I Am Cuba

Hidden away in the Soviet archives for three decades, "I Am Cuba" is a wildly schizophrenic celebration of Communist kitsch, mixing Slavic solemnity with Latin sensuality -- a whirling, feverish dance through both the sensuous decadence of Batista's Havana and the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people. In four stories of the revolution, Mikhail Kalatov's astonishingly acrobatic camera takes the viewer on a rapturous roller-coaster ride of bathing beauties, landless peasants, fascist police, and student revolutionaries.