One to watch this weekend over a cigar and a drink: I am Cuba

[El Presidente]

It is fascinating to watch this movie given todays Cuba struggles. They had so much hope. 

 

 

 

Soy Cuba (1964) English subtitles

Started only a week after the Cuban missile crisis and designed to be Cuba's answer to both Sergei Eisenstein's propaganda masterpiece, Potemkin and Jean-Luc Godard's freewheeling romance, Breathless, I Am Cuba turned out to be something quite unique — a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist kitsch, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality. The plot, or rather plots, feverishly explore the seductive, decadent (and marvelously photogenic) world of Batista's Cuba — deliriously juxtaposing images of rich Americans and bikini-clad beauties sipping cocktails poolside with scenes of ramshackle slums filled with hungry children and gaunt old people. Using wide-angle lenses that distort and magnify and filters that transform palm trees into giant white feathers, Urusevsky's acrobatic camera achieves wild gravity-defying angles as it glides effortlessly through long continuous shots. But I Am Cuba is not just a catalog of bravura technique — it also succeeds in exploring the innermost feelings of the characters and their often desperate situations. Shown unsubtitled at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I Am Cuba received two standing ovations — during the screening. The first movie ever jointly presented by master filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, I Am Cuba is one of the great discoveries in cinema.

 

 

 

[VeguerosMAN]

Cuba was one of the top 20 richest countries in the world, back in the day.

[ayedfy]

Everyone has to see at least the funeral scene. Remarkable.

https://youtu.be/rjuLkJ4m-mc?si=7AgLrUQrvg9gkfcJ