soy cuba.pdf

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The New Cult Canon: I Am Cuba

When Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba—a long-lost, phantasmagoricCuban-Soviet propaganda film from 1964 —was rediscovered andreissued in late 1995 by Milestone (with the prominent support of MartinScorsese and Francis Ford Coppola), critic Terrence Rafferty wrote thefollowing in his New Yorker review: "They're going to be carrying ravishedfilm students out of the theaters on stretchers."

That's about right. Personally speaking, I certainly needed medicalassistance to reattach my jaw, which had dropped permanently to thefloor during one of the film's famed tracking shots. Though I Am Cuba isfascinating enough as an historical footnote—and I'll get into that in asecond—the reason it endures is almost exclusively cinematic: Given thevirtually unlimited resources of two countries at their disposal, Russiandirector Kalatozov (The Cranes Are Flying) and his cinematographer

Sergei Urusevsky turned the newly Communist Cuba into a lushplayground where they could experiment with wide-angle lenses,whooshing camera moves, and towering crane shots held for minutes ata time. Their assignment was to affirm the revolutionary spirit that had

just given birth to a new Cuba, but within those broad parameters, theywere free to pull off all the technical wonderments they could dream up.After all, in a movie where the country itself serves as voiceover narrator,there's no danger in getting bogged down in the particulars of character.

Why did it take a film as striking as I Am Cuba so long to get rediscoveredin America? Partly because nobody knew to discover it. By 1964, the U.S.had severed all diplomatic and trade relations with Fidel Castro'sgovernment, and in doing so, severed the cultural exchange between the

two countries as well. (A shot of a "Cinerama" theater in a city backdrop in


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Nevertheless, the four vignettes that comprise the film have a poeticsimplicity, building from personal hardships and tragedy to thetriumphant movement of the collective. The first and most affectingsegment takes place in a decadent Havana, where Westerners indulge incasinos, luxury hotels, and bars—and exploit desperately poor localswilling to do anything to get by. This includes Maria, a virginal beauty(with a giant crucifix around her neck, no less) who's destined to marry afruit vendor, but joins the legions of exotic prostitutes at a Western bar.When a john insists they go back to her place—a tin-roofed shack in a

sprawling shantytown—we catch a glimpse of how Havana's other halflives.

From there, the other three segments depict Cubans taking action: Thesecond features a sugarcane farmer who takes drastic measures afterlosing his land and his home to a fruit company. The third follows astudent revolutionary who fails to carry out a political assassination but

summons the courage to rally the people to disbelieve false reports ofCastro's death and march against the authorities. The last heads into themountains, finding a farmer who leaves his family behind to join therevolutionaries as they battle in the countryside and forge their way, arm-in-arm, to a triumphant new day in the capital.

As the opening shot gently descends upon the Cuban coast via helicopter

and tracks along palm trees rendered almost silver by the black-and-white photography, I Am Cuba immediately lulls you into a hypnotic state—intended, no doubt, to make you more receptive to its ideas. Most of thesegments end with Cuba herself narrating, and here she talks about howChristopher Columbus once called the island "the most beautiful landever seen by human eyes." "Gracias, Señor Columbus," says Cuba, before

adding that the explorer's ships "took my sugar and left me in tears."


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Then we get to the film's most famous shot, which begins with theWestern revelers gathered for a beauty contest on a hotel rooftop, thendescends several floors down to the pool, then goes into the pool andshoots the action underwater. Kalatozov and Urusevsky reportedly had aspecial submarine periscope cleaner made available so they could dip inand out of the water without any drops screwing up the lens. (PaulThomas Anderson was so impressed that he lifted the shot wholesale forBoogie Nights.) Here are the two clips side- by-side, the first from I AmCuba and the second from Boogie Nights:

I Am Cuba is filled with extraordinary long takes like these, but the shotsare never static: Kalatozov and Urusevsky believed in what they called the"emotional camera," a handheld technique that uses constant movementto express the characters' feelings. (It's also utilized in Kalatozov's equallywonderful—and far less kitschy—WWII romance from six years earlier, TheCranes Are Flying, which is available on Criterion DVD.) Since the film

traffics in symbols more than flesh-and-blood people, the cameraprovides much of the drama, and there's hardly a shot that isn't strikingor purposeful. When the farmer in the second segment takes out hisanguish on the sugarcane, for example, the camera takes the point-of-view of his machete, slashing furiously up and down. Then later, when hesends his grown children to town to spend his last peso, the camerabecomes a blissed-out extension of his daughter as she dances to a songon the jukebox. We know these characters as types, and the film doesnothing to complicate them—which is proper, because that's howpropaganda works. But where a run-of-the-mill propaganda film mightdrive home its Communist sentiments with, say, a hammer and sickle,Kalatozov and Urusevsky's technical acrobatics carry them across withdazzling, unceasing sensuality.


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Loving I Am Cuba does come with a few caveats, however, since itspolitics are naïve at best, and more often just laughable. (Anotherquibble: The dialogue is spoken and then immediately overdubbed inRussian, which takes some getting used to.) International productionslike this one are notoriously tone-deaf anyway, but whenever anyone liftstheir voice—be it a character or "Cuba"—it breaks the spell cast by imagerythat speaks far more eloquently. For example, having a soullessWesterner offer to buy a young woman's crucifix ("I collect crucifixes")after despoiling her the night before is absurdly predatory, yet the

subsequent sequence of the man getting lost in the endless Havanaslums has breathtaking power. Then there's the purple narration fromCuba herself, with leaden passages like this one: "Sometimes it seems tome that the sap of my palm trees is full of blood. Sometimes it seemsthat the murmuring sounds around us are not the ocean but choked-backtears. Who answers for this blood? Who is responsible for thesetears?" (Cut to: Batista!) When I Am Cuba finally premièred in the United

States, there was 30 years' safe distance from the revolutionary idealsthat summoned it into existence. Though it remains a fascinatingaccident of history, the film lives on as the ultimate expression of whatgreat filmmakers can do when they have the world at their disposal.(Canny of me to follow up Cult On The Cheap month with its opposite,huh?) This is cinema with a capital "C," and the budding freshman-year

socialist in many of us—the one that signed up for some newsletter thatwill no doubt quash any later bid for public office—might find our heartsswelling a bit at times. When faced with shots like the following bird's-eye view of a martyr's funeral procession, what else can you say but "VivaCuba!"?

