Reflecting on Soy Cuba

Soy Cuba Summarized

Soy Cuba (spanish title) translates to "I am Cuba" in English; a political propaganda film released in 1964 in support of the Cuban Revolution.

The film features four vignettes, all of which tell stories in relation to the problems of Cuba prior to the revolution. Topics like prostitution, conglomerates, and more are covered in Soy Cuba. Ultimately, it is a communist propaganda film created by the USSR— one that was ironically not well received by either Cubans or Russians...

How to Pick Apart a Communist Propaganda Film (and Other Various Media)

So how does one pick apart a film of this nature? Well like picking apart any other form of media, all it takes is to analyze what others also have to say or have picked apart, and to approach that with a strategy!

In this digital archive entry, I will discuss three of my favorite ways to approach secondary sources

A secondary source is a source made by someone who had no firsthand experience of a certain event/situation, but they attempt to summarize or interpret it regardless of the fact.

Strategic Ways to Approach Secondary Sources:

Strategy 1: Simple Ol' Annotations

Yeah, this one is a no brainer...

The best way to understanding anything is to look at it piece-by-piece; by annotating, you split up the information presented to you in a way that you best understand it.

Next to this body of text is part of a secondary source written about Soy Cuba. The article is titled "Who is Cuba" and authored by Amit Thakkar. Notice the annotations (made by yours truly on my iPad); a large body of text becomes a lot easier to read and comprehend when it is color-coded and when key ideas are scribbled to the side... right?

Strategy 2: Employ a Friend

Have a friend you can talk for hours with? If so, take that to your advantage!

Personally, I oftentimes find myself talking to a close friend for hours and hours. My close friend (and roommate) have found it extremely beneficial for us to talk to each other about our schoolwork or assignments; when we have required readings for Humanities Core, we read together aloud— popcorn style. Strangely enough, you can make the most mundane and boring tasks interesting when you get a friend involved.

Strategy 3: Time-Crunch Andy's Method

I may need to explain myself for this one...

Time-crunch Andy is niche slang, basically a way to refer to someone who is short on time. In other words, I often find myself being a time-crunch Andy. So how do I have the time to read and interpret secondary sources?

I skip the reading bit; oftentimes in my google search history, you will find me looking up something along the lines of "text-to-speech online." I copy and paste an article into whatever website pops up. Essentially, I can get where I need to go and do what I need to do whilst having the article read to me.

Though I still need to do the interpreting by myself, having an article read to you can sometimes help the interpreting process. This is because maybe if I read an the article, I would read it in a tone that was not intended for it to be read in, versus a text-to-speech that may read it in a way I wouldn't have.

The website I tend to use the most is https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/... but I switch it up sometimes!

Sources

Informational

I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba). Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov. Mosfilm/Milestone Films/Kino Lorber,

1964.

Thakkar, Amit. “Who Is Cuba? Dispersed Protagonism and Heteroglossia in Soy Cuba/I Am Cuba.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 55, no. 1, 2014, pp. 83–101. Project Muse, https://doi.org/10.13110/framework.55.1.0083. Accessed 22 March 2024.

Images

https://filmartgallery.com/products/i-am-cuba-soy-cuba-1

https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-45957/dvd-blu-ray/?cproduct=21430979

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