Event Information
I Am Cuba
Sunday, Mar 24, 2019 6:00 PM
Hidden away in the Soviet archives for three decades, I AM CUBA (SOY CUBA) is a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist kitsch, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality — a whirling, feverish dance through both the sensuous decadence of Batista’s Havana and the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people, 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.
Event Pricing
Admission Adult - $11.00
Admission Older Adult (62+ years old w/ valid ID) - $9.50
Admission Students & Teachers (w/ valid ID) - $9.50
Admission Children (12 years old & under) - $9.50
Admission Military (w/ valid ID) - $9.50

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Hidden away in the Soviet archives for three decades, I AM CUBA (SOY CUBA) is a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist kitsch, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality — a whirling, feverish dance through both the sensuous decadence of Batista’s Havana and the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people, 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.

 

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.

 

Mikhail Kalatozov’s wildly mobile, hallucinatory film was initially rejected by both Cuban and Soviet officials for excessive naiveté and an insufficiently revolutionary spirit, and went largely disregarded and almost unknown for nearly 30 years. That all changed in the early nineties—a remarkable era in film culture, chock full of rediscoveries—when Tom Luddy programmed it at the Telluride Film Festival, and Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola co-presented a Milestone Films release. I AM CUBA is a one-of-a-kind film experience, a visually mind-bending bolt from the historical blue.