Hacker Cinema
I Am Cuba
Soy Cuba
1964 · Film · 141 min
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov
A study in contrasts set in and around Havana that explores Cuba's 1959 revolution: a young woman's fascination with the excess of an American-owned casino leads to her downfall in the eyes of her street vendor boyfriend; a tenant farmer revolts the only way he knows how, attacking the land he works; university students gain first-hand knowledge of political upheaval; and, in the hills outside the city, the members of a poor peasant family are patriotically swept up into the burgeoning revolt.
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9 comments on Hacker News
Well put. Fatalism and melancholy are great descriptions of it.
One such interesting culture clash happened when the Soviets went to Cuba to shoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Cuba. A beautiful movie, fantastic cinematography by Kalatozov, but the Cubans just never liked it. The portrayal of Cubans is very much what Russians thought Cubans might be like, as opposed to how Cubans see themselves.
The revolutionary film Soy Cuba also features this completely bogus line of thinking. The farmer sells over his land because he's broke then goes insane when he's evicted by the "mean capitalist" to whom he sold the farm. Somehow this forms the basis for the revolutionary spirit. People completely miss this. They just see evil capitalists under every stone.
A few other "greatest" scenes in cinema:
* Isak's vision of his family picnicking at the end of Wild Strawberries (1957), where a man finds peace in his journey through the memories of his life
* Hidetora walking out his burning castle in Ran (1985) amid a battle amid his two eldest sons for supremacy, his plan to divide his kingdom among his three children having come to a disastrous end - a man realizing his children (and humanity in general) are more horrible than his naive dreams of unity could sustain.
* Two scenes in The Cranes Are Flying (1957): a montage of Veronika's beloved dying in battle (he falls as his soul seems to ascend bc the camera angle) while she goes about her life; Veronika finding out Boris is dead for sure at the train station, giving the flowers intended for Boris to the returning men and their families, and then she sees the cranes above Moscow - hope and renewal.
* In I am Cuba (1964): a martyred revolutionary, a student, is carried through Havana as the whole city stops what they're doing to honor him, solemnly, cigar-factory workers and all.
* In Andrei Rublev (1966), there's an extended sequence where a bellmaker's young son agrees to pour a bell for a local lord. You see the entire process of making the mould and pouring the metal. It has a town-fair atmosphere. But at the end, there's tremendous pressure on the young bellmaker to have the bell ring properly and have no cracks. And it does. The protagonist, the lapsed monk Andrei Rublev, regains his faith, seeing the result of the young bellmaker's hope. (I've shared this a few times on this website.)
* At the end of L'Ecclise (1962), the two lovers decide to meet the next day but they don't. Instead, we see thirty shots of the empty city - a devastating way to get to the heart of loneliness and lack of connection in modern life.
> Very soon after we came back to Russia, more than half of our crew died. I survived because I was very young.
This is misquoted, mistranslated or just plain made up.
It is attributed to "Calzatti", one of camermen. There are two Calzatti (Кольцатый in Russian) - father (Arkadi), born in 1905, and son (Alexander). IMDB lists the latter as a cameraman, but Russian wikipedia page on file list the father as one. Film credits have it at "A. Кольцатый", which can be either. The film is not listed in filmography of the father, so most likely it was indeed the son who was the cameraman.
Then things get muddy. They both appear to have immigrated to the US shortly after and adopted Calzetti as the last name. Then, [1] talks about "Italian camera operator Alexander Calzetti" being the part of the film's great recipe. But a 2004 documentary on creation of Soy Cuba credits Aleksandr Kaltsatyj as himself.
So that's a mess in itself.
Then there's also an interview with the principal cameraman [2] where he speaks about his work, explaining in detail how the shot was made, and he doesn't mention Calzetti even once and repeating that most of the shooting was done by the director and himself.
To top it off the only mention of the mysterious crew plague is that sentence in the GP's acsmag article, derived from a brief interview given to that magazine by Calzetti.
Long story short, I think it's safe to assume that nothing horrible actually happened to the crew upon their return home.
1. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-12-08-9512080285-story.html
2. http://screenstage.ru/?p=13380
I have an original movie poster from Soy Cuba, its a beautiful piece of art, along with all Cuban movie posters. They speak to the creativity and vibrancy of the culture. I suggest a quick google of 'cuban movie posters;' from what I've been told typically the artist had not seen the movie or a limited amount of it, then was tasked to make an original poster. They often have no similarity to their western movie poster
Soy Cuba contains lush and gorgeous B&W cinematography. The film opens up with the camera flying over the waters of Cuba; the reflection of the water is glistening in a way unlike other films. I believe they used an X-ray film strip to achieve this shot.
Mikhail Kalatozov has included another impressive shot at the end of his previous work, "The Cranes Are Flying." (Palme d'Or at Cannes 1958) The camera follows the protagonist, then gets seamlessly lifted up by a crane to depict the entire street parading.
While Soviet-era films does not have much exposure in the English-speaking world, there are so many gems, critically and technically. The filmmakers were acutely aware of great filming techniques.
Also check out:
Walking the Streets of Moscow (1964) - B-roll scenery contains another lush reflection of the Moscow waters
Ivan the Terrible (1944/1958) - Eisenstein is an ardent practitioner of the montage, and prefers to static camera shots. However, his compositions are very imaginative, and there is no shot you want to miss. His film also briefly experiments with color, and he exploits colored lighting to emphasize the characters' psyche.
Anything by Andrei Tarkovsky - Tarkovsky is indisputably a master of Russian cinema after Eisenstein. He often shoots in nature, but no director shoots with such rich texture of the mud. His long shots emphasizes the bleakness inherent in the Russian psyche.
The Ascent (1977) - Set in WWII, the film shows the resistance escaping the Nazis covered in snow and panting in the cold. Great snow photography.
Hard to Be a God (2013) - A sci-fi story on the immigration of humans to a different planet, the colonizers inhabit the inhospitable environment. Like Tarkovsky, the slow dragging in the mud conveys the dreary lives.
These are recommendations I came up off the top of my head relating to cinematography, but there are definitely many more to appreciate.
About the movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Cuba
Thanks for suggesting to watch "I Am Cuba", I definitely will.
"The Cranes Are Flying" is an amazing movie, I totally agree. I think it is a great illustration of an idea that morally-strong and courageous people are the first ones to die in hard times.
If you like "The Ascent", I wonder if you'd also be fond of her other movies, first of all, "Ty i ya" (1971) [1] (The film has it's fair share of problems but I find the main idea behind it really powerful). I'd also recommend you to watch movies made by her husband, Elem Klimov, at least, "Come and See" [2] and "Rasputin" [3].
As about "Come and See", for me it has a somewhat personal theme: when Nazis were exterminating the people of his village near Ula, the grandfather of my ex has survived only by chance. His mother, while holding him, has jumped into the ravine before the bullets hit them.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067894/
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/
[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081991/
Good list. Yeah, I really like Shepitko's "The Ascent".
Kalatozov is really good. The Cranes Are Flying (Russian: Летят журавли) has really beautiful cinematography.
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Cuba is outstanding for cinematography. You will probably not enjoy its propaganda message, and Cubans didn't like, but cinematography wise it is a beautiful film.