Represent Cuba: Havana Hip Hop Under the Lens

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2014-01

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Ohio State University. Center for Latin American Studies

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Between 1997 and 2010, the Havana hip hop scene was the subject of some two dozen documentaries, the majority by non-Cubans. This article considers how the act of film making may participate in the dual process of transnational connection and division, and explores the politics and ethics of transnational cultural production, reception, and representation. While documentaries have given Havana rappers a voice, they have also exposed them to the "tourist gaze" (Urry 1990) and have actively shaped the hip hop scene on the ground as well as on film. Film makers were not only documenting censorship but actually indirectly responsible for it, and they played a role in the local hip hop economy. Events involving Cuba's leading hip hop group, Los Aldeanos, illustrated the risks that accompanied the transnational circulation of filmed images. Such problematics are elevated to a central theme of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's Young Rebels.

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alter/nativas, latin american cultural studies journal, no. 2 (Spring 2014)