I Am Cuba
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov
Written by Enrique Pineda Barnet and Evgenniy Evtushenko
1964/USSR/Cuba
Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematograficas/Mosfilm
Repeat viewing/my DVD collection
[box] The voice of Cuba: [Slums of Havana] I am Cuba. Why are you running away? You came here to have fun? Go ahead, have fun! Is this a happy picture? Don’t avert your eyes. Look! I am Cuba. For you, I am the casino, the bar, the hotels. But the hands of these children and old people, are also me.[/box]
Sergey Urusevskiy’s amazing camera work in this propaganda piece renders it art.
The movie was made to celebrate the Cuban Revolution and consists of four vignettes. The first concerns the effect of American tourism and capitalism on the people of Havana. First we witness a beauty contest at a Havana hotel. Â Then we move to the bar where some very ugly Americans treat the Cuban bar girls as objects. Â The sequence ends with an encounter between an American tourist and a poor young Cuban who has been forced into prostitution.
The second vignette begins with some poetic shots of Cuban peasants harvesting sugar cane only to find out that the land they have been farming for years has been sold out from under them to the United Fruit Company.
The third vignette moves back to Havana where idealistic university students seek to spread the revolution and squelch false rumors of Fidel’s death. Â The sequence ends with the awesome funeral march through the city shown in the first clip below.
Finally the film moves to the Sierra Maestra where Castro’s guerrillas have captured the province and are recruiting peasants to join them in securing the Revolution.
This movie might be pure propaganda and with some pretty bad acting at that if not for Kalatozov and Urusevsky’s (both of The Cranes Are Flying) amazingly mobile camera work. Some of the shots defy explanation. Â The lighting too is stunning. Â Surely something any film buff should see before shuffling off this mortal coil.
Ignore the “drone” reference which is nonsense
more amazing camera work