I am Cuba / Soy Cuba


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Soy Cuba (I am Cuba) is an amazing Soviet/Cuban propaganda film from1964, directed by Mikhail Kalazatov. It was made to celebrate the Cubanrevolution. The Cubans didn’t like it because they thought itmisrepresented their revolution (it did). The Soviets thought it made pre-Revolutionary decadence look rather too attractive (it did). So it remainedvirtually unseen for decades until its rediscovery in the 1900s byenthusiasts including Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

What’s so great about it?

Certainly not the script. It’s crude and simplistic propaganda despitebeing partly written by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Butcinematographer Sergei Urusevsky turned it into a dazzling visual poem.The black and white (and sometimes infrared) photography is startlinglybeautiful, and the sound design is great as well.

Uresevky and Kalazatov’s extraordinary long take ‘emotional camera’technique uses continuous camera movement, rather than editing, to gofrom wide shot to closeup to wide shot. One scene contains probably the most remarkable tracking shot ever: thecamera starts among the mourners at a revolutionary’s funeralprocession, ascends vertically several floors to enter the window of a cigarfactory, tracks across a room, and then leaves through another window

and ‘flies’ slowly along the street at roof level several stories up.

There’s another scene at the beginning of the film which is almost asspectacular: the wandering camera tracks between musicians andfashion models on a hotel roof, descends several floors to mingle withrevellers, and finally sinks into a swimming pool. The film wasn’t shot with a Steadicam – they weren’t invented for another


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ten years – but the ultrawide 9.8mm lens (roughly the equivalent of10mm on an APS-C SLR camera) kept camera shake to a minimum.Cameraman Alexander Calzatti used the revolutionary lightweight EclairCaméflex camera, a favourite of French New Wave directors.

What you can learn from it

You can learn a lot about how to use an ultra wide lens, how to shootscenes as ‘long takes’ rather than separate shots, using dramatic high

angle, low angle and canted angle shots, and creative use of naturallight. There’s some great use of diegetic sound and silence, particularly inthe scene where a revolutionary is killed during a demonstration.(Diegetic sound is sound that seems to be a natural part of what’shappening on screen; but in several scenes you can see how thesoundtrack has been carefully constructed.)

It’s in Spanish with English subtitles. The Spanish voiceover is quite clearand easy for Spanish learners to follow.


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I am Cuba (1964)

FILM REVIEW; A Visionary Cuba, When Believers Still

BelievedBy STEPHEN HOLDENPublished: March 8, 1995The island of Cuba has never looked as fantastically exotic as it does in "IAm Cuba," a nearly 2 1/2-hour swatch of cinematic agitprop that aspiresto be the "Potemkin" of the Cuban Communist Revolution. Completed in1964, during the headiest days of the romance between the Soviet Unionand Cuba, this Russian-Cuban co-production is a feverish pas de deux ofEastern European soulfulness and Latin sensuality fused into an unwieldybut visually stunning burst of propaganda. Supervised by the greatRussian director Mikhail Kalatozov, who is best known for "The Cranes AreFlying," it suggests Eisenstein filtered through "La Dolce Vita" with anAfro-Cuban pulse.

"I Am Cuba," which opens today at Film Forum, is structured like a socialrealist mural with five panels, each of which illustrates a different aspectof the revolution. After surveying the fleshpots of tourist Havana with aleering disapproval, it moves into the sugar cane fields, then returns tothe city to follow the leftist student movement. From there it journeys tothe country to show the bombing of the innocent peasants' hillside

dwellings. It ends in the mountains marching with Fidel Castro's ragtagarmy.

Although the movie has a cast of hundreds, its characters are little morethan stick figures on which to hang the movie's revolutionary rhetoric.The heroes include Betty (Luz Maria Collazo), an exploited Havana bar girlwho lives in a seaside shack; Pedro (Jose Gallardo), an impoverished

cane cutter whose land is sold out from under him; Enrique (Raul Garcia),


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a militant student leader, and Alberto (Sergio Corrieri), an indefatigablefreedom fighter. With their shining, idealistic faces, they are picture-postcard revolutionaries working against a government run by cigar-smoking, sour-pussed monsters.

Leading the list of enemies are the fat-cat American businessmen(including one grotesque Jewish caricature) who draw lots for the favorsof Havana bar girls forced by poverty into prostitution. In one of the film'smost inflammatory scenes, American sailors singing a jingoist anthem

chase a frightened young woman (Celia Rodriguez) through the city'sdeserted streets. Threaded through the screenplay, written by the Russian poet YevgenyYevtushenko and the Cuban novelist Carlos Farinas, is an oratoricalnarration by a woman representing the anguished soul of the nation. "Ithought your ships brought happiness," she tells the ghost ofChristopher Columbus. "Ships took my sugar and left me in tears." The

oratory escalates, as she describes the trunks of palm trees filled withblood and finally exhorts the nation's farmers to exchange their tools forrifles. "You are firing at the past," she declares. "You are firing to protectyour future."What makes "I Am Cuba" much more than a relic of Communist kitsch isSergei Urusevky's visionary cinematography. The film's high-contrastblack-and-white photography, which renders palm trees and sugar canefields a searing white against an inky sky, illustrates the revolution'sexplosive polarities and burning passions.

