I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba)
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov
Soviet Union/Cuba | 1964 | Fiction | 135 min
English, Spanish w/ Russian voice over and English subtitles
Film Source: Milestone Films
Sponsors: John Douglas
Coproduced by the state film organizations of Fidel Castro’s socialist regime and the Soviet government, I Am Cuba is a series of four vignettes about the Cuban revolution that melds the urgent thrust of the propaganda films perfected by Sergei Eisenstein with the anything-goes aesthetics of the French New Wave. While each of the four segments serves as a fascinating time capsule of a tipping point in Cuban history, the film’s greatest asset is its mind-boggling camerawork. In one scene, a fisheye wide shot literally turns aquatic as the camera plunges from a hotel balcony into a swimming pool. In the film’s most virtuoso sequence, a shot begins by tracking a funeral at street level. The camera then rises to the rooftops, tracks into a cigar factory, and finally soars high above the funeral procession — all in one unbroken shot, more than a decade before the Steadicam was invented. Presented in a sparkling 4K restoration by Milestone Films, I Am Cuba has never looked better. Yes, it’s propaganda. But propaganda has never been so technically spectacular. ~LB
I am Cuba
Once Christopher Columbus landed here.
He wrote in his diary:
”This is the most beautiful land ever seen by human eyes.“
Thank you Señor Columbus.
When you saw me for the first time,
I was singing and laughing.
I waved the fronds of my palms to greet your sails.
I thought your ships brought happiness.
I am Cuba.
Ships took my sugar and left me tears…
Strange thing — sugar, Señor Columbus.
It contains so many tears, but it is sweet…
