Cuban
see all genres ›The 2,000-mile-long stretch of some 7,000 islands, including Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Barbados, spanning from Florida's southern tip toward northernmost Venezuela, has often attracted filmmakers looking for exotic settings as well as real-life political drama.
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Genres / International / Americas / Caribbean / Cuban
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I am Cuba
Started only a week after the Cuban missile crisis and designed to be Cuba's answer to both Sergei Eisenstein's propaganda masterpiece, BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, and Jean-Luc Godard's freewheeling romance, BREATHLESS, I AM CUBA turned out to be something quite unique (a wildly schizophrenic...Watch Movie
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Salut les Cubains
The final film in the CINEVARDAPHOTO triptych is the oldest, SALUT LES CUBAINS. In 1963, Varda thoughtfully gave order to 1,800 photos that she had recently taken on a trip to Cuba. In just 30 minutes, the photographer/filmmaker achieves a sprawling depiction of the country,...Watch Movie
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Unfinished Spaces
In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba's National Art Schools on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began immediately and the school's first classes...Watch Movie
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The Last Rumba of Papa Montero
A fascinating film on the rhythmic dance genre known as Rumba, LA ULTIMA RUMBA DE PAPA MONTERO dances around the life of Papa Montero, one of the famous rumberos of Cuba, assassinated during carnival. A discovery of Cuban traditions and every day life told through beautiful...Watch Movie
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Yank Tanks
YANK TANKS is a look at the phenomenon of classic American cars in Cuba. Like an exotic, endangered species, these colorful cars roam around this island paradise trapped in a 1950s time warp. As beacons of individuality in a sea of government conformity they represent freedom for those who own...Watch Movie
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LBJ
Most definitely an unauthorized biography, Cuban agit-prop filmmaker Santiago Alvarez scavenges imagery from LIFE magazine, cowboy movies and Playboy to lampoon Lyndon B. Johnson’s tyranny. The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King, Jr. are all laid at...Watch Movie
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Sara Gomez: An Afro-Cuban Filmmaker
SARA GOMEZ: AN AFRO-CUBAN FILMMAKER is a rich, multilayered documentary about Afro-Cuban director Sarah Gomez. Born in 1943, she studied literature, piano, and Afro-Cuban ethnography before becoming the first female Cuban filmmaker. A woman of great intelligence, independence...Watch Movie
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79 Primaveras
Santiago Alvarez’s portrait of Ho Chi Minh braids beauty and devastation from its opening montage of blooming flowers and bomb clouds. Poring over documentary footage of the Vietnamese leader to search out the signs of bravery, Alvarez tracks Ho's political education from the French communist...Watch Movie
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El Tigre Saltó y Mató, Pero Morirá... Morirá...
Cuban filmmaker Santiago Alvarez's hurried response to the 1973 Chilean coup d’état rests upon the music of Victor Jara, the folk singer who was brutally murdered within days after Augusto Pinochet assumed power. Connecting events in Chile to other repressive police crackdowns...Watch Movie
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Fidel
Whether dismissed as a relic or revered as a savior, many agree that Fidel Castro is one of the most influential and controversial figures of our time. Rarely are Americans given a chance to see inside the world of this socialist leader. The documentary FIDEL offers a unique opportunity to view...Watch Movie
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Hasta la Victoria Siempre
Cuban agit-prop filmmaker Santiago Alvarez produced this radical newsreel within forty-eight hours of Che Guevara’s death by special request of Fidel Castro himself. Fellow filmmaker and Alvarez admirer Travis Wilkerson accordingly calls it "a pure distillation of the highly...Watch Movie
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Pablo
A blend of documentary and animation elements to tell the saga of "famous unknown" Pablo Ferro, a man with a personal journey that spans from Havana, during the pre-Cuban revolution to his current home, in the garage behind his son's house. The animation part of the film takes us through the...Watch Movie
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Hanoi, Martes 13
Santiago Alvarez’s tribute to the Vietnamese people transcends its narrow aim as anti-imperialist agit-prop. Patient documentation of local folkways contextualizes the American military actions as brutal, unnatural incursions. Alvarez’s camera was there when the bombs fell on...Watch Movie
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Nada+
Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti's NADA+ is a remarkable debut feature that explores the repressive, crippling political and social aspects of today's Cuba while turning upside-down all of our comfortably clichéd expectations about the United State's island neighbor. Carla is a young postal worker...Watch Movie
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Cerro Pelado
Though lesser known than Leni Riefenstahl’s OLYMPIA or Kon Ichikawa’s TOKYO OLYMPIAD, Santiago Alvarez’s tribute to Cuba’s sporting triumphs is no less breathtaking. A ship of athletes training on the rough seas becomes a symbol of Castro’s Cuba, the games projected on the backdrop of political...Watch Movie
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U.S. Troops Landing at Daiquiri, Cuba
X-ray exhibitor-turned-cinematographer William Paley was hired as an Edison-licensed cameraman in March 1898 and was sent to Florida where he took numerous films of U.S. military activities. He was apparently on board the armada of naval ships that stormed Cuban shores and...Watch Movie
