I Am Cuba
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I Am Cuba | |
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Directed by | Mikhail Kalatozov |
Written by |
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Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Sergey Urusevsky |
Edited by | Nina Glagoleva |
Music by | Carlos Fariñas |
Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 135 minutes / 141 minutes |
Countries | |
Languages |
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I Am Cuba (Spanish: Soy Cuba; Russian: Я - Куба, Ya – Kuba) is a 1964 film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov at Mosfilm. An international co-production between the Soviet Union and Cuba, it is an anthology film mixing political drama and propaganda. It was not received well by either the Russian or Cuban publics[1] and was almost completely forgotten until it was re-discovered by filmmakers in the United States thirty years later.[1] The acrobatic tracking shots and idiosyncratic mise-en-scène prompted Hollywood directors like Martin Scorsese to begin a campaign to restore the film in the early 1990s.
I Am Cuba is shot in black and white, sometimes using infrared 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 extreme wide-angle and the camera passes very close to its subjects, whilst still largely avoiding having those subjects ever look directly at the camera.
Plot
The movie consists of four distinct
The first story (centered on the character Maria) shows the destitute Cuban masses contrasted with the splendor in the American-run gambling casinos. Maria lives in a shanty-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 bar prostitute 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, her
The next story is about a farmer, Pedro, who just raised his best crop of sugar 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 to
The third story describes the suppression of rebellious students led by a character named Enrique at
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 the Sierra Maestra Mountains, ultimately leading to a triumphal march into Havana to proclaim the revolution.
Cast
- Sergio Corrieri as Alberto
- Salvador Wood
- José Gallardo as Pedro
- Raúl García as Enrique
- Luz María Collazo as Maria / Betty
- Jean Bouise as Jim (in Cuban version) (as Jean Bouisse)
- Alberto Morgan as Ángel
- Celia Rodriguez as Gloria (in Cuban version) (as Zilia Rodríguez)
- Fausto Mirabal
Production
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Shortly after the 1959
The director was given considerable freedom to complete the work,[3] and was given much help from both the Soviet and Cuban governments. The film made use of many innovative techniques, such as coating a watertight camera's lens with a special submarine 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—this despite the then-ongoing Cuban Missile Crisis.
In another scene, the camera follows a flag over a body, held high on a stretcher, along a crowded street.[4] 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 starts tracking 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 by the camera operator having the camera attached to his vest—like an early, crude version of a Steadicam—while also wearing a vest with hooks on the back. An assembly line of technicians would hook and unhook the operator's vest to various pulleys and cables that spanned floors and building roof tops.
Reception
Despite its dazzling technical and formal achievements receiving excellent support, and the participation of the renowned team of Soviet cinematographers
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."[5]
Also, upon its original release, the movie never reached Western countries largely because it was a
Restoration
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Until the
On 19 March 2018, Milestone posted a trailer for their new 4K restoration of the film.[6] 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 with
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[
In January 2024,
Documentary
In 2005, a documentary about the making of I Am Cuba was released called Soy Cuba: O Mamute Siberiano or 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.
See also
References
- ^ a b The New Cult Canon: I am Cuba Archived 10 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine. The A.V. Club, 1 May 2008.
- ^ 2005 Brazilian documentary The Siberian Mammoth
- ^ "The Astonishing Images of I Am Cuba – The American Society of Cinematographers". ascmag.com. Archived from the original on 22 October 2021. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
- ^ "BBC – Stoke and Staffordshire Films – I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) review". www.bbc.co.uk. Archived from the original on 9 March 2005. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
- ^ "The Astonishing Images of I Am Cuba", George E. Turner 2019-05-17, American Cinematographer
- ^ "I Am Cuba". Milestone Films. Retrieved 26 November 2023.
- ^ I AM CUBA (4K, drama, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964). Mosfilm on YouTube. 9 March 2020. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
- ^ "I Am Cuba". Criterion.com. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
- ^ Martin, Peter (16 January 2024). "Criterion in April 2024: La Haine, I Am Cuba, Picnic at Hanging Rock in 4K". Screen Anarchy. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
External links
- I Am Cuba at IMDb
- I Am Cuba at Rotten Tomatoes
- I Am Cuba at AllMovie
- Soy Cuba, O Mamute Siberiano at IMDb
- From Russia with Love, an article by Richard Gott from The Guardian November 2005
- "The 34 best political movies ever made", Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post 23 January 2020), ranked #28