Miguel Del Morales in Cuba feliz

Directed by Karim Dridi (2000)

Miguel Del Morales, the 76-year-old troubadour who strums and sings his way through Karim Dridi's uplifting film ''Cuba Feliz,'' embodies the wandering minstrel as a man of the people and the repository of an impoverished nation's hard-won emotional wisdom. As he travels from one city to another in his native Cuba, meeting up with local musicians and jamming with them, Mr. Del Morales, who is known as El Gallo (the Rooster) suggests a Latin-American Willie Nelson (without his band), indefatigably making his way along his country's dusty roads. A wiry, weather-beaten figure, El Gallo, clad in a black tank top and sombrero, is first glimpsed smoking a cigarette and gazing over the Havana harbor as a cargo ship slips into port. The song he sings with an impassioned resignation is a lament of the hardship of life, the passing of time and loves lost but not forgotten. Although ''Cuba Feliz'' has the look and sound of a documentary, it's really a loosely constructed musical road movie with a screenplay (by Pascal Letellier and Mr. Dridi) that follows El Gallo from city to city on a national tour undertaken largely on foot. Toting his guitar, he ambles from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Camaguey and Trinidad, ending up back in Havana in the same spot from which he started… LINK youtube Cuba feliz