IFC Center
323 6th Ave
212.924.7771
This event has passed.
- When
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Feb 13, 2009 – Feb 16, 2009
Daily
- Where
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- Price
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$12
- Links
Note:
I Am Cuba is the pinnacle of IFC's After the Revolution: Cuba on Screen series, which spotlights films by isle luminaries such as Tomas Gutierrez Alea and Humberto Solás, as well as Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls.
Agitprop often tends to be like the tasteless sale of timeshares — it feels like they're tossing in everything and the kitchen sink. But the dazzling and dizzying I Am Cuba, for which Soviets teamed with Cubans as brothers-in-cameras, transcends any wholesale tag; in fact, it's unlike anything on celluloid. Ostensibly a "Viva Cuba" piece of propaganda, Mikhail Kalatozov's 1964 docudrama is set in profligate, pre-Fidel Cuba, where four vignettes of capitalism-caused hardship — each featuring ecstatic cinematography and compositions — track the proletariat's stance from submission to revolution. Overwhelming in the best sense, the once-forgotten, eff-America production was ironically and thankfully saved by stateside enthusiasts (like Martin Scorsese) from obsolescence.
