I Am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth Film Review

I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth is a truly captivating and refined retrospective that tells the story of an amazing cutting-edge 1960's film, "Soy Cuba" (I am Cuba), produced in a tropical paradise long abandoned.

The film focuses on a delirious time during the Cold War when Russian director Mikhail Kalatosov and crew shot an epic celebration of Castro's revolution. The result of their two-year endeavor, "I Am Cuba," (the first Russian-Cuban co-production) originally disappointed audiences in both countries. Yet the films rediscovery decades later in capitalist America, and its reappraisal as a visual masterpiece, gives Brazilian Director Vicente Ferraz's tale an upbeat finale.

The film cleverly uses a mix of file footage and clips, recent interviews with filmmakers, and re-created scenes at the original shooting locations to re-tell the making of the communist epic. Ferraz truly went to great lengths, traveling to Cuba and Russia, to track down as many living members of the original cast and crew as possible; consequently unearthing a treasure trove of information. These interviews with the filmmakers are what hold the documentary together; adding first-hand insight into the production, Cuban culture, and the political ideology that brought the project to fruition.

Aside from recounting the making of this monumental propaganda film, this brilliantly conceived documentary exposes the dramatic economic changes that Cuba has faced since the creation of "Soy Cuba" in the 1960's. The film draws stark contrast of a diminished Cuba under U.S. embargo by super-imposing and inter-mixing recent shots of the dilapidated filming locations and stock footage from the once thriving points of Cuban civilization precisely chosen to represent the culture. I Am Cuba, the Siberian Mammothis a very politically motivated film which reaches to the inner depths of the creative soul, leaving a long-lasting impression.