The frequent use of a distorting wide-angle lens enhances the surrealism,lending the scenes of Havana nightlife an ominous, fishbowl artificiality.In a spectacular sequence set on the deck of a luxury hotel, the camerafollows bikini-clad tourists from poolside to underwater. The influence of

New Wave cinema is felt in several scenes shot with a hand-held camera.


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In a scene that recalls Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," the camera franticallygyrates on the dance floor of a fancy nightclub. Tame by contemporarystandards, these depictions of capitalist decadence remind one thatnothing looks more dated than yesterday's depravity.

Urusevky's photography ennobles the revolutionaries by gazing up atthem like living statues. As student revolutionaries are gassed and shot atby henchmen of the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, they becomemythological figures advancing heroically through parting veils ofsmoke. The film's relentless monumentalizing of heroes and villains may

be visually impressive, but it eventually becomes wearying. "I Am Cuba" is finally more than just a celebration of a revolution. It is a

dream of life in which everything is reduced to black and white. Or as therhetoric used to go, you are either part of the problem or part of thesolution. Nothing was ever quite that simple. I AM CUBA Produced anddirected by Mikhail Kalatozov; written (in Spanish, Russian and English,with English subtitles) by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Enrique Pineda

Barnet; director of photography, Sergei Urusevsky; edited by N.Glagoleva; music by Carlos Farinas; released by Milestone Films. At theFilm Forum, 209 Houston Street, South Village. Running time: 141minutes. This film is not rated. WITH: Luz Maria Collazo (Maria/Betty),

Jose Gallardo (Pedro), Sergio Corrieri (Alberto), Mario Gonzalez Broche(Pablo), Jean Bouise (Jim), Raul Garcia (Enrique) and Celia Rodriguez

(Gloria).


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URUSEVSKY, Serg

Cinematographer. Nationality: Russian. Born: 1908. Education:

Institute of Fine Arts, Moscow. Military Service: Front-line cameraman,World War II. Career: Worked as a graphic designer and photographer inthe 1930s; cinematographer, Mosfilm Studios, after World War II;directed two films toward the end of his life. Awards: Special Award,Cannes Film Festival, for Sorok pervyj , 1957; Golden Palm, Cannes FilmFestival, for Letyat zhuravli , 1958; Archival Award, National Society of

American Film Critics, for I am Cuba (1965), 1995. Died:In Moscow,1974.

Sergei Urusevsky will be remembered as one of the most innovative andresourceful figures in the history of cinematography, a proponent of afilmmaking in which a subjective camera narrates the film. He advocateda camera technique that would edit the film with its own movement and

make montage obsolete. Urusevsky was influenced by the other mainfigure of Soviet cinematography, Eisenstein's cameraman Eduard Tisse.While celebrated internationally, at home he was often blamed for hisobsession with form.

Urusevsky studied under graphic artist Vladimir Favorsky and otherRussian constructivists in Moscow. In the 1930s he worked as a graphic

designer and photographer. He was a Picasso admirer, and wasparticularly proud that he visited with Picasso once and received someceramic pieces from the painter. During the war he was mobilized andworked as a combat cameraman. He became a DP only later, and workedwith directors Mark Donskoy and Yuli Raizman, as well as on the lastpicture of veteran Vsevolod Pudovkin. Little of Urusevsky's formalistphilosophy is to be seen in his earlier work. His best-known film from that


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period is Grigoriy Chukhrai's Sorok pervyi (1956), a conventionally shotstudio-set adaptation of a popular short story by Boris Lavrenyev,recounting a doomed love affair unraveling in the background of Russia'scivil war. Urusevsky's interest in cinematic form found its adequateexpression only after he began working with director Mikhail Kalatozov.Their first collaboration was the war-time romance drama Pervyi eshelon(1955), but it was not until the triumph of Letyat zhuravli (1957) thatUrusevsky's innovative approach to film narration was recognized.Besides receiving the top award at Cannes, the film marked a decisive

turn in Soviet war cinema: for a first time the experience of war wasdiscussed through the utterly personal anxieties of the protagonists.Hand-held camera shots were used as often as technology allowed. Therewas even a scene where the protagonist, Veronica, runs away in amoment of trauma, surrounded by a shaky background of trees andbuildings, reflecting her state of mind. For this subjective shot Urusevskyis said to have asked actress Tatiana Samoilova to hold the camera herself

while running.

Kalatozov and Urusevsky then collaborated on Neotpravlennoye pismo( The Letter Never Sent , 1959), a romantic story of geologists facing ahostile nature. Elements of the cinematography of this film are believedto have influenced some scenes in Francis Ford Coppola's ApocalypseNow. Urusevsky's masterpiece remains his last picture ascinematographer, Ya Kuba ( I Am Cuba , 1965). It was an important andlavishly financed joing project of the Soviet Union and newly socialistCuba, meant to further the iconography and mythology of therevolutionary aesthetic, and to become the cinematic cornerstone of the"Cuban craze" that characterized the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s.


