Santiago Álvarez Román

Cuba in 1959 placed communism in power, a political shift that affected Cuba and Cubans in all levels. In the arts, revolutionary filmmaking immediately appeared not only to makes films about the revolution that would inspire revolutionary enthusiasm among Cubans (education as Vertov and all the Bolsheviks wanted in the U.S.S.R in the 1920´s), but also, cinema was the tool that the Cuban revolutionaries employed to bring the revolution all over Cuba by creating the Cine-Mobil (as Medvedkin did with his Kino- Trains). One of the most well-known Cuban revolutionary filmmakers is Santiago Alvarez, who made films as tributes to Communists, Marxists and Leninist all over the world, as well as music clips and anti-imperialist satires. Although many scholars have claimed to see an influence of Dziga Vertov in Santiago Alvarez´ work, the Cuban filmmaker has denied watching Vertov´s film. A comment that proves that the his filmmaking was inspired onhis political believes and on the political shift that arrived in 1959.