Soy Cuba

I am Cuba/Soy Cuba features the stories of several Cuban citizen-types: a young prostitute, a farmer, a young revolutionary and so on, up to the start of the island's Castro Revolution.

If this sounds dull, then rest assured that the plot is minimal and, despite it's avowedly political purpose, hardly gets in the way of the film's main attractions today. What distinguishes the production is the cinematography. It is not an exaggeration to say that the images and technique in the film are breathtaking, and it is a tour-de-force of bravura camera work. Apparently Martin Scorcese has screened this film privately to work out how such-and-such a shot was achieved, and perhaps it's influence can be found in the famous through-the-kitchens tracking shot in 'Goodfellas'.

This is a film where the camera is constantly in motion, with sweeping balletic long takes, crane and hand held shots, tracking shots, including some over and down the side of buildings, through cane fields, into swimming pools, around packed night clubs, even hovering and moving along high over a street in the middle of a packed funeral procession - all without the usual cutting. I estimate the average length of a take in this film at about 2 - 3 minutes, a figure rare and astonishing these days, even with the benefit of steadicams - but jaw dropping given the still-unwieldy equipment they were surely using in 1964. In particular one or two large scale sequences must have taken days, if not weeks, to prepare, and presumably needed government marshaling to choreograph. (Ironically, whether or not the film makers intended it, the liberated camera work on display here reflects the notion of revolutionary freedom far more than the actual story vignettes.)

The film itself is shot in high contrast gleaming black and white, favouring wide angle lenses, and with a constant deep focus that reminded me of Greg Toland's work for Welles or some of James Wong Howes' work. Kalatozov's use of a handful of character 'types' throughout recalls Eisenstein's (and in fact there is a faint reference to his the Odessa Steps sequence in 'Battleship Potemkin' at one point when the revolutionary rioters march down some steps), but the effect here is far more sensual and lyrical. (Among the professional actors, Sergio Corrieri also appears in the better-known Memories of Underdevelopment). The film's 'artiness' is undeniably a distraction from the message of struggle, and to the original viewers the beautiful images must have been a long way from reality in the New Cuba.

Today we don't have this problem and the viewer is left with a visual feast to enjoy over and over again..

Every frame of this film deserves to be printed, framed and hung in a gallery. And the sound, wow. The sound... Crunchy super-intimate sounds- like the sound of machetes ringing in the cane field- are as evocative as the images.

1964. It's amazing how much can be done with so little...

"Don't avert your eyes. Look! I am Cuba. For you, I am the casino, the bar, hotels and brothels. But the hands of these children and old people are also me" -- Yevgeni Yevtushenko

I Am Cuba is described by film critic Elliot Wilhelm as "a unique, insane, exhilarating spectacle". Filmed in Spanish, dubbed in Russian, and subtitled in English, this unique collaboration between Russian director Mikhail Kalatozov (The Cranes are Flying), the poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko, and writer Enrique Pineda Barnet dramatizes the conditions that led to the 1959 Cuban revolution. Originally made in 1964 (and unpopular both in Russia and Cuba), it was released in 1995 through the combined efforts of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

I Am Cuba is set in the late 1950s when a ragtag bunch of students, workers, and peasants organized to overthrow the corrupt regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista. The film is divided into four sequences. The first depicts the American-run gambling casinos and prostitution in Havana. The next shows a farmer burning his sugar cane when he learns he is going to lose his land to United Fruit. Another describes the suppression of students and dissenters at Havana University, and the final sequence shows how government bombing of mountain fields induced farmers to join with the rebels in the Sierra Maestre mountains. The final scene is a triumphal march into Havana to proclaim the revolution.