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The film runs close to three hours and consists of four unrelated stories,recounting the fates of ordinary Cubans involved in situations of classconfrontation that in the end lead them all into revolution. Otherwise anordinary propaganda feature, I Am Cuba is outstanding for itsextraordinary cinematography and design influenced by the work ofCuban painter Jose Portocarrero. Urusevsky chose to make the film inlush black and white, as he believed that the powerful emotional impactof contrasting shadows was crucial in cinema. For I Am Cuba , he usedspecial infrared stock to achieve a fairy effect of the white island and

palms on the dark background of sea and sky. Most of the film was shotwith a 9.8 lens that slightly distorts the proportions and gives the imagesa dizzy, engulfing feel. The shots in I Am Cuba are long and elaborately composed; many consistof a single take that runs over two minutes. In order to secure thechanges in angles and the twists in the point of view the camera had notonly been hand-held most of the time, but at times had to be handled by

two operators. The nearly three-minute- long complex single-takeopening scene on the hotel roof had to be shot 17 times; it involvesvertical and horizontal movement of the camera operator, a combinationof panoramic shots and extreme close ups, as well as the coordination ofmore than 100 extras. The innovative cinematography of I Am Cuba was also influenced by the

presence of young and inventive camera operator Aleksander Calzatti onthe set. Calzatti, who eventually emigrated to Israel and the UnitedStates, had spent long hours discussing the film with Urusevsky andKalatozov. He had seen Hitchcock's Psycho , and described to them itsopening shot where the camera moves from a panoramic view of the cityto a close-up of the window behind which the action of the film begins tounravel. Urusevsky was impressed by this description, and planned some

of the long takes in I Am Cuba around the concept of combination of far


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and near. In the famous funeral scene, in one unbroken take the cameramoves over a street overlooking a funeral procession, then enters a roomthrough a window, travels over the heads of the workers in a third floorcigar factory, then goes out of the window again and continueswandering over the top of the procession. The shot was made possiblewith a system of cranes and an elaborate cable system.

Upon its release, I Am Cuba was accused of formalism. In an extensivediscussion organized by Iskusstvo Kino in 1965 various filmmakers and

critics shared their admiration for its experimentation with cinematicform, but noted that excessive attention to form had led to neglectedcharacter development and psychological complexity of the protagonists.The overtly aesthetic approach was considered inappropriate since it hadsubjected content to form. The filmmakers were accused of misleadingviewers into enjoying the beauty of the images instead of sympathizingwith the sorrows of the disinherited protagonists. It seemed that the

cameraman had taken over directing, and was rather preoccupied withdemonstrating the means of expression he had at his disposal whileforgetting the goal these means were supposed to serve.

Urusevsky defended himself: "There cannot be art beyond form," heinsisted, alluding to Eisenstein. "It has never interested me, ascameraman, to just register what is going on in front of the camera." On

the contrary, Urusevsky claimed that his goal had always been to "makethe image very active."I Am Cuba was rediscovered at the Telluride Film Festival in 1992, andscreened to a standing ovation at the 1993 San Francisco InternationalFilm Festival. It was then restored, released in the United States as apresentation of Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola, and enjoyed

enthusiastic reviews and acclaim in the arthouse circuit.


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Toward the end of his life, Urusevsky turned to directing. In 1969 headapted for the screen the popular short novel by Kirghiz writer ChingizAitmatov Farewell, Gulsary! , and in 1971 he worked on a film based onthe works of Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who committed suicide in1925. After Urusevsky's death, an exhibition of his paintings wasorganized in Moscow.

—Dina Iordanova————


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The movie consists of four distinct short stories about the suffering of theCuban people and their reactions, varying from passive amazement inthe first, to a guerrilla march in the last. Between the stories, a femalenarrator (credited "The Voice of Cuba") says such things as, "I am Cuba,the Cuba of the casinos, but also of the people."The first story (centered on the character Maria) shows the destituteCuban masses contrasted with the splendor in the American-rungambling casinos. Maria lives in a shanty-town on the edge of Havanaand hopes to get married to her fruit-seller boyfriend, Rene. Rene is

unaware that she leads an unhappy double- life as "Betty", a barprostitute at one of the Havana casinos catering to rich Americans. Onenight, her client asks her if he can see where she lives rather than takingher to his own room. She takes him to her small hovel where shereluctantly undresses. The next morning he tosses her a few dollars andtakes her most prized possession, her crucifix necklace. As he is about toleave Rene walks in and sees his ashamed fiancée. The American

callously says, "Bye Betty!" as he makes his exit. He is disoriented by thesqualor he encounters as he tries find his way out of the area. The next story is about a farmer, Pedro, who just raised his biggest crop ofsugar yet. However, his landlord rides up to the farm as he is harvestinghis 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 about the crops? The landowner says, "you raised them on myland. I'll let you keep the sweat you put into growing them, but that isall," and he rides off. Pedro lies to his children and tells them everythingis fine. He gives them all the money he has and tells them to have a funday in town. After they leave, he sets all of his crops and house on fire. Hethen dies from the smoke inhalation. The third story describes the suppression of rebellious students led by a

character named Enrique at Havana University(featuring one of the


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longest camera shots). Enrique is frustrated with the small efforts of thegroup and wants to do something drastic. He goes off on his ownplanning on assassinating the chief of police, however when he gets himin his sights, he sees that the police chief is surrounded by his youngchildren, and Enrique cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. While he isaway, his fellow revolutionaries are printing flyers. They are infiltrated bypolice officers who arrest them. One of the revolutionaries beginsthrowing flyers out to the crowd below only to be shot by one of thepolice officers. Later on, Enrique is leading a protest at the university.

More police are there to break up the crowd with fire hoses. Enrique isshot after the demonstration becomes a riot. At the end, his body iscarried through the streets; he has become a martyr to his cause. The final part shows Mariano, a typical farmer, who is rejects the requestsof revolutionary soldier to join the ongoing war. The soldier appeals toMariano's desire for a better life for his children, but Mariano only wantsto live in peace and insists the soldier leave. Immediately thereafter

though, the government's planes begin bombing the areaindiscriminately. Mariano's home is destroyed and his son is killed. Hethen joins the rebels

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The New Cult Canon: I Am Cuba 12/01/2016, 17:39

in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, ultimately leading to a triumphal marchinto Havana to proclaim the revolution.

