Cinemateca 2010 Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba) 1968 September 3 - September 9, 2010

Film Notes Shot just a few years after the Cuban Revolution, the film This beautiful film reveals the poetic inadvertently reminds us that, possibilities of cinema. SOY CUBA (I AM in spite of appalling inequality CUBA) is a 1964 Cuban/Soviet film produced and corruption, Cuba had by director Mikhail Kalatozov (THE CRANES been more developed than ARE FLYING, 1960). The Soviet government its island neighbors. This is commissioned Kalatozov to create a film contrasted against the clearly promoting international socialism; what it aestheticiszed poverty of the got instead was “an avante-garde freakout Cuban countryside where that continues to cast a spell over filmmakers” squalor, hopelessness and (New York Times, 11/20/2007) including injustice mark the terrain, and , giving life and visibility to who campaigned successfully to restore the the blacks, mulattos, and poor movie. Stunning in its cinematic beauty, the “guajiros” of Cuban society. film utilizes high-contrast black-and-white —Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, photography. Critic Paul Julian Smith argues UNO Professor of Political that, “the film’s Havana is not the now-ruinous Science, and Assistant Director dereliction of the old city, but a sleek vision of for Research and Outreach, Office of Latino and Latin modernity worthy of Wallpaper* magazine. The American Studies (OLLAS) students drive fast cars along wide highways or scale angular high rises, all concrete, glass and steel. The beachfront Malecón is eerily pristine.”

Film Information Directed by Language Country Running Time Mikhail Kalatozovy Spanish/English Cuba/ 141 minutes

...... Cinemateca 2010 ∙ Presented by Film Streams in collaboration with UNO’s Office of Latino/Latin American Studies ∙ Series generously sponsored by Sam Walker and Elizabeth Emlen Walker