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| I Am Cuba | |
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| Directed by | Mikhail Kalatozov |
| Written by |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Sergey Urusevsky |
| Edited by | Nina Glagoleva |
| Music by | Carlos Fariñas |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 135 minutes / 141 minutes |
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I Am Cuba (Spanish:Soy Cuba;Russian:Я — Куба,Ya — Kuba) is a 1964 film directed byMikhail Kalatozov atMosfilm. An international co-production between theSoviet Union andCuba, it is ananthology film mixingpolitical drama andpropaganda.
The film was almost completely forgotten until it was re-discovered by filmmakers in theUnited States 30 years later.[1] The acrobatictracking shots and idiosyncraticmise-en-scène promptedHollywood directors likeMartin Scorsese to begin a campaign to restore the film in the early 1990s.
I Am Cuba is shot in black and white, sometimes usinginfrared film obtained from the Soviet military[2] to exaggerate contrast (making trees and sugar cane almost white, and skies very dark but still obviously sunny). Most shots are in extremewide-angle and the camera passes very close to its subjects, whilst still largely avoiding having those subjects ever look directly at the camera.
The movie consists of four distinct short stories about the suffering of the Cuban people and their reactions, varying from passive amazement in the first to aguerrilla march in the last. Between the stories, a femalenarrator (credited "The Voice of Cuba") says such things as, "I am Cuba, the Cuba of thecasinos, but also of the people."
The first story (centered on the character Maria) shows the destitute Cuban masses contrasted with the splendor in the American-run gambling casinos in Havana. Maria lives in ashanty town on the edge of Havana and hopes to marry her fruit-seller boyfriend, René. He is unaware that she leads an unhappy double-life as "Betty," a barprostitute at one of the Havana casinos catering to rich Americans. One night, her client asks her if he can see where she lives rather than take her to his own room. She takes him to her small hovel where she reluctantly undresses in front of him. The next morning, he tosses her a few dollars and takes her most prized possession, hercrucifix necklace. As he is about to leave René walks in and sees his ashamed fiancée. The American callously says, "Goodbye, Betty!" as he makes his exit. He is disoriented by the squalor he encounters as he tries to find his way out of the area.
The next story is about a farmer, Pedro, who just raised his best crop ofsugar yet. However, his landlord rides up to the farm as he is harvesting his crops and tells him that he has sold the land that Pedro lives on toUnited Fruit, and Pedro and his family must leave immediately. Pedro asks what will happen to the crops. The landowner says, "You raised them on my land. I'll let you keep the sweat you put into growing them, but that is all," and he rides off. Pedro lies to his children and tells them everything is fine. He gives them all the money he has and tells them to have a fun day in town. After they leave, he sets all of his crops and houseon fire. He then dies from the smoke inhalation.
The third story describes the suppression ofrebellious students led by a character named Enrique atHavana University (featuring one of the longest camera shots). Enrique is frustrated with the small efforts of the group and wants to do something drastic. He goes off on his own planning onassassinating the chief of police. However, when he gets him in his sights, he sees that the police chief is eating breakfast with his wife and young children, and Enrique cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. While he is away, his fellow revolutionaries are printing flyers. They are infiltrated by police officers who arrest them. One of the revolutionaries begins throwing flyers out to the crowd below only to be shot by one of the police officers. Later on, Enrique is leading a protest at the university. More police are there to break up the crowd with fire hoses. Enrique is shot after the demonstration becomes a riot. At the end, his body is carried through the streets; he has become amartyr to his cause.
The final part shows Mariano, a typical farmer, who rejects the requests of a revolutionary soldier to join the ongoing war. The soldier appeals to Mariano's desire for a better life for his children, but Mariano only wants to live in peace and insists the soldier leave. Immediately thereafter though, the government's planes begin bombing the area indiscriminately. Mariano's home is destroyed and his son is killed. He then joins the rebels in theSierra Maestra Mountains, ultimately leading to a triumphal march intoHavana to proclaim the revolution.
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Shortly after the 1959Cuban Revolution overthrew the United States-backed dictatorship ofFulgencio Batista, the socialistCastro government, isolated by the United States after the latter broke diplomatic and trade relations in 1961, turned to theUSSR in many areas, including for film partnerships. The Soviet government, interested in promoting international socialism, and perhaps in need to further familiarize itself with its new ally,[citation needed] agreed to collaborate with theInstituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), and finance a film about the Cuban revolution. Shooting began on February 26, 1963.[3]
The director was given considerable freedom to complete the work,[4] and was given much help from both the Soviet and Cuban governments. Among his inspirations for the project wasSergei Eisenstein's unfinished¡Que viva México!, another Soviet project about a post-revolutionary Latin American nation.[3] Among Kalatozov's Cuban collaborators on the project were screenwriterEnrique Pineda Barnet and composerCarlos Fariñas.[3]
The film made use of many innovative techniques, such as coating a watertight camera's lens with a specialsubmarine periscope cleaner, so the camera could be submerged and lifted out of the water without any drops on the lens or film. At one point, more than 1,000 Cuban soldiers were moved to a remote location to shoot one scene.