I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)


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The supreme masterpiece of the poetic documentary form

Three recent views of Cuba: the repressive, fragmented, poverty-stricken

last gasp of modern Communism offered by the U.S. media; thewonderland of repudiated gay and “counter-revolutionary” culture inmovies like Strawberry and Chocolate, a 1993 feature film set in pre-Mariel 1979; and the glittering pleasures — social and spiritual — of thereclaimed island shown by what is surely the supreme masterpiece of thepoetic documentary form, Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1964 Russian-Cuban

coproduction I Am Cuba.

This unforgettable reconstruction of the life of the island, from the jazzyrhythms of the decadent Batista era to the heroics of the Revolution andits aftermath, recalls the work of Leni Riefenstahl and Eisenstein in itstransformation of agitprop into art. The Eisenstein connection is noaccident — the Russian team that created I Am Cuba were attempting the

same kind of aesthetic treatment of history as Eisenstein, and theyworked with some of his collaborators. But the filmmakers of I Am Cubadiffered from their mentors in perhaps the most fundamental aspect —the visual. Whereas Eisenstein used cutting and dynamic composition infilms like Potemkin, Kalatozov and his visual collaborators use a movingcamera — a handheld Eclair — to bring their story to scintillating life.

The first draft of I Am Cuba was a scene-by-scene re-creation of the Cubanrevolution. Kalatozov and his screenwriter, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko,wisely scrapped this in favor of a more aesthetic approach. The finishedfilm divides roughly into five episodes that chronicle the island’s recentcolonialist and revolutionary periods.

The first is a look at Batista’s Cuba, with settings in nightclubs and palatial

hotels overrun by American businessmen and the submissive workers,


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singers, and prostitutes they exploit. This sequence contains the film’smost famous shot where the camera starts atop a high-rise, where agroup of musicians and bikini-clad women perform, then descends downthe side of the building to a crowded swimming pool and finally —without a cut — underwater, where it follows the movements of theswimmers. According to the press notes, the filmmakers “had to make a watertightbox out of sheets of DuPont plastic with three handles so the cameracould be passed between Urusevsky and Calzatti [cameramen] at crucial

moments. On the first take, the camera box refused to dive beneath thewater surface, and Calzatti had to adapt the box with a hollow steel tuberunning through it so the air could escape the box, but no water wouldenter the camera.”This sequence, which in its overwhelming power makes mincemeat ofmost such bravura camerawork in films like Citizen Kane, is also notablefor its portrayal of the creepy, unattractive Americans who exercise their

“manifest destiny” in the crudest ways imaginable against the desperateinhabitants of the sugar-cane— rich island. In an alarming scene, abeautiful young woman named Maria is shoved from one man toanother across a dance floor. The camera follows her unwillingmovements in radical jerks, perfectly visualizing the loss of control she —and by inference the island — is experiencing under U.S. domination.

The visual pyrotechnics continue throughout the film. The second majorepisode, about a peasant family whose meager living as sugar canecutters is brutally ended by a coopted native landowner and the UnitedFruit Company, has an elaborate scene in which the grief-stricken fatherburns down the cane fields. The filmmakers devised a closed-cameravideo system that let them view this complicated, crane-shot sequencewhile it was being filmed.

The unforgettable images of the old man cutting what appears to be


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luminous sugar cane against a black sky point up another of I Am Cuba’sbreakthroughs — the use of infrared film to obtain jaw-dropping levels ofblack-and-white contrast. These shots, featuring ordinary people playedby amateur actors, emphasize the dazzling primacy of the land over thosewho briefly inhabit it, and reflect the filmmakers’ idea that complexcharacterization must be subjugated to the struggle by “real people” tomaintain the land against corrupt influences. Later sequences detail with equal power the rise of the worker andstudent movements, and the physical conflicts — particularly the

disastrous invasion of the Moncada army barracks — that culminated inthe overthrow of Batista and the destruction of U.S. “interests” in theisland. The soundtrack of I Am Cuba features a female narrator who ties togetherthe episodes with Yevtushenko’s poetry, which plays on Cuba’s splitidentity: “Don’t avert your eyes. Look! I am Cuba. For you, I am the casino,the bar, hotels and brothels. But the hands of these children and old

people are also me.” The music in the film continues this motif; peasantfolk tunes and African rhythms compete with raucous early ‘60s rocktunes, “exotic” jazz, and nightclub ballads (“Amor Loca”).

In spite of its extraordinary power, the film was denounced by Cubanauthorities as counterrevolutionary and — in a fit of revolutionarybitchiness — informally dubbed “I Am NOT Cuba”! The kind of “pure art”

approach represented by the film has always been problematic to theMarxist mentality, but I Am Cuba is truly revolutionary in every sense.


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Incredible long-take cinematography from "I Am Cuba" (1964)

- a Soviet propaganda film utilizing pulleys that give the

appearance of modern drone footage.

Pretty fascinating to read how cinematographer Sergey Urusevskyachieved this shot, given the technology that was available over 50 yearsago: These shots were accomplished by the camera operator having thecamera attached to his vest—like an early, crude version of a Steadicam—and the camera operator also wearing a vest with hooks on the back. Anassembly line of technicians would hook and unhook the operator's vestto various pulleys and cables that spanned floors and building roof tops.(source: I Am Cuba Wikipedia page)

Sergei Urusevsky and I am Cuba's director, Mikail Kalatazov, also made a

subsequent movie called Letter Never Sent (or The Unsent Letter ) whichhas some pretty mind-blowing camera work, too. That one's complete onyoutube, I'd recommend it as well.

They should have filmed the process, it's almost a performance piece atthat point.

At first I thought it was something that could have easily been done witha boom truck and then it started getting higher and higher and I startedthinking "hmm, maybe not" and then it went into the building and Iwent "yeah, definitely not.". Heh you can actually tell it's being yanked up now that you said theyused pulleys


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I think this movie also has the shot of the camera entering and exitingthe pool. The same shot PTA took for the pool party scene in BoogieNights.

