BuzzFlash Reviews
"Yo Soy Cuba" -- I Am Cuba 3-DVD Collector's Edition
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, Co-written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Cuban Writer Enrique Pineda Barnet
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
The now legendary film shot by a storied Russian Director in Cuba in 1964 is just a little over two hours long.
This collection is also full of extras that provide background into the history of the making of "Yo Soy Cuba," the director, the actors, the historical context, you name it. That's why there are three artistically packaged DVDs.
Read below to get a brief introduction into the legendary, almost forgotten, film itself.
From Millstone Films:
"Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
USSR/Cuba. 1964.
141 minutes. Black & White.
Started only a week after the Cuban missile crisis and designed to be Cuba’s answer to both Sergei Eisenstein’s propaganda masterpiece, Potemkin and Jean-Luc Godard’s freewheeling romance, Breathless, I Am Cuba turned out to be something quite unique — a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist kitsch, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality. The plot, or rather plots, feverishly explore the seductive, decadent (and marvelously photogenic) world of Batista’s Cuba — deliriously juxtaposing images of rich Americans and bikini-clad beauties sipping cocktails poolside with scenes of ramshackle slums filled with hungry children and gaunt old people. Using wide-angle lenses that distort and magnify and filters that transform palm trees into giant white feathers, Urusevsky’s acrobatic camera achieves wild gravity-defying angles as it glides effortlessly through long continuous shots. But I Am Cuba is not just a catalog of bravura technique — it also succeeds in exploring the innermost feelings of the characters and their often desperate situations.
Shown unsubtitled at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I Am Cuba received two standing ovations — during the screening. The first movie ever jointly presented by master filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, I Am Cuba is one of the great discoveries in cinema. It will change your view of cinema forever!"
Martin Scorcese said, upon first seeing it in the early '90s (after retrieving one of the two remaining prints from an the national film archive in Moscow) that if he had seen "Yo Soy Cuba" at the beginning of his career, it would have changed his directing style.
From BuzzFlash:
Meant to indict the Batista regime (which deserved it), "Yo Soy Cuba" was destined to become a film whose images, cinematography and poetry overshadowed its political intent. In fact, for nearly 30 years the film languished because the Cuban government thought it was too artistic and not heavy enough on the propaganda, and the Soviet government did not want its citizens to view scenes of American decadence in Cuba (because it might ironically come off as appealing to the consumer hungry Soviet residents.)
The "Yo Soy Cuba" "cigar box" collector's edition is a great gift for anyone who is a true fan of the masters of cinemar, particularly those who follow the work of great directors.
This is definitely not Hollywood fare. Think Fellini meets Eisenstein, or something there abouts.
Alternately lyrical, sensuous, heroic, sentimental -- and occasionally campy --this "Yo Soy Cuba" box set is a visual treasture chest of delights. The film itself has some tracking shots that will leave you gasping.
And, of course, there is the political context of the beginning of the Cuban revolution during the waning days of the corrupt, mafia tainted Batista dictatorship. But this is as about as far from a documentary style film as one can get. Artistic form trumps politics in "Yo Soy Cuba."
If you are an "art house" fan, this one is for you.
It's got cinematic history, political history, literary history, the whole shebang.
And all the extras that we have seen in the second and third discs are fascinating themselves. And there's a background guide to the whole set included!
Kudos to Milestone Films for producing "The Ultimate Edition" and for ensuring that "Yo Soy Cuba" reaches as large an audience as possible, more than 30 years after it was unceremoniously held prisoner in a state-run film archives in Moscow.
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS