Part of Milestones of the Last Quarter Century and Weekend Classics
Director Mikhail Kalatozov’s delirious masterpiece unfolds in four stunning vignettes that paint a portrait of pre-revolutionary Cuba — its culture and the people who call the island home. Shot soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis, this wildly offbeat celebration of Communist iconography mixes Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality, and represents an early effort to keep abreast of the ongoing and crucial work of film preservation — even if our means of exhibition left much to be desired.
The earliest years of our current iteration — now a quarter-century old — found us exercising a multi-pronged approach to operating this theater. We had an arm in new releases, a leg in live theater, another more active leg in live music — and the remaining arm trying as we might to figure out an approach to repertory cinema. Early repertory efforts consisted mostly of week-long runs, albeit supplemented periodically with what we now call Weekend Classics — very loosely, Saturdays and Sundays at noon. In that regard, I AM CUBA represents early efforts to keep abreast of the ongoing and crucial work of film preservation — even if our means of exhibition left much to be desired at the time.
In 2001, I AM CUBA had been restored and released with the support of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, and we wanted to show it — but we only had lenses for the two chief aspect ratio formats of the era: Flat, a shape that’s very close to today’s television standard (16×9), and the much wider Cinemascope. Unfortunately, screening the boxier formats without the proper lenses — basically everything before the invention of widescreen — meant that the image would spill well below the boundaries of our screen. Our solution? Take the backup screen we had in a hallway and fold it over the lower frame of our screen, thereby adding an extension — albeit with a very clear dividing line along the lower third of the image. It was absolutely atrocious. This would be rectified soon, in time for and with the support of a short-lived but impactful appendage of early Belcourt efforts known as Nashville Premieres (see AU HASARD BALTHAZAR).
See I AM CUBA in the manner in which it was intended, and behold among other wonders the awe-inducing poolside tracking shot — without which the aforementioned Scorsese’s trademark expository long takes might not exist.
“Sustained ecstasy for cinephiles, a dreamlike phantasmagoria of technique disguised as a pro-Castro propaganda film…. Photographed in a B&W monochrome so rich and luxuriant that every image could be mounted on a gallery wall, I AM CUBA serves as a showcase for Kalatozov's ‘emotional camera,’ his term for the unbroken, astonishingly elaborate handheld takes that he strings into a narrative.” —Scott Tobias, A.V. Club “A collage of Herculean feats of technical wizardry that would be easy to dismiss if it wasn’t so humane…. The film may or may not have changed the political face of the world, but in the way image and sound conspire to lay down the foundation for a new way of aesthetic thinking, it was at least geared to permanently change the way movies were made.” —Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
