Mantilla 9 pm is a photographic series made up of black and white photos taken very spontaneously, with hand-held flash, in Mantilla, the neighborhood of Havana where l lived until 2005. The title refers to the legendary Cuban documentary PM, made in 1961 and directed by Sabá Cabrera Infante y Orlando Jiménez-Leal, just two years after the triumph of the Cuban revolution. This showed some Cubans, mainly black, enjoying parties and bars as part of the night-life of Havana at that time. The documentary was curiously censured by the Cuban Ministry of Culture for giving a «distorted» image of Havana’s nightlife.
Mantilla 9 PM also shows night time revelry, parties, the spontaneity of a country for which music was and is fundamental. In it we see the joy and fun-loving nature of a group of Cubans living in this almost “marginal” neighborhood of the city. They were rehearsing to take part in the municipal carnival. Instrumentally, they may have been a little wobbly but their explosion of energy seemed to be lifting them towards something bigger.
This series is also one of my projects dealing with the space and destiny of the black Cuban population under the socialist revolution in Cuba.
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