I Am Cuba: The Siberian Mammoth

Even Leni Riefenstahl's wonderful, horrible images of propaganda can't touch the jaw-dropping cinematography of Mikhail Kalatozov's 1964 drama about the Cuban revolution. Kalatozov shot for 14 months in order to tell the story of the people's uprising, at a time before it was clear that the new boss (Marxist tyrant Castro) was destined to be essentially the same as the old boss (capitalist tyrant Batista); both Cubans and Russians hated it. Although Vicente Ferraz's inexpert documentary The Siberian Mammoth buries this lead, his film about the movie's making is an intriguing companion to what is certainly one of the year's key revivals.