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Synopsis [top]
Forty seven years after Fidel and his guerrillas rode through the streets of Havana on the back of a truck, the love and devotion ordinary Cubans still hold for their revolution and its leader endures. The rare opportunity to see the stoic beauty of Havana is matched by thoughtful commentary from a group of Cubans whose belief in the cause of social justice remains as vivid and impassioned as it was almost 50 years ago. (Vancouver International Film Festival, 2008)
Today, July 26, is the celebration of how it all began. Afterwards, a journey back in time, from Batista's coup d'etat to the triumph of the revolution. Then, back to the present. The stories of those who participated directly in the revolutionary process guide us. We see the narrators about their daily lives, as their voices tell us where they come from, what awoke their revolutionary awareness, and how they became involved in the clandestine struggle. Their stories are juxtaposed with images of modern-day Cuba.
From the exhilarating days following the triumph of the revolution, we come to their lives of today, 46 years later. Cubans do not live in luxury, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Empire, and they are the first to admit it.
The price of liberty is very high.
As for those who lived through that intense life-and-death struggle, what do they say today?
Their lives, their struggles and their memories come together to form a vivid portrait of a generation and its leader.
Production Credits [top]
Director and screenplay
Yanara Guayasamín
Producers
Olivier Auverlau
Yanara Guayasamin
Associate Producer
Jan Vandierendonck
Cinematographer
Olivier Auverlau
Editor
Carla Valencia
Sound Engineer
Amaia Merino
Sound Mixer
Régis Cornudet
Post-Production
Olivier Auverlau
Rodrigo Haro
Subtitles and English Translator
Christopher Minster
Director's Notes [top]
By: Yanara Guayasamin
I was born in Ecuador, a country devastated by corruption and the power exercised by the few over the many, but also a country where the land is rich and the corn grows tall, where the memory persists of those who have shared in its struggles.
From the moment when my political awareness awoke, I began dreaming of Cuba and I felt drawn to a whirlwind, a human adventure, emotional and collective, to a political being and a different kind of politics, founded on a historical effort and a social aesthetic, that which pushes man to find the best within himself.
When we got to this country, the forgotten dream awoke and came face to face with the Cuba of today. With a Castro beyond his own dream?
Apparently Cuba lives, like the rest of the world, in a continuous, homogenous time, a chronological time, broken up into days, weeks, years, and defined by dates. It is this time that the western journalist projects onto Cuban politics in order to tell the story of “the agony of the last bastion of socialism.”
But a different sort of time exists in Cuba, which is the time of this film. It is the time of the “everyday”, of history, of a life, of a man—Fidel Castro—and the time a people have taken to see him.
My experiences in Cuba have been marked by meetings, friendships and images. As the years pass by, we have gained access to spheres of reality not always obvious. We have gotten to know men and women of diverse origins, who fought for Utopia even as they personally battled against Batista. Out of this struggle, many questions have arisen:
How does one take up arms and kill another human being? Is there any possible justification? Can we come to understand that which motivated them then and motivates them still today to keep hope alive, even when they live in a situation in which their daily lives are full of hardship?
Documentary filmmaking is, for me, a search for that which exists pertaining to the notion of “being,” including at the same time a social and cosmic dimension. Everybody is political and must live within their own surroundings, but also artistic and poetic because of their dreams and their relation to the universal. I believe that documentary cinema helps us to recognize and look at this being. All of these searches come together in Cuba.
Media [top]
Screen Captures
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Links
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1098200/
Sales Info [top]
For sales of Cuba: The Value of Utopia//Cuba: El Valor de una Utopia, please contact André Bennett at sales@cinemalumiere.com.