MOVIE REVIEW : 'I Am Cuba': Epic of Poetry and

Daring

Mikhail Kalatozov's 1964 "I Am Cuba" is a great poetic epic that blendsthe stirring visual daring of Russia's cinema of revolution with an

intoxicating Latin sensuality. It is a triumph of collaborative strategy, with Kalatozov and his dazzling

cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky in perfect rapport with each other andwith their writers, renowned poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko and eminentCuban novelist Enrique Pineda Barnet. It is said that Kalatozov, bestknown for "The Cranes AreFlying" (1958), a World War II romance of uncommon passion and

candor (and a big art-house success in the United States), wanted tomake a "Potemkin" for Castro's revolution and for the people of Cuba,and he certainly succeeded.

"I Am Cuba," composed of four episodes set in late 1956, when Castrowas raising an army in the Sierra Maestra, had apparently not beenshown outside the Soviet Union or Cuba until it was presented at the

Telluride Film Festival in 1992. It is a major discovery, and the long delay in its U.S. release has resulted

in its impact compounding irony within irony. That's because therevolution that was to wipe away the corruption of the Batista regime isnow, three decades later, mired in economic catastrophe and marked bya bleak history regarding human rights.


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The film inescapably confronts American audiences with our own sorryrole in Cuba's misery, past and present, in that it reminds us that if theUnited States was to such a large extent responsible for Batista, it is alsoresponsible for Castro. The creative decision to go for a poetic narrative,giving the film the shape of a shimmering fable, pays off in two ways: Itallows the film to transcend the level of propaganda, and in Urusevsky'srestless, probing camera, it also allows us to share the filmmakers' senseof continual discovery. "I Am Cuba," which has a glorious, emotion-charged score by Carlos Farin~as, is a superb example of imaginative

planning yielding an effect of constant spontaneity. *

Punctuated by stanzas of the poem that gives the film its title, it mostresembles in style, not surprisingly, Sergei Eisenstein's incomplete "QueViva Mexico" in its folkloric passages. In its immediacy and passion, itbrings to mind the volatile cinema of revolutionary Cuba itself and ofAllende's Chile as well as the films of the Russian masters. It is at its most

Soviet in spirit in its stirring but doctrinaire finish.

In the opening stanza of that poem, Columbus' fateful remark, "This isthe most beautiful land ever seen by human eyes," accompanies aFellini-like helicopter shot over the Cuban coast, capturing images ofpoverty before settling on a Havana hotel rooftop, where a beauty contestis in progress.

Soon we're swept up in a swirl of driving Afro-Cuban music and dance asthe least boorish of severalAmerican businessmen (noted French actor Jean Bouise) spends the night with a beautiful, reluctant prostitute (LuzMaria Collazo) only to awaken in a vast makeshift village of far greaterpoverty than he had ever imagined. Kalatozov next acquaints us with a worn peasant (Jose Gallardo), who, ashe looks out into a rainstorm, recalls how he lost everything when he was

duped into leasing his sugar cane land only to have it sold out from


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under him to the United Fruit Co. The camera then picks out a young man (Raul Garcia), part of a group ofstudents who throw Molotov cocktails at a drive-in screen showing anewsreel celebrating U.S.-Cuba relations; this sequence, depicting theever-widening student-led anti-government demonstrations, culminateswith one of the most bravura tracking shots ever attempted. Appropriately, "I Am Cuba" concludes in the ruggedly beautiful SierraMaestra with tremendous cumulative power as a peasant casts his lotwith Castro's guerrillas. In this post-Soviet era, however, the idealistic zeal

that fuels all of this fiery film takes on a cast that's truly tragic.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has some street demonstration

violence, some strong language, complex style and themes; not for

preteens.


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SOY CUBA (I AM CUBA)

DIRECTED BY MIKHAIL KALATOZOV

SOY CUBA (I Am Cuba) Chale Nafus Director of Programming, Austin Film Society

One of the most kinetically exhilarating films in the history of cinema wasalmost lost forever. Premiering in 1964 in Cuba and the Soviet Union,SOY CUBA was removed from distribution after only one week in bothcountries, both with state-run film industries. I AM CUBA was not shownin the US until a festival screening at Telluride in 1992, only madepossible by the knowledge and perseverance of Pacific Film Archive’sEdith Kramer, who tracked down a print of the virtually unknown film.Even without English subtitles, the Russian- Spanish language film and

its jaw-dropping cinematography became the talk of the festival. Newlyformed Milestone Films, created by the husband and wife team of AmyHeller and Dennis Doros, secured an original camera negative of SOYCUBA from Russia’s Mosfilm and struck 35mm prints with Englishsubtitles. Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola offered to “present”the film, a credit which would heighten awareness of the unknowntreasure. Sold-out screenings at New York City’s Film Forum in 1995 led

to distribution of SOY CUBA across the US, generally accompanied byrave reviews and incredulity that this film was made in 1964 and onlyseen 30 years later. Aspiring and even veteran cinematographers wereespecially amazed by the acrobatics of the camera in a pre-Steadicam era.

