I Am Cuba

I Am Cuba (Spanish: Soy Cuba; Russian: Я — Куба, romanized: Ya — Kuba) is a 1964 political drama anthology film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov. An international co-production between the Soviet Union and Cuba, it follows four distinct stories about the Cuban population shortly before the Revolution. The film was almost completely forgotten in the West until it was re-discovered by filmmakers in the United States three decades later. The acrobatic tracking shots and idiosyncratic mise-en-scène prompted Hollywood directors like Martin Scorsese to begin a campaign to restore the film in the early 1990s. I Am Cuba was shot in black and white, sometimes using infrared film obtained from the Soviet military to exaggerate contrast (making trees and sugar cane almost white, and skies very dark but still obviously sunny). Most shots are in extreme wide-angle and the camera passes very close to its subjects, whilst still largely avoiding having those subjects ever look directly at the camera.