PRESENTED IN GLORIOUS BLACK & WHITE 35mm!
I AM CUBA (SOY CUBA) is one of the landmarks of world cinema, first
revealed to American audiences 30 years after its production. Soviet
director Mikhail Kalatozov, born in Georgia and praised for THE CRANES
ARE FLYING (1957), set out to create a Cuban film as powerful as
Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, a rallying point for a nascent
revolution. With a script by the Soviet Union’s internationally famed
poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko and Cuban author Enrique Pineda Barnet, the
film is divided into four sections: “Ugly American” tourists taking
advantage of Cuban women’s poverty, the anguish of a tenant farmer whose
land has been sold to the United Fruit Company, the optimistic actions
of a student revolutionary, and the decision by another peasant to join
the revolutionary forces after his home has been destroyed by government
planes. But no matter how powerful the content of the film, I AM CUBA
(SOY CUBA) has garnered praise over the past two decades for its
“death-defying” camera work with swooping dolly shots and long takes,
all done before Steadicams and small helicopter cameras.