Thursday May 14th: I Am Cuba, by Mikhail Kalatozov (1964)

A 1964's Cuban-Soviet propaganda film by Russian filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov. Mainly formed as a well renowed documentary filmmaker, Kalatozov found himself with unlimited resources coming from both countries to produce his most remarkable work. The result is a beautiful experiment of camera moves and wide-angle lenses, a movie of city and countryside, of music and dancing, but also a poetic portray of Cuba, eternally settled on the ambivalence of luxury and poverty sharing the same land. Almost forgotten for 30 years, the film was re-discovered by prominent filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

Synopsis:

This Russian-made study of Cuba, partially written by renowed poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, captures the island just before the transition to a post-Revolutionay society. The film, alike the country, is a sample of dramatic contradictions as luxury is followed in the screen by raw nature or poverty sharply contrasted with pure wealthiness. Nevertheless, the film is comprised in poetic simplicity for four vignettes. Beginning in a decadent, Pre-Castro Havana we firstly follow a track of casinos, luxury hotels and bars where desperately poor locals like Maria, a virginal beauty, try to take part on the tough game of life. From here, the other three sections star Cubans taking direct action. One of them is a sugarcane farmer applying drastic measures to his fatal fate after loosing both land and home. The third follows a revolutionary student who fails to carry a political assault yet encourages the crowd to disbelieve false reports of Castro's death. the final cut is an affecting story of a farmer leaving his family behind to join the revolutionaries that battle in the countryside until they triumphaly reach the capital.

In sum, a visual essay on the revolutionary spirit that was given birth to a new Cuba through the eyes and actions of the locals, yet the film also participates in the depiction of prostitution and poverty mainly constructed by the intervention of well-established foreigners. Both the country itself and the spectators corroborate the contradictions of a magical country that continually disrupts its ambiguous reality.



Open questions:



- What is your image / idea of Cuba?

- Where is this idea mainly comes from?