With I AM CUBA, legendary Soviet filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov gives himself the lofty objective to illustrate each aspect of the Cuban Communist Revolution through cinematic language and somehow, with the help of Sergei Urusevky’s visionary cinematography, he achieves this goal. Using high-contrast black-and-white photography to depict a cast of thousands, Kalatozov creates a social realist wonder highlighted by the haunted narration of a woman representing the heart and soul of Cuba. The powerful and at times surrealistic images found in Urusevky’s cinematography are unlike any in cinema and one can see how Noe took inspiration from this film in some of the more dazzling sequences found in his films ENTER THE VOID and LOVE. (Davis Rivera)