I Am Cuba

Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
Year Released: 1964
Rating: 2.0

Propaganda film made by a Russian filmmaker in Cuba, decrying the inequalities and 'tyranny' of the Batista regime while praising the greatness of Castro and his guerilla army - it's Birth of a Nation, but with Communists in the place of the Ku Klux Klan. Visual splendor is everywhere, as the 'working men and women' - farmers, cigar makers, freedom fighters - are placed in delicately composed black and white shots of the land and the sky to show off the majesty of both, but the film is long and the message disgusting - the movie flirts with the idea of political assassination and shows no-nothing students activists as being young Marxist heroes.