The Rolling Stones Olé, Olé, Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America follows legendary rock band The Rolling Stones through a tour of ten Latin American cities, ending in a show in Havana, Cuba. This film is director Paul Dugdale’s fourth film chronicling the Stones’ travels.
Dugdale tells VICE: “The first was a concert film in Hyde Park […] I pretty much cold-called them. I phoned up the management and said, ‘We know you’re doing this show.’ And they were really welcoming! I was really excited because I thought it would be their swansong, and I was doing their final concert. But, as has become cliché, with them it’s never the last show.”
Dugdale’s relationship with the Stones makes them comfortable enough to let their guards down and create wonderful moments onscreen. In one particularly resonant scene, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards perform an acoustic version of “Honky Tonk Women,” which was written in Brazil. Dugdale talks about this moment in the film, “We wanted to relive [the moment they wrote the song] in some way. It was a lovely window into Keith and Mick’s relationship when they were barely out of their teens just going on a bit of a lads’ holiday around South America. And they were really up for it, you can see how the conversation descends into quite puerile territory by the end. It kind of thaws them a little bit I think. And it was just one take. We filmed it and then went, ‘that was good.’”
— Diana Martinez, Film Streams Education Director