INTERVIEW: Cuban heavy metal band Zeus profiled in new doc, ‘Los Últimos Frikis’
Photo: Los Últimos Frikis is a new documentary charting the decades-long career of heavy metal Cuban band Zeus. Photo courtesy of Cinema Tropical / Provided by press rep with permission.
If one is a fan of heavy metal music in Cuba, then there’s a good chance they know Zeus, a hard-rocking group that has been around for decades, weathering many storms, much like the country itself. Today, the members of the outfit actually find themselves as a state-sponsored heavy metal act, and their truly amazing story, which has traveled 180 degrees from its beginning, is the subject of a new documentary, Los Últimos Frikis, by director Nicholas Brennan.
The movie uses the term “frikis” because that’s the endearing name for mega-fans of the band, and there are many of them in Cuba and perhaps soon across the world.
“It’s been a decade-long project that I started on my first trip to Cuba as a student,” Brennan said in a recent phone interview. “As an American obviously Cuba was a quite difficult place and quite a challenging environment to make a project, to make a film, and I had the opportunity to meet and work with some really, really amazing artists and musicians on my first trip there. And that’s where I made a short film called Hard Rock Havana, which we premiered at Tribeca and then played all over the world, and was really the start of telling and sharing Zeus’ story.”
Brennan was most interested in the many setbacks that the band has faced over their career. Although today they are sponsored by the government, that was not always the case. There were some years when it was difficult, if not dangerous, to be a member of Zeus or a fan of their music.
“The guys are world-class musicians but also as you see in the film have really had to overcome and work within just such a different context from so many other musicians,” the director said. “I think it’s an important and inspiring story to share with the world. For me, the persevering and strength of the band, as a filmmaker, I connected with and very much been inspired by myself.”
Los Últimos Frikis has already played in Cuba as part of the Havana Film Festival. Its screening at the recent Miami Film Festival was canceled because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, but there are the Havana Film Festival New York screenings at the end of April.
Metalheads and documentary lovers, no worries if New York doesn’t work out. The team behind the film has made the movie available for one week, starting March 18. The price is only $4.99, which is half the admission it would have cost in Miami. Now, when people are staying indoors for an indeterminate amount of time, they can learn about the all mighty Zeus from the comfort of their homes.
“The thing with Zeus, everyone in Cuba knows them,” Brennan said about their fame. “They’re legendary on the island in Cuba, but their story is largely untold to the rest of the world. So they have been very excited and very collaborative in terms of making sure that their story gets told, but I think what you see in the film is the delicate balance of making sure that their story is told in a [certain] way. In Cuba, there’s the forbidden truth that you see in the film. … [Capturing] the truth and depth of their experiences, in a way that can be quite challenging within a closed society in Cuba.”
Brennan pointed out that it wasn’t only difficult to be a fan of Zeus, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s, when rock music was more restricted in the country. It was simply hard to be a Cuban, as the director put it.
“In the early-’90s, during what’s called the Special Period, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a real economic collapse in Cuba happened,” he said. “Everyone was struggling, and it was during that time that rock ‘n’ roll and having an opportunity to express yourself and release the tension and the frustrations that you have in a musical way was something that really became a saving moment for many people. It became an opportunity for rock ‘n’ roll and heavy metal to have a strong and important cultural relevance, and I think that’s what you see now in the film. Heavy metal has lost a bit of its relevance. People aren’t having the daily frustrations of the need to express yourself and to fight for something. You’re seeing people listening to reggaeton and enjoying, and the culture very much at the moment being about celebrating the shallower moments of life. Certainly in the heyday of heavy metal in Cuba, it was a very important outlet for people to express themselves.”
The director added: “I wouldn’t say that the band’s music has changed. I think they haven’t softened in any way, but certainly … the band is no longer on the outside. They are officially the band. What does that mean for a rock band? That’s part of what we try to explore in the film.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Los Últimos Frikis, directed by Nicholas Brennan, is available to stream for $4.99 from March 18-25 due to the documentary’s cancellation at the Miami Film Festival. Click here for more information.
