dougdoepke Thank you reviewer NIKITIN for bringing some balance to the body of reviews. Soy Cuba's themes are indeed more important than the flashy technique, dazzling as it is. Of course, it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the innovative camera work. And ironically this was at a time when Americans were told that Soviet cinema was nothing more than variations on the stodgy 'boy meets tractor'. Whatever the truth of this-- since their movies were never shown over here-- Soy Cuba shows the spirit of Eisenstein was still alive in some quarters of that huge nation.Actually, the movie could have been much more critical of US policy than it was. For example, the first vignette could have shown that Meyer Lansky and the mob were actually running the casinos and prostitution of Havana—one reason the mob conspired with the CIA to kill Castro. In fact, Cuba under Batista was sometimes called 'America's sewer'. Thus, the movie's revolutionary message should be celebrated along with the terrific cinematic effects. And had the US wanted a genuinely non-aligned Cuba, we could have started by avoiding the embargo, not invading the island, and foregoing efforts to assassinate its leader. Then the island nation might not have had to go halfway around the world to find allies and a trading partner.Anyway, the movie dramatizes key elements of the popular uprising, each vignette standing for a crucial broader dynamic. On the whole, the movie comes as a startling surprise that shouldn't have taken 40-years for the authorities to allow our public to see.

chaos-rampant My usual problem with Kalatozov, this time amplified by the propaganda nature of the film and made obvious for that reason, is that his subject matter keeps me at a distance. But at the same time, what dazzling displays of cinematic fireworks his movies are! No one films a clouded sky like Sergei Urusevsky, with that pristine quality dreamlike and supine, and no one has ever made a camera seem more alive dynamic and freewheeling than you'll find in Kalatozov's movies. There were times the movie made me wonder in awe with jaw agape as to where the camera was mounted, how it seemed to float in the air above a crowded street, having already tracked up four stories and across the street and through a room and out the balcony, hovering suspended in the air as though by an act of sheer cinematic will, amazing if just for the blocking and coordination it would have required. As someone who's indifferent/contrary to Communism, Soy Cuba's best case for the power of collective strength does not come through in the agitprop subject matter, the onedimensional depiction of hard edged patriotic Cuban guerillas fighting against all odds and oppressed peasants having their land stolen by rich landowners and student radicals rioting in the streets against the fascist police and being shot down by them, this in itself borderline successful not because it imitates real life because a propaganda piece is immediately negated if tries to replicate real life but because it imitates melodrama we're already vaguely familiar from other movie plots; Soy Cuba's best showcase of Soviet will comes in the amazing cooperation it must have took to make the camera move the way it does. These people were making cinema that was unthinkable in the US at the time for anyone not called Welles. If Soy Cuba is a celebration of Communist ideals, a failure as a narrative because of the intellectual dishonesty necessary in concocting a propaganda film, it's also a celebration of amazing cinema, a success despite itself, not for plot drama or characters, but for the simple joy of staging beautiful elaborate images, for the amazing camera-work, for the stark black and white, a lot of it self-indulgent, the camera moving for the sake of movement and the joy of it, the actors treated as little more than walking props the camera can circle around. When Kalatozov introduces a blurry dreamlike flashback it seems to swim out of the head of the character who experiences it. When the same character torches his own cane field, Kalatozov orchestrates a vision of hell, the camera itself dancing through swirling flames and billows of black smoke. I can't really praise the visuals enough. As with other Kalatozovs, the story prevents me from tenning it, but from a technical standpoint, this will blow your mind.

st-shot The cameras are flying in this remarkable display of cinematic poetry that elevates I Am Cuba's heavy handed and sometimes mawkish propaganda message to an effective and inspiring pedestal. Like Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will it is both visually mesmerizing and immediate to the early glories and heady times of change through revolution before the total onset of the totalitarian dictatorships that followed in each country.The dictatorial and brutal regime of Fulgencio Batista is in it's final days but the exploitation and repression of the Cuban people living amid poverty continues. The somber sultry beauty of the rhythmic isle we float through is suddenly thrashed by the crass noise of sloppy rock and roll poolside amid tall hotels and voluptuous swim suit models. Other interrelated stories feature a woman forced through economics to peddle herself to unctuous American businessmen and along with a student activist fight off a platoon of loutish US servicemen. Outside the city the farmers are also exploited by United Fruit Company and attacked indiscriminately by government planes. The cause is clear for all; they must rise up against the tyranny. This point is gracefully and heroically conveyed from end to end in I am Cuba.Matching their masterful artistry displayed in the powerful and moving The Cranes are Flying, Soviet director Mikhail Kolatozov with cinematographer Sergei Uresevsky blueprint some audacious camera acrobatics. With some of the finest tracking and crane shots I have ever witnessed (the hotel pool scene and the funeral for the student activist are as good as it gets in any film) I could rhapsodize endlessly on its form but I am Cuba's content also offers some fascinating incite to time and viewpoint. The film is anti American Imperialist, Capitalist, Western Influence and Coca Cola with a hint of anti-semitism thrown in but even with this stilted viewpoint I am Cuba remains a powerful and moving document on the struggle against government repression.All leaders of the Twentieth Century understood the power of film and its possibilities to reach, persuade and motivate the masses to their way of thinking. Propaganda is an indispensable tool to all who hold power and film is a perfect delivery system. Democracies (The 49th Parallel, Purple Heart) as well as Dictatorships (see above) and anyone else interested in consolidating and maintaining power would be lost without it. I am Cuba is a magnificent and passionate tract in that vein that clearly does Castro proud but with nuances in ideology would have done the same for Roosevelt Churchill or Robert Mugabe. In the case of I am Cuba it's the singer not the song that shines.