Marvelously photographed in black and white by Sergei Urusevsky and using acrobatic camerawork by Alexandr Kalzaty, some of the shots and distorted camera angles are so staggering as to be virtually unbelievable. In one sequence, the camera lifts off from a hotel rooftop, takes in the Havana skyline, descends several floors, winds its way through the poolside party-goers, and then takes you for a swim in the pool in one continuous shot. Reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein, the caricatures are broad but are presented with such exuberance that it hardly seems to matter. Audacious and imaginative, I Am Cuba is a revelation, not only for its style but also for its inspiration. Filmed with true visionary poetry, I Am Cuba transcends the genre of advocacy filmmaking to reach a pinnacle of cinematic art.

One of the advantages of making a propaganda film in communist countries is that you have full support of the government that you are favoring. With that in mind, it's no wonder that a film of this magnitude could be made only in a communist country (before it went bankrupt). Soy Cuba surprises the viewer over and over again as you expect the camera to cut, and just as you expect it to, it doesn't and whoosh, you're underwater, or you've just flown out a window and hover above a funeral procession of massive proportions. I ponder the planning it must have taken to concoct such long takes with each moment so thoughtfully planned out. As much as most people will credit this film with fabulous cinematography (which it arguably has), it is a direct result of the complex direction by Mikheil Kalatozishvili that gives the film its flow and strength. Long takes become boring if the rhythm of the film is not well choreographed (some Tarkovsky films have this problem, but not all). Soy Cuba is never boring. Of course, what is most interesting is to see Havana in all it's beauty just after Fidel's revolution and then to contrast that with the Cuba seen in Buena Vista Social Club. It says it all about the politics of this film. This one is purely worth watching for the choreography and cinematography, not for the silly ideology. This is required viewing for all filmmakers.

I had no idea what this film was about or when it was shot when I watched it. About an hour & a half into it I realized that I was mesmerized. I was weary from not blinking while I watched silently and then realized that I'd not moved from the moment of that first long shot from the party atop the hotel, which wound through the crowd into a pool below.

Somewhere during the cabal in the night-club where we watched a young woman dancing disconcertingly and harnessed, I became riveted. Then as we watched her being followed home through a ghetto by a man from the club I felt like a voyeur, which worked through the end of that story and melded seamlessly into the next.

It is a story starting at night as a young woman is approached and intimidated by a bunch of US Sailors and another clean cut Cuban student comes to her aid. Still I was feeling like I was just inside a window somewhere watching these people who might turn and look up to spot me at any moment. So I remained still and quiet through almost the entire film, and continued following the student and watching his attempts at assassination and his friends' deaths because they "doth protest too much".

Then I'm standing just behind a farmer melancholy in his doorway remembering... thinking as his grown children sleep just nearby. They all wake to work the land with their father. The images are starkly bright whites sliced by black shards of shadows and shapes that make up the surrounding overgrown land, buildings, people and that lone horse. I realize my stillness when my hypnosis is broken by the landowner riding up to tell the crushed old man that the land has been sold. He feigns being OK by sending his kids off to town to enjoy some sodas and music, for all their hard work. Then he burns their home to the ground.

I think it is here that I take my first breath in 90 minutes -I exhale. Then the next think you know, I'm hiding and watching again, this time in the mountains and a guerrilla, who at first seems lost, lands on the doorstep of a small rural family with at least one child running around bare bottom. Everyone here looks weary and dirty, the soldier also, who is invited in to eat. As he eats the wife crushes corn in the background like the rhythm of a snare to the smoky voice of a jazz singer as the soldier speaks of revolution. The father strangely can't take this kind of aggressive thinking and has the guerrilla to leave. Just as I try to inhale, a bomb hits just next to the little raggedy house in the hills and the family makes a hasty retreat, but father and son get separated from mother and children. It's dangerous and sad, serious and almost silent. The little naked boy who retreated with his agonizing father gets killed. Father is reunited with his family under a cave-side waterfall. Pain, loss, grief, anger - he goes to join the revolutionaries in a final act of leaving his little family behind.

Now I've watched the entire film and I'm still not sure how I feel about it all, but I'm breathing again, and I continue to live with the images.

That is a good film experience.