In another scene, the camera follows a flag over a body, held high on a stretcher, along a crowded street.[5] Then it stops and slowly moves upwards for at least four storeys until it is filming the flagged body from above a building. Without stopping, it then startstracking sideways and enters through a window into a cigar factory, then goes straight towards a rear window where the cigar workers are watching the procession. The camera finally passes through the window and appears to float along over the middle of the street between the buildings. These shots were accomplished with a cable device.[6]
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Despite its dazzling technical and formal achievements receiving excellent support, and the participation of the renowned team of Soviet cinematographersMikhail Kalatozov andSergei Urusevsky (winners of the1958 Cannes Film FestivalPalme d'Or forThe Cranes are Flying, another virtuosistic art film, and also in the midst of theCold War), the movie was given a rather cold reaction by audiences. InHavana it was criticized for showing astereotypical view of Cubans,[7] and inMoscow it was considered naïve, not sufficientlyrevolutionary, even too sympathetic to the lives of thebourgeois, pre-Castro classes.[citation needed]
The film was shot during a period of relatively uneasy relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. The recently concludedCuban Missile Crisis had ended with Soviet leaderNikita Khrushchev removing its missiles from the island without consulting Cuban leaderFidel Castro, which opened a period of disagreements between the nations over revolutionary strategy.[3]
Cameraman Alexander Calzatti stated that the crew "was so enthusiastic [that] we were infected by it, and we worked very hard"; as a result "very soon after we came back to Russia, more than half of our crew died. I survived because I was very young."[8]
The movie never reached Western countries during its original release, being acommunist production in the midst of theCold War era during theUnited States embargo against Cuba.
Up until the 1990s, the film was relatively unknown to the general public both locally and internationally. This changed whenMartin Scorsese andFrancis Ford Coppola[9] subsequently began to promote the film after it came to their attention. Their love for the film differed from the public opinion at the time as critics called it emotionally dragged out and lacking in sophistication film wise.[10] Others thought that the actual filming of the movie was chaotic and brought the audience close to fainting.
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes,100% of 40 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Visually absorbing and formally audacious, I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) opens a long-buried time capsule that has lost none of its captivating power."[11]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 91 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[12]
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Until theUSSR collapsed in the early 1990s,I Am Cuba was virtually unknown. In 1992, a print of the film was screened at theTelluride Film Festival. TheSan Francisco International Film Festival screened the film in 1993. Shortly after the festival, three film professionals who had screenedI Am Cuba at the San Francisco screening contacted friends atMilestone Films, a small New York film distributor specializing in the release of once-lost and neglected older films. Milestone screened a slightly blurry, unsubtitledVHS tape of the film and then went about acquiring the distribution rights from Mosfilm in Russia.[citation needed] Milestone's release opened at New York'sFilm Forum in March 1995. For the tenth anniversary of the film release, Milestone debuted a new 35 mm restoration ofI Am Cuba without the Russian overdubbing in September 2005. Milestone released an Ultimate EditionDVD boxset at the time as well, with a video appreciation from Scorsese.
On 19 March 2018, Milestone posted a trailer for their new4K restoration of the film.[13] It became available later that year on Milestone films' Vimeo powered streaming service, with original Spanish audio but at 1080p HD.
On 9 March 2020, Mosfilm publicly released the entire film in 4K withhardcoded Russian overdubbing on theirYouTube channel.[14]
Sometime after April 2021, the film was removed from Milestone films' streaming catalog on Vimeo because they sold the film's US distribution license, assumably back to Mosfilm. Milestone never released the film in 4K but gave refunds to upset customers.[citation needed]
On 29 October 2021, Mosfilm released the film on their English-language YouTube channel. From an archival perspective, it is inferior[fact or opinion?] to Mosfilm's previous 4K release due to its hardcoded English subtitles, watermarking, Russian overdubbing, and 16:9pillarboxing.[citation needed]
The Criterion Collection released a 4K restoration ofI Am Cuba onBlu-ray and4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, with the film's original Spanish audio, in April 2024.[15][16]
In 2005, a documentary about the making ofI Am Cuba was released calledSoy Cuba: O Mamute Siberiano (I Am Cuba: the Siberian Mammoth), directed by the Brazilian Vicente Ferraz. The documentary looks at the history of the making of the film, explains some of the technical feats of the film, and features interviews with many of the people who worked on it.
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