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I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba)
Milestone Films first released Mikhail Kalatozovs deliriously beautiful masterpiece, I Am Cuba in 1995. Now, decades later, we are delighted to have been able to create a brand new 4K restoration of the film from original 35mm fine grain masters we purchased so long ago. The newly restored I Am Cuba is even more ravishing and surreal the improved visuals and the single-language soundtrack allow viewers to experience the films extraordinary cinematography, sound editing, and narrative power. Audiences will have no question why this film revolutionized filmmaking in the 1990s and beyond.
Produced by Mosfilm and ICAIC, this film was started only a week after the Cuban missile crisis and was designed to be Cubas answer to both Sergei Eisensteins propaganda masterpiece, Potemkin and Jean-Luc Godards freewheeling romance, Breathless. But I Am Cuba turned out to be something quite unique a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist iconography, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality. The plot, or rather plots, feverishly explore the seductive, decadent (and marvelously photogenic) world of Batistas Cuba deliriously juxtaposing images of rich Americans and bikini-clad beauties sipping cocktails poolside with scenes of ramshackle slums filled with hungry children and gaunt old people.
Using wide-angle lenses that distort and magnify and filters that transform palm trees into giant white feathers, cinematographer Sergei Urusevskys acrobatic camera achieves wild gravity-defying angles as it glides effortlessly through long continuous shots. But I Am Cuba is not just a catalog of bravura technique it also succeeds in exploring the innermost feelings of the characters and their often desperate situations. Shown unsubtitled at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I Am Cuba received two standing ovations during the screening. The first movie ever jointly presented by master filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, I Am Cuba is one of the great discoveries in cinema. It will change your view of cinema forever!
Distributed by Milestone Films
"The staggering, swaggering camera choreography and unapologetic reliance on white-hot infrared film stock acknowledged, we should also consider I AM CUBA as a daffy but ultimately sincere political document." Kyle Westphal, Cine-File
"Obama is fascinated with the beauty of the island, whereas Kalatozov was fascinated with the beauty of its struggle for independence Everyone wants a new kind of society. And they are ready to fight for this new way of life. This is what film celebrates. The beauty of this new Cuba." - Fandor
"Some of the most exhilarating camera movements and most luscious black-and-white cinematography you'll ever see inhabit this singular, delirious 141-minute communist propaganda epic." - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
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LocationSuns Cinema (View)
3107 Mount Pleasant Street NW
Washington, DC 20010
United States
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