Beyond the Visual City: The Sound of Space in Fernando Pérez’s Suite Habana

Abstract

This article considers the role of sound in the production of space and subjectivity, as seen in Cuban director Fernando Pérez’s 2003 film, Suite Habana . It argues that sound modifies the film’s ideological and visual representations of the city by creating an aural imaginary that represents an affective and corporeally felt notion of community. In this way, sound not only links unrelated characters to one another on the screen, it also expands the enclosed, visual experience of the city into a soundscape that connects the space on the screen to the space of the theater or the home of the audio-viewer. Sound thus unites otherwise disparate subjects into a sonic community that crosses spatial boundaries. The article grounds its arguments in analyses of voice, music, and the construction of both acousmatic and hyperreal sound in the film.

Sonic Modernity and Decolonizing Countersounds in the Poetry of Urayoán Noel

“…Holmes (2015) andGentic (2014) both provide convincing arguments on the effects of reimagining urban soundscapes as symphonies in their respective analyses of the 2003 Cuban film Suite Habana.…”