This movie is a motherfucker. I dont think I will be able to do the wikipedia article justice, so for some background on it:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_Cuba
I picked this movie up last year at MCC after Paul Thomas Anderson name dropped in his Boogie Nights commentary. I was interested in his description, "A soviet-cuban experimental propaganda film made in the sixties". If that isn't enough to perk anyone's interest then you have got to be dead.
Well I am very much alive so I decided to hunt a down a copy. Sure enough MCC had one. And just for the record I love my school. 
And man does it deliver. Full mag shots (15 minutes) traveling thru huge elaborate set pieces. For example: we start in the street following palbearers as crowds start to surround the procession and travel up the side of a building into a cigar rolling factory, out the window over the street as the crowd has grown 5 times in size. Or follow a man on foot as burns his cane field down. Or go to party on the top of a luxury hotel where a beauty pageant is going on and then go down to the pool deck going guest to guest, look over the balcony, then follow a girl into the pool, then go underwater! ALL IN ONE UNBROKEN SHOT!
And man does it deliver. Full mag shots (15 minutes) traveling thru huge elaborate set pieces. For example: we start in the street following palbearers as crowds start to surround the procession and travel up the side of a building into a cigar rolling factory, out the window over the street as the crowd has grown 5 times in size. Or follow a man on foot as burns his cane field down. Or go to party on the top of a luxury hotel where a beauty pageant is going on and then go down to the pool deck going guest to guest, look over the balcony, then follow a girl into the pool, then go underwater! ALL IN ONE UNBROKEN SHOT!
This is 1964, and its soviet. The acrobatics alone are spellbinding.
This movie is worth watching five times just as an exercise in cinematography, but it has some the best voiceover and acting I have seen. Jesus I damn near became a socialist after my first viewing, fucking United Fruit.
Masterpiece of camerawork, directing, and epic poetry by Serguei Urusevsky, who according to my good friend Janos Balla who lived in communist Hungary he was considered the poet laureate of the USSR.
Pretty fucking cool movie. Its out on DVD now thanks to the joint efforts of Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola.
Pretty fucking cool movie. Its out on DVD now thanks to the joint efforts of Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola.
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