Soy Cuba!

Images from Soy Cuba

I watched I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba, in Spanish) directed by Russian filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov. The film was made in 1964, during the zenith of Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba. The movie is beautifully shot in black and white, and is definitely the most artful piece of propaganda that I’ve ever seen. The film consisted of four vignettes set in pre-Castro Cuba. The opening shot of the movie pans across the ocean to the island, finally settling on a cross, shot from below so that its upward thrust matches that of the palm trees behind it. The sparse, mysterious music is interrupted with a woman’s voice, slowly and deeply saying “soy Cuba.” This phrase is repeated at the end of each vignette, and each time the woman expounds on what it means to “be Cuba.” Initially, the narrator speaks of the country’s beauty as articulated by Columbus. But the theme quickly turns to exploitation and invasion of Cuba by Christopher Columbus (taking their sugar), then by the tourists (taking their pride) and finally by Batista (taking their freedom).
The first vignette begins on the deck of a hotel swimming pool, as a band plays upbeat music while girls show off their bikinis and swim in the pool. Other tourists clap at the spectacle and look out to a view of Havana. But Kalatozov soon shows that despite their high viewpoint, the Americans cannot see the full picture. After a night spent with a prostitute, a despicable American man tries to buy the girl’s crucifix from her (he collects them) when it is clearly precious and one of the few things she owns (“Nothing’s indecent in Cuba if you’ve got the dough”). As the man wanders through the slum where she lives, he begins to panic as children begging for money mob him. As this scene unfolds, the female narrator speaks: “Why are you running away? You came to have fun. Go ahead, have fun! Don’t avert your eyes. Look! I am Cuba. For you, I am the casino, the bar, the hotels and brothels. But the hands of these children and old people are also me. I am Cuba.”
After this first glimpse into the director’s hellish vision of pre-Castro Cuba, is it clear that this film was not intended to lure tourists to Cuba. The movie is fantastical, but not in the way that Kolton describes in her article. It romanticizes the revolutionary cause, and the plight of the common, hard-working Cuban struggling under Batista’s regime. This is a movie made for Cubans, executed by a sympathetic Russian with the cooperation of the Cubans. The vignettes get progressively darker—the second revolves around a man who toils his whole life on his sugar cane crop, only to have the landowner callously tell him that he has sold his land (and the man’s house) to the United Fruit Company. The man sends his children to town with his last peso and then feverishly hacks at his crops before burning them all down—a very intense scene, shot in infrared film (I assume) as the man dies under a black sky. In the last two vignettes, the Cuban Revolution has begun. First we see the heroic martyrdom of university students against Batista, then with the story of a man who lives a simple life in the country, until he is one day visited by man toting a rifle. The country dwelling man is offended at the concept of using violence to achieve peace, but he changes his mind a few minutes later after his family’s secluded house is randomly bombed. He goes on to join the revolutionary cause, he “steps up” and fights because he is Cuba.
The movie was very extreme in its political and social representation of Cuba, but I was happy to watch something from this angle rather than from the viewpoint of the Western world. Although the film portrayed Americans in a bad light, it made me even more excited to go to Cuba. The cinematography was incredible, and the soundtrack was also amazing. The parables were interesting, but I could also recommend I Am Cuba based on its aesthetic value alone.