The Music Film and the City: Our Manics in Havana

Abstract

Kent offers a detailed analysis of the British filmmaker Russell Thomas’s music documentary film Our Manics in Havana (2001), which was recorded at the time of the British rock band Manic Street Preachers’ visit to Havana and depicts their performance at the Teatro Karl Marx (Karl Marx Theatre). The chapter begins by spotlighting the phenomenon of music films recorded in Havana and explores the way these texts are used by artists for promotional purposes in the contemporary context. Kent draws attention to the way Thomas’s film deals in pre-existing images of the city associated with the Buena Vista “afterimage” and examines the way that documentary music films such as Thomas’s Our Manics in Havana formed part of the extended narration of a series of different Havana imaginaries. “The Music Film and the City: Our Manics in Havana” concludes by reflecting on the way that music films shot in Cuba since the end of the 1990s have played a fundamental role in the way the image of the city has developed over the course of the last two decades.