I am Cuba

I am Cuba is a 1964 Soviet-Cuban film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov at Mosfilm. The film was not received well by either the Russian or Cuban public and was almost completely forgotten until it was re-discovered by filmmakers in the United States thirty years later. The acrobatic tracking shots and idiosyncratic mise en scene prompted Hollywood directors like Martin Scorsese to begin a campaign to restore the film in the early 1990s. The film is shot in black and white, sometimes using infrared film obtained from the Soviet military to exaggerate contrast . Most shots are in extreme... wide-angle and the camera passes very close to its subjects, whilst still largely avoiding having those subjects ever look directly at the camera. Shortly after the 1959 Cuban revolution overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the socialist Castro government, isolated by the United States after the latter broke diplomatic and trade relations in 1961, turned to the USSR for film partnerships.
more