists for a refreshing pop hybrid album...
Buena Vista Social Club
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 866
1999 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 105 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 18, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Compay Segundo, Eliades Ochoa, Ry Cooder, Joachim Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer, Omara Portuondo, Rubén González, Orlando ‘Cachaíto’ López, Amadito Valdés, Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal, Barbarito Torres, Pío Leyva, Manuel ‘Puntillita’ Licea, Juan de Marcos González.
Cinematography: Jörg Widmer
Film Editor: Brian Johnson
Written by Wim Wenders, concept Nick Gold
Produced by Deepak Nayar
Directed by Wim Wenders
Looking for something new and invigorating, in the late 1980s Paul Simon collaborated with South African vocalists for a refreshing pop hybrid album...
- 4/18/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Film review: 'Social Club'
Ry Cooder's plaintive, sinuous guitar work has been an indispensable contribution to the films of Wim Wenders and Walter Hill. With "Buena Vista Social Club", gifted German director Wenders returns the favor via a loving, vivid documentary that not only explores Cooder's music, craftsmanship, culture and roots but becomes a meditation on creativity.
The spellbinding work, a special screening at the Berlin Film Festival, should tap an appreciative audience that will respond strongly to its soulful celebration and sense of wonder. "I've been making records for 35 years. I never know how the public is going to respond, but this was most enjoyment I ever had," Cooder says early on. In 1996, during a visit to Havana, Cooder sought out the surviving members of Cuba's vibrant pre-revolutionary music scene to collaborate on an album. "In Cuba", Cooder says, "the music flows like a river." The finished work, "Buena Vista Social Club", was a critical and commercial phenomenon.
Wenders, operating with a small, guerrilla crew (the movie was shot on digital video and Beta camcorder), showcases 1998 concerts staged in New York and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Like Jonathan Demme's "Stop Making Sense", the portrait is deeply humane, evoking detailed texture and an emotionally riveting examination of the 13 Cuban singers and musicians that complemented Cooder's usual sidemen.
Denied overt political or ideological "insights," "Social Club" exists on a deeper, direct level of camaraderie and musical kinship. One feels like an anthropologist bearing witness to a forgotten, buried world.
Wenders' excursion into the exotic, desperate streets of Havana transcends conventional documentary form, providing voice and shape to the compelling personalities. Cooder functions in the background, willingly assimilating his voice into the collective. The dominant figures are two incredible subjects: Compay Segundo ("a Cuban Nat King Cole," Cooder says), an astonishing 91-year-old guitarist and singer with an expressive face and liquid eyes, and chanteuse Omara Portuondo, daughter of a prominent Cuban baseball player, whose deep-lined face and electric voice are magical and transcendent.
In Wenders' fiction films, the road is unstable and rootless, a place from which people are constantly fleeing. However, the Havana that Wenders conjures seems trapped in space, with 1950s shark-fin convertibles and once-elegant facades of crumbling architecture illustrating the elusive, mysterious Soneros music scene.
"Social Club" puts a human voice to a world that for many existed only in the abstract. In deft visual and cinematic language, it transports us to an exciting time that the world should be privileged to experience, at least for one night.
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB
Road Movies
A Wim Wenders film
Producer-director: Wim Wenders
Directors of photography: Jorg Widmer, Robby Muller
Editor: Peter Przygodda
Color/stereo
With: Ry Cooder, Joaquim Cooder, Compay Segundo, Ruben Gonzalez, Ibrahim Ferrer, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal, Orlando Lopez "Cachaito", Barbarito Torres, Manuel "Puntillita" Licea, Raul Planas, Felix Valoy, Richard Egues, Maceo Rodriguez
No MPAA rating...
The spellbinding work, a special screening at the Berlin Film Festival, should tap an appreciative audience that will respond strongly to its soulful celebration and sense of wonder. "I've been making records for 35 years. I never know how the public is going to respond, but this was most enjoyment I ever had," Cooder says early on. In 1996, during a visit to Havana, Cooder sought out the surviving members of Cuba's vibrant pre-revolutionary music scene to collaborate on an album. "In Cuba", Cooder says, "the music flows like a river." The finished work, "Buena Vista Social Club", was a critical and commercial phenomenon.
Wenders, operating with a small, guerrilla crew (the movie was shot on digital video and Beta camcorder), showcases 1998 concerts staged in New York and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Like Jonathan Demme's "Stop Making Sense", the portrait is deeply humane, evoking detailed texture and an emotionally riveting examination of the 13 Cuban singers and musicians that complemented Cooder's usual sidemen.
Denied overt political or ideological "insights," "Social Club" exists on a deeper, direct level of camaraderie and musical kinship. One feels like an anthropologist bearing witness to a forgotten, buried world.
Wenders' excursion into the exotic, desperate streets of Havana transcends conventional documentary form, providing voice and shape to the compelling personalities. Cooder functions in the background, willingly assimilating his voice into the collective. The dominant figures are two incredible subjects: Compay Segundo ("a Cuban Nat King Cole," Cooder says), an astonishing 91-year-old guitarist and singer with an expressive face and liquid eyes, and chanteuse Omara Portuondo, daughter of a prominent Cuban baseball player, whose deep-lined face and electric voice are magical and transcendent.
In Wenders' fiction films, the road is unstable and rootless, a place from which people are constantly fleeing. However, the Havana that Wenders conjures seems trapped in space, with 1950s shark-fin convertibles and once-elegant facades of crumbling architecture illustrating the elusive, mysterious Soneros music scene.
"Social Club" puts a human voice to a world that for many existed only in the abstract. In deft visual and cinematic language, it transports us to an exciting time that the world should be privileged to experience, at least for one night.
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB
Road Movies
A Wim Wenders film
Producer-director: Wim Wenders
Directors of photography: Jorg Widmer, Robby Muller
Editor: Peter Przygodda
Color/stereo
With: Ry Cooder, Joaquim Cooder, Compay Segundo, Ruben Gonzalez, Ibrahim Ferrer, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal, Orlando Lopez "Cachaito", Barbarito Torres, Manuel "Puntillita" Licea, Raul Planas, Felix Valoy, Richard Egues, Maceo Rodriguez
No MPAA rating...
- 2/22/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.