VIEW TRAILER 

BYE BYE HAVANA

58 min., English/Spanish (opt. subtitles)

       For all Havana's crumbling structures and piles of rubble, its disintegrating roads and toxin-belching jalopies, its plethora of armed policemen and sun-bleached billboards espousing their pat, revolutionary slogans, it attracts over a million pink-skinned, camera-toting, snack-munching mojito-swilling tourists each year.

       Cuba stands pummeled by an unworkable socialism and a voracious consumer appetite. What began more than forty six years ago seems spent, "patriotism or death" are simply not enough. Cubans want other choices, other points of view, and they can't wait any longer. But defeating the autocracy also means Cubans will need to relinquish much of their collective conscience in order to chase  individual profit and personal freedom.

      Bye Bye Havana is 90 miles from being political. This fast-paced stream of conscience documentary presents a unique flavor of irony, carried by an eclectic soundtrack featuring Latin Grammy Nominee X Alfonso, hip hop by Free Hole Negro, pianist Roberto Carcasses and jazz poet Telmary.

       Filmmaker J. Michael Seyfert, a constant commuter between journalism and the creative arts, is leaving behind the limitations of entertainment in favor of a more substantial task: to meaningfully and directly affect the plight of his subjects through his work. 

This film holds a slice of the Cuban soul for all of us to ruminate"

"A well-crafted film essay on a country most forget"

"One of the better produced and enjoyable documentaries about a serious subject"

"A crystal clear window into a crumbling world"

me me, more more

 BYE BYE HAVANA                                                             2nd draft - June 27

 by J. Michael Seyfert / 2004  

I did not go to Cuba prepared to celebrate uncritically what the Castro regime has achieved, nor rejoice in Western glee over its failures to provide important freedoms.  

Return to Utopia

Delirious in the tumble of my new-found freedom, far away from the mediocre crowds that have been enfolding me out West, I walk down Campanario towards the Malecon. A sniffy Caribbean breeze squeezing tears from my eyes, I pass chicos playing baseball with rocks and sticks, salsa blares from boom-boxes placed everywhere at opened windows, filling the tropical air with sexy, brassy music and, no doubt, drowning out the puritanical incantations of revolutionary doctrine which, for forty five years, have yet to subdue the hedonistic Afro-Cuban culture. Marxist maybe, but communism here has a certain cha-cha-cha.  No one knows my name, yet it seems we’ve all been friends for a lifetime. I smile contently, is this home? To me Cuba is a place of symbols, full of calm equilibrium. There is no keeping up with the Joneses, they don’t have any Joneses.

I prefer the electric neighborhoods of central Havana, the almost hopeless decay of these grandiloquent ruins filled by a radiant people, who seem to have everything, except money, but everything that money can’t buy.  

I question the cultural messages that deign to tell me who I am, scanned, delimited, controlled and utterly powerless to stop it all; the friends and colleagues who seem to mold me and bind me and pigeonhole me. I wonder aloud, repeatedly, just why the hell I do the things I do, and if .........Continuation