FIDEL!

galing kay eleyn ang post sa ibaba, rebyu ng dokyumentaryong Fidel! (brightightsfilm.com)

kay tagal na hinintay ng US ang pagkakataong ito. ilang beses na ring pinagtangkaan ng US/CIA ang buhay ni castro. sa kanyang pagreretiro, hindi raw siya namamaalam at manaatiling mabangis na kritiko ng imperyalismong US.

Estela Bravo's documentary offers an affectionate,
in-depth portrait of the enduring world leader
who stood up to the U.S.

By Joanne Bealy

Over the course of the last 40 years, the CIA has tried to murder Fidel Castro with such frat boy antics as exploding cigars, poison pens, and arsenic-laced milkshakes.

Jesse Helms, North Carolina's controversial, right-wing senator and co-sponsor of the Helms-Burton law that codified the U.S. embargo against Cuba, told Congress he didn't care whether Fidel Castro left Cuba vertically or horizontally. "Let me be clear," he shouted, "he will leave."

With Helms retiring early in 2003 and Castro still unvanquished, it seems Jesse spoke prematurely. But what is this psychotic obsession the United States has with Fidel Castro? And why do we insist on demonizing the man hailed elsewhere as hero?

Addressing the United Nations

Estela Bravo's new film puts it all in perspective. Born in New York nearly 70 years ago and resident of Cuba since 1963, Bravo is a self-taught director of 30 documentary films, many about Cuba. Her latest film, Fidel, was commissioned by Channel 4 in Britain, won the Distinguished Achievement for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking from the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York, and played the Toronto International Film Festival to sold-out crowds despite the fact that it opened three days after the September 11 attack on New York and Washington. It has played in arthouses and repertory cinemas throughout the U.S.

After previewing the film, I have only one piece of advice: see it. Really. It makes no difference whether you're for or against Castro, Estela Bravo presents us with a piece of history that we owe it to ourselves to see. Fidel is the definitive word to date on Castro.

"I would call this the untold story," Bravo said in a recent telephone interview from New York. "As a close observer of the revolution and the man, I knew it was necessary to tell the story, especially given what's being said in the United States."

Fidel covers 40 years of the Cuban revolution and is unprecedented in providing its viewers with an understanding of Cuba and its leader. Ms. Bravo uses exclusive archival footage and a remarkable mix of interviews with Fidel. She includes such luminaries as Harry Belafonte, Aleida Guevera (Che's daughter), Alice Walker, Ramsey Clark, Sydney Pollack, Angela Davis and longtime friend of Castro, Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. We hear from journalists, both in Miami and Cuba, guerrillas who fought in the revolution, politicians, writers, musicians, scientists, old teachers, family and friends. There are priceless and touching exchanges between Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro. Alice Walker, as only Alice Walker can, talks about her great admiration for the man then breaks off, puzzling over the fact that she's heard he can't dance.

With friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Philip Agee, former CIA agent, lends credence to the often summarily dismissed assassination stories. They began, according to Agee, with the most renowned of those attempts, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in which President John F. Kennedy sent 1,400 Cuban expatriates onto Cuba's shores. When Castro squelched the attack within 72 hours, what had been an overt war against the country became a covert war against Fidel.

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