Four vignettes about the lives of the Cuban people set during the pre-revolutionary era.Four vignettes about the lives of the Cuban people set during the pre-revolutionary era.Four vignettes about the lives of the Cuban people set during the pre-revolutionary era.
- Awards
- 2 wins & 1 nomination
Mario González Broche
- Pablo
- (as Mario González)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe now famous long take that begins at the top of the hotel, then winds around and down into the swimming pool, originally come out of the water and continued. The camera was hand held, passed from crew member to crew member, to make its way down the side of the hotel into the pool. The camera lens had been equipped with a high speed, spinning glass disk taken from a submarine periscope. The spinning disk was installed to fling water drops off of the lens when the camera emerged from the swimming pool at the end of the shot. Much to the disappointment of the camera crew, director Mikhail Kalatozov cut the end of the take, ending it underwater.
- GoofsWhen Enrique gets to the top of the high-rise building he gains access to the roof by stepping through a window with a broken pane of glass. When he returns, the pane in same window is unbroken.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Soy Cuba, O Mamute Siberiano (2004)
- SoundtracksLoco amor
(Spanish-speaking adaptation of the 1958 song "Crazy Love")
Music and lyrics by Paul Anka
Performed by El Duo Los Diablos (as Los Diablos Demonicos)
Added accompaniment music recorded later at the Prado 210 studio
With Chucho Valdés (piano), Guillermo Barreto (drums) and Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez (bass).
Featured review
Why does everyone focus on the technicalities?!!?
Just about every comment posted here eulogises Soy Cuba's camera-work, which is certainly understandable as it is remarkably filmed, but this is done to the neglect of other extremely important aspects. Whether they are bigger fans of the camera-work or of the direction, however, all the commentators on these pages seem to share the caveat that arguably the main point of the film - its plot - amounts to nothing more than "silly propaganda" or a curiosity of totalitarian film making. Such an attitude is a terrible oversight! Soy Cuba is about people's desire for freedom and a better life, and the revolutionary potential of this desire when conditions reach a point beyond which people will no longer endure. It is about self respect, and courage, will and humanity and a human, filial patriotism; it is about the distillation of Cuba as an idea and a cause for justice and empowerment. I cannot understand how deeply postmodern and jaded, or just plain superficial, someone has to be to notice all the nuances of angle and light and completely miss the deep emotional and spiriual poetry of the content (in fact, the US government certainly paid good attention, for it banned the film until 1992)! It is like discussing Korda's portrait of Che Guevara in terms of focus and aperture alone!Did they not feel goosebumps as they watched the scene of the students on the steps, and the dead dove? I am lost for words! Indeed, if it were just a vapid propaganda piece, what explains its de facto censorship in the Soviet Union? I am quite sure that many of these commentators must have visited the Caribbean on holiday at one time or another; I know from my own experiences, and they ought to have immediately realised on seeing the film, that the portrait the it paints of Cuba remains the reality of Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Haiti today, some 65 years later. Watching this film, we should above all feel indignant, rather than heaping praise onto disembodied and decontextualised technicalities such as camera-work. To dismiss it as propaganda yet ogle at its images is akin to prostituting this beautiful, very deeply moving, and inspiring film, the same way that Cuba herself was prostituted. Shame on you.
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official site
- Languages
- Also known as
- Soy Cuba
- Filming locations
- Calle M & 23 Ave, Havana, Cuba(rooftop scene: Enrique as a sniper)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $168,100
- Gross worldwide
- $274,098
- Runtime2 hours 21 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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