‘Havana Motor Club’ documentary racing to theaters
With relations normalizing between the United States and Cuba, and with President Obama and the Rolling Stones having just concluded high-profile visits to the island nation, Havana is hot.
The timing is fortuitious for the filmmakers behind “Havana Motor Club,” a feature-length documentary about Cuban street racers.
The film’s director, producer and editor Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt initially went to Cuba to shoot a “making of” documentary about another filmmaker’s movie. That didn’t pan out, but while Perlmutt was in Havana waiting for the green light, he got invited to check out an informal car club event. Entranced by what he saw, he shifted gears and was soon meeting Havana hot-rodders and filming their illegal street races.
The result is an 84-minute look into Cuba’s underground car culture. Perlmutt and his talented crew -- 80% Cuban, Perlmutt says, and led by producer/cinematographer Zelmira Gainza and editor/cinematographer Armando Croda -- bring Havana into beautiful focus as they follow a charismatic collection of car nuts preparing their vintage vehicles for a sanctioned drag race that, month after month, never happens.
They include Tito and Rey, a father-and-son team working up a red-and-white ’55 Chevy Bel Air; Carlos, who races a ’58 Bel Air and a Porsche with a V-8 under the hood; Jote, who drives the ghoulish Black Widow, powered by a massive boat motor; and Piti, a cancer survivor determined to make the most out of a coal-colored ’56 Ford Victoria.
Through a series of false starts, the racers compete in secret, petition the government for the right to hold official races, scheme to find spare parts and fresh tires on the Cuban black market -- or by sneaking them in from Miami -- and dream of leaving Cuba altogether for a new life in the U.S.
Perlmutt, who cut his teeth co-directing an admired documentary on Diana Vreeland, among other projects, says he and his crew met and parted multiple times over four full years of filming, eventually exposing more than 300 hours of film.
The result, a kind of “Buena Vista Social Club” on four wheels, is a love letter to Cuba -- the vintage cars, the racers and their families, the crumbling grandeur of the city and its streets -- that’s as good an introduction to the country as anything I’ve seen since I visited in 2000. It will serve as an admirable travelogue for anyone interested in Havana, irrespective of their interest in automobiles.
The movie has already created some positive fallout. Perlmutt reports that representatives of the “Fast and Furious” feature film series have met with some of the racers featured in “Havana Motor Club,” as have a few reality TV show producers, bringing them more attention and perhaps some funding for their race endeavors.
Perlmutt is moving on to more serious matters, having secured an extended contract with Discovery to film a series on viruses.
His movie is already available on iTunes, and will be available elsewhere and in select movie theaters Friday.
Twitter: @misterfleming
