‘Give Me Future’ Sundance Review: Major Lazer Rocks Havana

Broad Green Pulls Buena Vista Social Club Doc From Sundance

Besides the expected bureaucratic hoops, the band also has to contend with the fact that Cuba has been isolated from much of the rest of the world, although it turns out you can still get your music heard in a country with a tightly-controlled state-run media.

The paquete’s motto is “no porn and no politics,” but as one interviewee notes, this is a case where the medium is literally the message, with American reality shows and Korean telenovelas and Euro-pop making its way to a hungry audience that is deprived of such pleasures via official means.

“Give Me Future” shows us a Cuba we wouldn’t necessarily expect — when Diplo asks the sea of fans at the Major Lazer show to hold up their cellphones as the sun sets, seemingly everybody has one — although some aspects of a totalitarian country don’t change: A political rapper with a large national following bows out of performing at the last minute, lest he spontaneously say something that gets the whole concert shut down.

“Give Me Future” culminates, of course, with Major Lazer’s Havana show, and it’s an exuberant event; the audience (of hundreds of thousands, stretching out over several blocks and occupying every balcony within sight of the stage) explodes with enthusiasm, and Peters and cinematographer Deering Regan’s camera make that delight infectious.