How on earth did this joint Soviet-Cuban film production come to be? One of Fidel Castro’s first decrees after taking the reins of the Cuban


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government in January 1959 was the creation of the official governmentfilm office, ICAIC. Just like Lenin in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, Fidelknew that the best way to spread awareness of the ideals and missions ofhis Revolution was through motion pictures. Many farmers in the Cubanhinterlands were virtually illiterate and television was still out of thequestion, so the cinema would be the best means of educating people tothe dramatic changes brought by revolution. But, unlike Mexico andArgentina, Cuba had a relatively insignificant film industry, so a lot wouldhave to be learned and fast. Under Premier Khrushchev, the USSR was

offering film production assistance for any country friendly to the idealsof Communism. Cuba must have been at the top of the list. Soviet Georgian filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov (1903-1973) was veryinterested in the changes in Cuba. He had enjoyed international successwith his World War II romance THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1957), madeduring the “Khrushchev Thaw,” the post-Stalinist period of greateropenness in Soviet society and the repudiation of Stalin’s repressive

regime. The director felt that going to Cuba to make a film aboutrevolution was his opportunity to equal the success of Sergei Eisenstein’sBATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925) and OCTOBER (TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THEWORLD, 1928), films which had also shaken the world and proven that anew style of filmmaking had arrived on the world’s cinema screens.Besides an agenda of “creating a new film language to express his

political beliefs and personal vision,” he wanted to celebrate andpromote the Cuban revolution. And there was already much to celebrate– the beginning of a massive drive toward education with brigades ofyoung people going into the remote areas of the island to teach literacy,as well as providing medical care and housing for everyone. Nothing likethis revolution had ever happened in Cuba, for centuries a Spanishcolony and then an economic colony of the US. Cuba was quickly

becoming the model for social change in Latin America and Kalatozov


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wanted to be the one to show the world what Cuba had suffered and whya revolution was necessary and inevitable. But since Kalatozov and his crew were outsiders, they must first do someresearch. The director took his trusty director of photography SergeiUrusevsky, who had filmed Kalatozov’s THE CRANES ARE FLYING andLETTER NEVER SENT (1960), to Cuba in 1961. Joining them were BelkaFridman – Urusevsky’s wife and eventual casting director for the film –and Alexander Calzatti, a camera operator whose technical skills wouldliberate the camera to do hitherto unseen maneuvers. Calzatti later

reminisced: “When we got there, we didn’t know much about the history,about the culture, nor about the language spoken in Cuba. The Cubanrevolution seemed more human than we had imagined.” He learned thatit had “shed less blood than other revolutions.” Certainly far less than theRussian Revolution which turned into a bloody civil war in its first fewyears. The Soviet filmmaking team was not alone in its admiration for theearly years of the Castro revolution. Writers and intellectuals of the world

flocked to Cuba to see this revolutionary greenhouse. Everybody wasmoving towards hope for a New World. Many of us in the US wereequally affected with optimism for radical change in the Old Order. TheCuban Revolution undeniably played a great role in the politicaldemonstrations of the 1960s and early 70s. The people of Cuba wereinvolved in a great social experiment of conquering underdevelopment

through State-planning. We were naïve in not understanding the fullramifications of such centralized control. But no one was thinking aboutthat in the early stages of euphoria and optimism.

Another member of Kalatozov’s team was the world-renowned Sovietpoet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933 - ), who was already familiar with Cuba,after working there for awhile as a correspondent for the official Soviet

newspaperPravda. It also helped that he had become a friend of Fidel.


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Even though he had no experience in screenwriting, Yevtushenkobecame Kalatozov’s first choice to create a script. Soon, they enlisted theaid of Cuban writer Enrique Pineda Barnet (1933 - ).

Before writing a word, this team of writers joined Kalatozov and hiscamera crew in tours around Havana and the countryside. They visited thescenes of the battles in Oriente Province, where the Revolutionsuccessfully began in January 1957. Pineda Barnet became their tourguide into Cuban folklore and regional customs. They took photos and

even shot some film footage to record what they were seeing andlearning. Barnet later commented that his guests seemed mostinterested in “the moral fallout of Cuba’s colonial past.” To that end, theyalso visited the few Havana night clubs still managing to hang on.

Kalatozov tape-recorded interviews with many who had participated inthe rebellion in Oriente Province and in the student demonstrations and

assaults. Likewise they watched documentaries, which were becomingthe first manifestations of the new Cuban film industry. Ironically, theyoften crossed paths with Fidel who also visited the ICAIC screeningrooms. But instead of documentaries idealizing his revolution, the Cubanleader more often watched classic Hollywood movies. Che Guevara andRaúl Castro also told their stories to Kalatozov. Meticulous researchprovided lots of information and ideas for scenes in the future film.

As pleasant as it may be, research has to finally end. Back in HavanaKalatozov, Urusevsky, Yevtushenko, and Pineda Barnet began regularmeetings to discuss “subjects, ideas, characters, situations.” Onceagreement about a particular scene or sequence was achieved, the twoscreenwriters would go their


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separate ways to write their own version – Yevtushenko in his 17th floorroom at the Havana-Libre Hotel [formerly Havana Hilton] and Pineda

Barnet in his home near the waterfront. Meanwhile Kalatozov andUrusevsky wandered around Havana, trying out camera filters andnatural lighting in a variety of locations, and doubtlessly still visitingthose nightclubs.

What was clear to the two writers was that Kalatozov did not want atraditional 3-5 act script, but instead an epic cinematic poem about the

revolution. “The main heroine would be the revolution – the hero wouldbe the people.” No individual, even Fidel or Che, would be elevated toheroic stature, but that was already traditional Marxist film propaganda –masses, not individuals, change history. The director also wanted topresent the Revolution as an historic inevitability, brought about byoppressive forces such as decadent American tourists, arrogant Americansailors, and brutal American corporations such as United Fruit Company(“the Octopus”). The Cubans who sided with the dictator Batista would berepresented by corrupt police officials and avaricious landowners.

Once Yevtushenko and Pineda Barnet had fleshed out the first portion ofthe film (a prologue and the Havana nightclub scenes), they submitted itto the board of ICAIC, along with synopses of the four other proposed

sections involving sugar cane harvesting, student rebellion, Fidel’s attackon Moncada Barracks in 1953, and the final success of guerrilla warfare.The ICAIC board included filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, who wouldsoon find his own success directing MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT(1968). After listening to the board’s observations and suggestions, thethree Soviet members of the team returned to Moscow. After being

joined there by Pineda Barnet, they completed the script.


