Dame la mano 2003

“A joyous, exuberant documentary, Dame la mano is about Cuban expatriates in New Jersey and the music that sustains them: the rumba they credit with everything from curing breast cancer to maintaining erections at age 83. Latest entry in the impressive oeuvre of Dutch helmer Heddy Honigmann [The Underground Orchestra, O Amor Natural], Dame la mano builds to a half-hour musical climax that sends audiences dancing out of the theater… As Honigmann tracks several Cuban emigrants, she effortlessly establishes an intimacy that gently but insistently leads her subjects to reveal themselves… Every Sunday night the entire cast of characters shed their workaday existences, spiff themselves up… and converge on La Esquina Habanera, a restaurant and favorite gathering place in New Jersey. The astounding virtuosity on display, from amateurs and professionals indistinguishably, is magnificently interactive; everyone encourages everyone else to greater heights, as a dancer goes one-on-one with a drummer or carries the rhythm into the streets.” — Ronnie Scheib, Variety