PFA Collection Print

(Soy Cuba/Ja Kuba). “Here is a true film maudit. Never before shown in the United States, impossible to see in Cuba (where it was called ‘I Am NOT Cuba'), and scorned in Russia as agitprop kitsch, I Am Cuba was made in 1962 as an act of Soviet-Cuban friendship. Yevgeny Yevtushenko gets credit for the film's poetic structure-a loose series of choreographed tableaux. From first shot to last, (it is) a staggering visual experience, comparable to Eisenstein and von Sternberg in its expressive, almost experimental black and white cinematography. It is also a deliriously one-of-a-kind movie, wildly schizophrenic in its bizarre mix of Slavic solemnity and Latin sensuality.”