Havanna Mi Amor

Huge TV sets; produced under licence, these Soviet era devices, branded “Caribe”, are repaired time and again. Everybody wants to watch the latest Telenovelas, but few can afford the top of the range TV sets sold at state-run retail stores. Uli Gaulke resolves to get to the bottom of a passion in a work that revolves around these sentimental soaps, as well as relationships between those who watch them. The central figure is José, a TV repairman and master of improvisation, who never fails to get a set working again despite the absence of spare parts.

José's life is actually, at least in his eyes, a great more tragic than any Telenovela: his wife having left him after fourteen years of marriage, he now desperately searches for a new love. At the same time Silai, head of a local hairdresser's, has had more than enough of men. HAVANNA MI AMOR is a fascinating synthesis of the everyday lives of a multitude of spirited individuals characterised by both melancholy and a lust for life, as contradictory as the Cuban capital itself. WMH