!Viva Los Zafiros!

But he was determined to film on the island. Working with Cuban television's Roman, he approached government officials. They seemed receptive. "We thought the idea was interesting," notes the Foreign Ministry's Cabanas. "The potential for other people to do similar projects is high, and our doors are open to those possibilities."

It took Cancio two years to work out the details and figure out how to make the film without violating the embargo. His father and Cuban scriptwriter Raul Macias worked up a first draft of the screenplay. The original idea for a documentary gradually became a docudrama, then a short film, and finally a feature film.

Cancio was allowed to make his film independently in Havana, working with personnel from Cuban television and the Cuban Film Institute. "There was 150 percent cooperation," he says. According to both Cabanas and Cancio, the filmmakers were not even required to pay the Cuban government location fees or taxes.

The film's main location was a private home in Cayo Hueso, not far from where Miguel once lived; it was spruced up with paint to hide three decades' worth of deterioration. Director Herrera relates that people willingly opened their doors to the crew once they learned the movie was about Los Zafiros. Musicians who knew the group asked to do cameos. Well-known actors took bit parts for free. "This was a film made with more enthusiasm than resources," Herrera beams.

Cancio donated one print of the film to Cuban television and another to the film institute. Zafiros: Locura Azul was screened at the recent Cartagena International Film Festival in Colombia; Luis Alberto Garcia, who plays Miguel Cancio, won the award for best actor. The movie is slated to be shown at the Chicago Latino Film Festival later this month. Cancio notes that he's received inquiries from several distributors about handling the movie's commercial release in this country, and he hopes to clinch a deal soon.

As for Miguel Cancio, he's already gotten his payback. "I thank God for allowing me to have this experience," he reflects. "The quartet's success arrived so fast that we didn't have time to realize the magnitude of what we had done. Who knows, maybe when I die we'll all meet up in Heaven and form Los Zafiros all over again.