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The film would be divided into four “stories.” The one about Castro’sfailed first revolution in 1953 was scrapped. Wisely so, for that failure,though heroic, would have down-shifted the movement toward thesuccessful rebellion. The four sections would be:

1) a young woman lured into prostitution during the Batista regime,when Havana was world-renowned as “the Latin Las Vegas”

2) the struggle of an aging tenant farmer trying to maintain dignity andfeed his family, while suffering the arrogance and power of landlords

3) the Havana-based university student fight against the dictatorship,torn between heroic but futile efforts of individuals and an organizedmass movement 4) the successful rebellion in the mountains of Eastern Cuba, exemplifiedby a non-combatant peasant who loses one of his children during aBatista bombardment and takes up a gun After May 1962 Kalatozovreturned to Cuba to assemble a cast with the help of Belka Fridman.

Together they looked for people whose faces Kalatozov liked for theircinematic qualities: “I think that cinema doesn’t really requireprofessional actors, because what counts more than anything is thehuman presence.” Naturally there were some semi-professional actorswith experience on stage. Some of these were also recruits from PinedaBarnet’s acting classes.

All this pre-production activity was suddenly interrupted in October 1962with the Soviet-US confrontation over the unexpected placement ofmissiles (with nuclear warhead capabilities) in Cuba. The Cold War wasdistressingly on the verge of heating up all the way to the unthinkable –nuclear war. The infamous Bay of Pigs (Playa Girón) invasion of Cuba hadfailed a few months before, and an understandably angry and

legitimately paranoid Castro needed to make a show of power. Already


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forging an economic and military alliance with the Soviet Union, he hadwelcomed Soviet missiles onto the island, all pointed at locations withinthe US. After a tense 13 days, cooler heads prevailed and JFK and Sovietpremier Khrushchev agreed to back down. Missiles and bombers wereremoved from Cuba, and the US secretly removed its own missiles fromItaly and Turkey. More importantly to Castro, the US agreed not to invadeCuba.

After four more months of preparation, the production of SOY CUBA got

underway on 26 February 1963. No one could have guessed that it wouldbe another 14 months before filming ended. The crewmember who doubtlessly would have had the most headacheswould have to be Alexander Calzatti, who worked as camera operatorunder the direction of DP Urusevsky, described by many as dictatorial. Itwas Calzatti who would solve the technical demands for the amazingmobile shots proposed by the director and DP. He had to translate his

bosses’ dreams – “Wouldn’t it be great if we could....” – into how tosuspend the camera from wires in dangerous places in order to follow theactions out windows and along streets. An astounding 97% of the filmwas shot with a handheld camera, generally by Calzatti. There were noSteadicams yet. Martin Scorsese would later say that a Steadicam wouldnot have achieved the same level of tension as seen in SOY CUBA. TheSteadicam glides smoothly, while Calzatti’s handheld camera places usright in the action and betrays our nervousness through the subliminal,minute shaking at the edges of the frames. Fortunately for Calzatti he washolding the relatively light-weight Éclair camera, beloved of the FrenchNew Wave directors, and capable of holding a 5-minute magazine of35mm film, critical for the continuous, long takes sought by the director.


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From the very opening shot along the coastline, something about thepalm trees looks other-worldly. Using infrared film, acquired from EastGerman film labs – usually reserved for spy work – Urusevsky and Calzattiturned the foliage into a brilliant silver-white. Filters and wide-anglelenses which distorted perspective in various shots also added to thedreamlike (even nightmarish) quality in the look of the film.

For the crane shot of the farmer Pedro burning his cane field and hut, thecrew devised a video system which allowed them to watch on a TV

monitor while shooting film. This, a full 20 years before such a systemcame into use in Hollywood, should have revolutionized worldfilmmaking techniques, but few people would hear about it. A specialunderwater container for the camera had to be devised to facilitate theswimming pool scene.

Once he had all the footage in the can, Kalatozov returned to the Soviet

Union to begin the huge undertaking of editing the film with NinaGlagoleva. To celebrate the opening of the Cuban Revolution (the failed firstattempt), SOY CUBA premiered in Santiago de Cuba on 26 July 1964. ARussian premiere took place at the same time. The 140-minute filmclosed after only one week – not because of “poor box office” (a capitalistconcept), but because neither the Soviet nor the Cuban government liked

it. The shelving in the Soviet Union is more understandable – Khrushchevwas on his way out of power, soon to be replaced by a very repressiveBreshnev. Certainly images of a people rising up against an oppressivegovernment would be dangerous for Soviet people to see, no matterwhat the nominal politics of the day. They were also concerned that thenightlife scenes in the early part of the film would look too beguiling to

Soviet audiences who had never seen any such lifestyle and might very


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well envy it. Our present-day knowledge of post-Soviet Russian oligarchsand gangsters partying should lend weight to that 1964 paranoia.

More confusing is the repudiation of SOY CUBA in Cuba. One Cubancrewmember later said: “Many Cubans didn’t feel that the film reflectednational characteristics. It is the Cuban reality seen through a Slavicprism.” Fidel, who was planning many great projects for his country whilealso instituting repressive measures “to guard the Revolution” againstenemies, both internal and external, perhaps felt that SOY CUBA might

suggest “reopening” the Revolution.I haven’t found any discussion of the film in interviews with Castro. It’sunfortunate that for whatever reason, he caused it to disappear. It is sucha stirring film, one which shows the inequalities of the Batista years inboth city and countryside, that it certainly can’t be branded reactionary.And it is a sterling example of pure cinema, told primarily through the

camera with little reliance on the spoken word.

Kalatozov died in 1973, followed one year later by Urusevsky, whoreportedly spent his final years sorely distraught over the “failure” of SOYCUBA. Fidel is still alive.

Documents

soy cuba.pdf