MisterWhiplash The power of I Am Cuba as a piece of pure cinema is two-fold. The director, Mikhail Kalatozov, needed to make a film in the same urgency of the present tense with a country, to 'document' as it were the wave that Cuba was riding with its revolution. It was an exciting, dangerous, uncertain but promising time, and whichever side could agree that the country had changed forever. Like Eisenstein, one part of the impact is for Kalatozov to present fragments of the country of Cuba to the whole world, something that proclaims loudly, proudly what the country strived for an possibly won.But there's another part, maybe a more crucial one than the given propagandistic side of it, to take the art of film-making to breathless invention and surprise and passion, breaking the boundaries of the early 1960s via Eclair cameras. Perhaps instinctively Kalatozov, Urusevsky and his screenwriter knew that there had to be something else to the picture to make it stand out from typical propaganda, of the same beat of the drum. It takes so much courage to take the simplicity of message or rhetoric and to film it as if the subjects are documentary but the form is complete fever dream and heightened hyper-reality.I Am Cuba will remain a document of a time and place and aspirations of a people. But long after Castro dies or the Cuba of his uprising fades or changes to a different political denomination (if it hasn't already), it will be a great piece of film-making, one of the towering examples of taking the tools of the art- light, hand-held cameras, tracking shots, cranes, natural light and filters and the distinct lenses- and applying them like almost no other film like it at the time. The most wonderful thing to keep in mind about this filmmaker is that he's a poet and technical revolutionary first, communist sympathizer second.Some may disagree with the message, and they're not without reasons. Though it's hard to disagree on how much Kalatozov and his crew get done with seemingly so limitless a budget. So many scenes and sequences stand out as triumphs of control of the mis-en-scene, masterpieces of preparation and blocking out the scene and creating unforgettable figures with the locals. The scene early on at the hotel with the camera moving around from person to person and dropping down and then tracking into the swimming pool is the most famous example. Lest not forget transcendent shots like the nightclub tracking of the singing or simple shots like the farmer working the sugar cane happily at first, the camera gliding through the field and the canes, and then the fury of the technique mirroring the farmer's breakdown following being told his farm and home are no longer his (the actor, or non-actor as it probably was, is incredible here).Or the student, Enrique, who sees the hears a man singing a song as he enters a hotel to commit an assassination of a political figure, only to have the song come back into him, haunting his consciousness while he aims miles away. Another that could be analyzed in a master's film class, just one shot, is on the crowd in the street for the funeral of the boy, as the camera goes along on the roof then through the room of workers and finally gliding off the roof looking down on the crowd. Did I mention how awesome they use things like waves of smoke or camera tilting or just masses of bodies walking through muddy waters with rifles in hand? There's more and more I could go on about, but it might spoil some of the surprises in store.Is it, perhaps, a God-like or other-worldly presence Kalatazov means to have on I Am Cuba? Surely the narrative voice transforms it/herself into the very nature of cinematic expression at most times, an alive point of view. Above the political and national reason for the film to exist, which is a strong one, is as a testament of physicality, of atmosphere of a city or farm or slum or hotel or mountain, of the joys and horrors and sorrow that are in all people. The film is about Cuba and its people and political upheaval, but it is also about human nature, survival, adaptation to circumstances, love. And all of these themes and ideas are important as the subject matter, and this might already make it a must-see. But for anyone, any student of film or person looking to the past for possibilities of movies in the future, it is required viewing.It may have come to the United States and other parts of the world too late in an influential respect (think how rich the 1970s might have been if it had been released in 1964), but it's not too late to influence others, and it still does. Its significance with regard to film style is comparable to Citizen Kane - mesmerizing is the only word for it.