ARKANSAS TIMES FILM SERIES: ‘I AM CUBA’
TUESDAY 4/21. RIVERDALE 10 VIP CINEMA. 7 P.M. $12-$14.
Directed by Soviet-Georgian filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov, “I Am Cuba” (“Soy Cuba” in Spanish) consists of four separate stories from before and during the Cuban Revolution. Guided by an omnipotent narrator (“The Voice of Cuba”), we see the state of things under the Batista regime through the eyes of Maria, a poor young woman forced into prostitution at a Havana casino; Pedro, a peasant who’s being displaced from the land he works after his landlord sells the property; a group of student protesters who are violently suppressed by the government; and Mariano, a farmer reluctant to join the fight until the fighting comes to him. Released in 1964 as a Cuban/Russian co-production, “I Am Cuba” was largely forgotten until the early ’90s, when it was rediscovered after the fall of the Soviet Union and championed by enthusiasts (including directors Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola) who were taken by the film’s visual poetry. Get tickets at riverdale10.com.
