OFFICIAL SELECTIONS - Telluride Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, Woodstock Film Festival, and Montclair Film Festival
Music • Youth • Cuba • Jazz • Cross Cultural Exchanges
Date of Completion: 2023 | Run Time: 71 minutes | Language: English & Spanish | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Directors & Producers : Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman | Editor: Susan Fanshel
Music is famously central to the Cuban spirit and way of life. Like the old American cars that fill the streets, the musical instruments Cubans play have weathered decades of humid tropical climate. Without the resources or craft skills to keep them maintained, Cuban musicians hold their instruments together with the equivalent of spit and chewing gum. In 2011, a US-based group of musicians and instrument artisans created an organization called Horns to Havana to help address this problem. H2H has been sending artisans from the US to Cuba every year since then to repair these instruments and teach young Cubans the skills they need to keep them in good condition. The story begins as Oscar/Emmy/Grammy-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Celluloid Closet, Linda Ronstadt:The Sound of My Voice, Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music) follow a string bass from a workshop in lower Manhattan to Havana, Cuba, and into the hands of 16-year-old Lily. Lily is a student musician at Amadeo Roldán, the premiere music-focused high school of Havana, and part of a thrilling swinging Big Band orchestra of fabulously talented high school musicians. At Amadeo Roldán we meet two other young musicians and follow them over the next five years through their everyday lives in Havana -- at school, at home with their families, rehearsing at school, performing around town, even embarking on a Mùsical exchange adventure to Preservation Hall in New Orleans. What connects these students is their love for music, and their ambition to make it as professional musicians upon graduating. MÙSICA! is an exploration of the power of music and the value of cross-cultural exchange — and the impact they can have on individuals' lives. Within the story of the film, music builds bridges and creates new opportunities for these young people and gives them skills and tools they will need to face the challenging future ahead of them. Horns to Havana aims to help Cuban students and schools overcome constraints enforced by lack of resources, dire economic conditions, politics, and geography. MÙSICA! shows this struggle in action.