I Am Cuba [Criterion Collection] [4K Ultra HD Blu-ray]

Director: Mikhail Kalatozov Mikhail Kalatozov

Overview

An unabashed exercise in cinema stylistics, I Am Cuba is pro-Castro/anti-Batista rhetoric dressed up in the finest clothes. The film's four dramatic stories take place in the final days of the Batista regime; the first two illustrate the ills that led to the revolution, the third and fourth the call to arms which cut across social and economic lines. A lovely young woman in a nightclub frequented by crass American businessmen takes a customer to her modest seaside shack for a night of pleasure for pay, only to be found out by her street vendor suitor; a tenant farmer is told that his crop has been sold to United Fruit and in frustration burns his fields; a middle-class student rallies his pals and workers in a street demonstration against the regime; a peasant eking out a living in the mountains quickly converts to the cause when Batista bombers strafe his land in search of rebel fighters. At face value, this is all obvious agitprop, but director Mikhail Kalazatov turned his cinematographer, Sergei Urusevsky, loose, and the result is a procession of dazzling black-and-white images, shot with a camera that is almost always moving and soaring over the sugar fields, swooping in and out of urban buildings, following characters down narrow streets. Unreleasable to American theaters during the Cold War, I Am Cuba, through the auspices of filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, got a belated U.S. release in 1995 and has proved to be both a time capsule of a fading political movement and a timeless work of cinematic art.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/23/2024
UPC:	0715515294713
Original Release:	1964
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	2:21:00
Format:	Blu-ray
Sales rank:	21

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Luz Maria Collazo	Maria/Betty
Jean Bouise	Jim
Sergio Corrieri	Alberto
Jose Gallardo	Pedro
Raúl García	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 González	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	Director,Producer
Enrique Barnet	Screenwriter
Yevgeny Yevtushenko	Screenwriter