Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba)
Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
Soviet Union/Cuba 1964. 141 mins.
Spanish version with English subtitles. PAL ALL REGIONS
This astonishing and underrated film is blessed with some of the most extraordinary camerawork in film history. Ostensibly this is Communist propaganda, celebrating the progress achieved by the Cuban Revolution and dramatizing four examples of injustice to the common man in pre-Revolutionary Cuba. The link that holds the film together is a spoken monologue beginning each sequence with the words ?Soy Cuba? (?I am Cuba?). It's still pushing the boundaries of pure cinema, a stirring and unforgettable experience.
"My favourite film" David Bailey
"A sensouously beautiful movie" New York Magazine
"Cinema?s singular dream, so often betrayed elsewhere, is to deliver such visions as this? 5/6. Number 2 in Critics Choice, TIME OUT LONDONJanuary 2006
"Nothing quite like I Am Cuba has been created either before or since" 4/5 , Wendy Ide
"Beautiful... Visually dazzling... Miraculous... I am baffled as to why it isn't in everyone's Top 10 lists" 5/5, Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN
"A fascinating artefact of 20th century politics, and an acknowledged masterpiece of technical filmmaking" CHANNEL4.COM REVIEW
"A memorably eccentric and lyrical hymn to the transformatory powers of cinema" BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE
"The gliding black and white imagery is magnificent. A masterpiece" THE INDEPENDENT, 5/5
"A world cinema classic" THE GUARDIAN GUIDE, January 2006
"A Classic of its kind" THE OBSERVER, January 2006
"One of the most deliriously beautiful films ever made" LA WEEKLY
"Visually staggering... A classic" VARIETY US
"Intoxicating" LA TIMES
"Spectacular! visually stunning" Stephen Holden, THE NEW YORK TIMES
