I AM CUBA

"I am Cuba" has some of the greatest tracking shots in all of cinema. Here is a film that practically reinvents cinema. It was made by the Russian director Mikhail Kalatozov in the early sixties as a kind of love-letter to the island and the Revolution. He filmed it like a documentary but with a scripted narrative and using 'actors' to tell the story of the Revolution and what lead to it but unaccountably the film was neither popular with the Cubans or the Russians. Did they really think it lacked revolutionary fervour? Yet this isn't a film you watch for the narrative alone but for the technique employed and visually this is one of the greatest of all films. Almost every shot is a stunner and like all great visual films the intensity of the images take on a life of their own turning the somewhat didactic 'story-telling' into real poetry. The script may be propaganda and the acting wooden but the imagery is so strikingly vivid it forces you to care about the characters and there are scenes in this film that rank with the finest in all of world cinema. Indeed, I think this film is up there with "The Battle of Algiers" and Salvatore Guiliano" as one of the great revolutionary pictures. 'Lost' for almost 30 years it was finally re-released through the auspices of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. We owe them a considerable debt of gratitude.