I Am Cuba

Director: Mikhail Kalatozov

Overview

"Mikhail Kalatozov's visually stunning look at life in Cuba gets a straightforward presentation in this DVD edition. I Am Cuba has been transferred to disc in its original full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and the audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital

Product Details

Release Date:	01/18/2000
UPC:	0014381592528
Original Release:	1964
Rating:	NR
Source:	SONY PICTURES HOME ENT/IMAGE
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[monaural, Dolby Digital]
Language:	English
Time:	2:20:00

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Luz Maria Collazo	Maria/Betty
Jean Bouise	Jim
Sergio Corrieri	Alberto
Jose Gallardo	Pedro
Ra?l Garc?a	Enrique
Salvador Wood	Actor
Alberto Morgan	Actor
Fausto Mirabal	Actor
Roberto Garcia York	American Activist
Maria M. Diez	Actor
Silia Rodriguez	Gloria
Barbara Dominquez	Actor
Iris del Monte	Actor
Mario Gonz?lez	Pablo
N. Nikitina	Russian Text Reader,Narrator
Georgiy Epifantsev	Russian Text Reader,Narrator
Raul Garcia	Actor
Luz Maria Collaso	Actor

Technical Credits

Enrique Barnet

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Mikhail Kalatozov	Producer
Enrique Barnet	Screenwriter
Yevgeny Yevtushenko	Screenwriter

Scene Index

Side #1
0. Chapter Selection
1. Main Title [3:58]
2. "The Most Beautiful Land Ever Seen by Human Eyes" [5:31]
3. Loco Amor [8:13]
4. The Fruit Seller; Seeds of Revolution [3:17]
5. Where Maria Works [6:43]
6. How the Other Half Lives [5:30]
7. Not for Sale [2:54]
8. Slumming [3:56]
9. Signed in Blood [4:04]
10. Waiting for the sugar to Grow [4:37]
11. Good, Hard Work [2:54]
12. Señor Acosta & the United Fruit Company [3:30]
13. "I Am Not Tired!" [4:08]
14. Two Coca-Colas [2:41]
15. "Who Answers for This Blood?" [3:35]
16. Propaganda at the Drive-in [3:07]
17. The Heroes of Uncle Sam [4:25]
18. Struggling Against the System [:24]
19. The Tower [5:37]
20. A Personal Demon [6:54]
21. "Viva la Libertad!" [3:20]
22. The Path of the Star [4:53]
23. Inequity of Power [5:33]
24. One More Martyr [3:31]
25. Guerrillas in the Mist [4:02]
26. Up in the Mountains [3:02]
27. A Stranger at the Table [4:01]
28. The Mountains Explode [6:00]
29. One Is Missing [5:41]
30. Joining the Front [3:42]
31. Victory [5:36]
32. End Credits [3:51]

Menu

Side #1
Feature Start
Theatrical Trailer

Editorial Reviews

I Am Cuba is to communist propaganda what Triumph of the Will is to the Nazi cause. Leaving aside the content of the two films' messages, these are exceptionally well-made works of cinema. While Triumph director Leni Riefenstahl was confined by the limitations of her subject -- providing a record of the 1934 Nuremberg rallies -- Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov had a freer hand with this co-production between the Soviet Union and Cuba. His screenwriters, the Cuban writer Enrique Pineda Barnet and Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, created a quartet of stories to illustrate mostly the ills of the Batista regime, with only lip service paid to the advantages of a Communist alternative. But in constructing a framework for a variety of settings, from decadent Havana nightclubs to the sugar fields of the lowlands to the lush forests of the mountains, the stories gave Kalatozov and his immensely inventive cinematographer, Sergei Urusevsky, myriad opportunities to celebrate the physical beauty of Cuba (and its people). The filmmakers can't keep their cameras still -- one amazing shot, during an urban funeral procession, begins at street level, rises to the open window of a third-story cigar factory, continues through the factory and out another window to follow the funeral from overhead down a narrow avenue. The effect of all that movement is to suggest a country in upheaval and transition. I Am Cuba will likely go down in history as the ultimate film record of the communist revolution in Cuba, if only because of the consummate skill it employs to illustrate the roots of that movement.