It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

hyped garbage

Fantastic!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Can a propaganda film result in a work of art? Yes, it can, you just have to call the best at it, Mikhail Kalatozov managed to put the communist cause to the center, making it look inviting. The four stories he presents us invite us to feel the tragic ways of capitalism, the pain of corruption, and the abuse of power. That continues today more than ever, only that it is destroying us in a more subtle way. Dazzling camera work as well.

I had the great displeasure of sitting through this piece of rubbish film. Yes, I know it is supposed to be historical, it is a Soviet-Cuban propaganda film and the camera work is supposed to be fantastic. This film only appeals to ignorant students who think they know more than anybody because they "are for the people and justice" and communists. As Billy Joel once said, "I had my pointless point of view." ALL the scenes are way too long, hammering the point home in 20 minutes when it was understood in 3 minutes. The nightclub singer repeating Crazy Love so many times you go loco, following the student revolutionary for 20 minutes through a building and up to the roof, a guy running through plants for 10 minutes, come on, enough! I bring this up because both the writer and the director are applauded as fantastic when their work, propaganda or not, is worse than an Adam Goldberg family video. Please don't waste your time with this film. Go get experimental brain surgery instead.

The critic's dilemma with propaganda films lies in the controversial subject matter and the fact that they are generally made by the crème de la crème of directors - a blessing and a curse. All these films are supposed to convey is a certain political mind-set, the glorification of a person, revolution or regime - in impressive imagery that is, the rest is artistic license. The latter is why directors are carefully chosen for these projects in the first place - their unique style should warrant the film's success. This was the case with Eisenstein's and Dovzhenko's masterpieces in the 1920s/1930s or Riefenstahl's infamous "Triumph of the Will" aestheticising Nazis, and it also applies to Mikhail Kalatozov's "I am Cuba" retracing the Cuban revolution. Interestingly however Kalatozov, whose breathtaking "Cranes are Flying" took the Cannes Grand Prize in 1958, failed in the eyes of the Cubans and the Soviets, who didn't consider it revolutionary enough, too naïve, too stereotypical. Its rediscovery however is well deserved, and it's due to its sublime beauty.More than half a century on much more has remained from "I Am Cuba" than just a historic document tinged by communistic propaganda. Above all it is a poetic portrayal with incredible visuals, a riveting collage of very different lives on the same soil, connected by their love for their country. "I Am Cuba" is a feeling. It comprises the Cuban homeland and a time of upheaval, strong emotions that have bottled up for years and years to finally come to the forefront leading up to inevitable confrontations. The film's perspective still comes across as powerful and relevant, story-wise and camera-wise. Kalatozov films in long takes which are often choreographed with absolute precision, uses stylized high contrast black and white cinematography, extraordinary crane and tracking shots, tilted camera angles and seemingly even moves freely through Havana in one of the most famous continuous camera shots in film history. With his superb technical and cinematic artistry Kalatozov transcends the moment and while his approach wasn't appreciated back in the days, his rediscovery in the 1990s prompted an array of quotes from this work. Indicator enough that Cuba is worth a visit, at least on the silver screen.

Mikhail Kalatozov's 1964 film, I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) is probably the most divergent film I've ever watched in terms of the quality of its constituent parts. It is, as its reputation boasts, visually stunning, imaginative, innovative, and flat out great. But, in terms of its narrative, it is hackneyed, trite, and unimaginatively anti-American in its blatant agitprop, and laughably bad. And I say this fully aware of the Ugly Americanism that has wrought the communist fervor that still grips South America, as well as the Islamic Extremism, because the propagandizing in the film has a seriously negative effect on the film, to the point that its labeling as 'Commie kitsch,' by many of its detractors, and even some of its champions, is dead on.The film was a joint Soviet-Cuban production, meant as blatant propaganda for the Communist cause, but Kalatozov's film so rhapsodized Cuban sexuality and reveled so in its visuals, that even its backers as Mosfilms, the Soviet State film company, pulled it after a short distribution period. It was critically denounced both in Cuba and the Soviet Union. It was not until filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Francs Ford Coppola saw and championed it in 1995 that the film got its first taste of critical success in the West. The film was written by Enrique Pineda Barnet and Russian state poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko and the cinematography by Sergey Urusevsky, as mentioned, deserves all the plaudits it can muster. The acting is passable, at best, and wooden, stilted, and forced, most of the time. The film was shot in black and white, and used using color filters to exaggerate contrast, as well as using wide angle shots in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The film's music is diegetic and not, but the one aspect of the film that is neither good not bad, overall; although in certain scenes the singing and music are wonderfully evocative of time and place.