June 4 (Bloomberg) -- If you had ears for Wim Wenders's 1999 documentary ``The Buena Vista Social Club,'' you'll want to know all about ``We Are the Music!''

In the Wenders film, Ry Cooder assembled for the cameras a group of great Havana musicians who, prior to recording a best- selling album, had largely been forgotten. ``We Are the Music!'' made in black and white in 1964 by the Cuban filmmaker Rogelio Paris, is a more scattershot documentary, but it's intoxicatingly alive with song and dance.

What is clear from this film -- if you didn't already know it from ``The Buena Vista Social Club'' -- is that Cubans are indubitably and ecstatically a musical people. The Afro-Cuban folk ballads, pop songs and jazz featured in ``We Are the Music!'' are not simply performance pieces. They are emanations of the performers' spirit, and the audiences' spirit, too. Concerts in this movie are almost always participatory events, and the most exciting ones happen on Havana's streets and beaches.

Paris worked for the Cuban film studio ICAIC as a director of both dramatic features and documentaries, and he has a fine eye for the captured moment. As befits the subject, his film has a rough-hewn, improvisatory feel. Wisely, he doesn't compete visually with the soundscape. He always seems to know which musicians to focus on, which gyration to capture.

Infectiously Smiley

Some of the featured performers are legends in Cuba but virtually unknown anywhere else. The wonderful singer-pianist Odilio Urfe is reminiscent of Fats Waller and as infectiously smiley as Louis Armstrong. (Claiming he's ``made of chocolate,'' he jokes about his nickname, ``Bola de Nieve'' -- snowball.)

Ana Gloria is a hyperenergetic rumba dancer backed by the tip-top percussion group Ilacho Rivero. The singer Elena Bourke draws a crowd in the Havana tenements and sparks an impromptu celebration.

There are also musicians who, maddeningly, go unidentified, including an old gent in what looks like a storefront who plays guitar with soulful delicacy and seems unimpressed with his great gifts. Paris's film makes it seem as if he could take his cameras into any byway in Havana and uncover equal treasure.

A DVD bonus is the short film ``Omara,'' a portrait of Omara Portuondo, one of the featured singers in ``The Buena Vista Social Club.'' Like most first-rate singers, she also has, onstage, the bearing and dramatic power of a great actress. She performs ``Stormy Weather'' here and, although she doesn't top Lena Horne -- who could? -- she runs a pretty close second. (First Run Features, $24.95).

`The Last Supper'

If ``We Are the Music!'' sparks your interest in all things Cuban, you may want to check out ``The Last Supper'' (1976), a scathing drama by Cuba's greatest filmmaker, the late Tomas Gutierrez Alea, who is best known internationally for ``Memories of Underdevelopment.''

It's about a 17th-century slaveholder whose piety compels him to assemble 12 slaves in a re-enactment of the Last Supper, with predictably disastrous results. It's a microcosm of colonial horrors and, in some respects, stands beside Luis Bunuel's ``Viridiana,'' which also featured a mock Last Supper. (New Yorker, $29.95).

`The Thief of Bagdad'

The newly remastered Criterion DVD of ``The Thief of Bagdad'' does full justice to this eye-popping 1940 Technicolor extravaganza, starring Conrad Veidt as the most villainous of grand viziers and Sabu as the infinitely resourceful thief who undoes him. It's one of the finest of all film fantasias despite the fact that five directors worked on the trouble-plagued production, including Michael Powell and the producer Alexander Korda's brother, Zoltan.

Martin Scorsese, a major Powell fan, and Francis Ford Coppola provide the banter for one of the commentary tracks (The Criterion Collection, $39.95).

(Peter Rainer is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own).

To contact the writer responsible for this story: Peter Rainer at Fi1L2E@aol.com

Last Updated: June 4, 2008 00:01 EDT