FILM: "Cuba: an African Odyssey"

This film has been out for a while but is slowly winding its way around the world. As the tile suggests , it's about Cuba's support for various Africn liberation movements. Below is a sterling review that appeared last September on the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU))website. This film is also known as "Cuba! Africa! Revolution!"

Just found out that you can get it in DVD:

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7624011


Film Review: “Cuba: an African Odyssey"and "Salud"



The full story of Cuba’s direct and continuing influence on the history of the world is not widely known or appreciated even by those who have friendly feelings towards that country. In Africa, where Cuban direct action has been more crucial than anywhere else, the details of its history are not as a rule well preserved or presented, with a few exceptions.



The Tricontinental Conference that took place in Havana in 1966 is familiar to some readers of revolutionary literature, particularly because of the contribution of Amilcar Cabral to the proceedings.



But how many people know that Che Guevara, who was present at the famous Tricontinental, had crossed Lake Tanganyika in a boat with an armed column the year before, initiating a Cuban military presence that lasted more than 26 years, and which was undoubtedly crucial to the liberation of at least half a dozen countries, including especially South Africa, from the killing yoke of direct colonialism?



At the same time, the extraordinary initiative of the Cuban doctors was developed and expanded until it has become much more than a marginal effort to assist a proportion of the afflicted, but more like a rational, comprehensive and full frontal world-historical attack on preventable disease and the diseases of poverty.



Thanks to the Tricontinental Film Festival (to run in Johanesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Tshwane), anyone who has any doubts about all this now has a wonderful opportunity to catch up.



“Cuba: An African Odyssey” is a well-made and extremely exciting experience for anyone with the slightest interest in how we came to be what we are in this continent in particular, and in the world as a whole.



Liberation from direct colonialism was the principal historical shift in the second half of the 20th century. It did not “just happen”. It was the product of sovereign, concerted and direct action, and of a cross-continental co-ordinated and deliberate drive by the peoples of the so-called “Third World”. Within this combination the Cubans, far more so for example than the Soviets, played a critical role.



Any communist seeing this film would wish that the 52,000 current members of the SACP could see it without any delay, not to mention ANC and COSATU members. Among other things it would be a good antidote to lingering blues about “the fall of the Soviet Union”.



It was the “Third World” that liberated the “Third World”, not the Soviet Union. This is one of the truths that reveals itself gradually through this film, out of the fog of the “Cold War” that has always tended to obscure the agency of the oppressed peoples, which was the actual motor of world history during this period, as it always is.



It is thrilling to see personalities, both known and relatively unknown, on both sides of the anti-colonial conflict, coming to life on the screen, warts and all.



Che Guevara in Africa! This fact is as astonishing now as it obviously was to the Congolese in 1965, as you can clearly see in this film. Legends flick past across the screen, sometimes without any comment: Cabral, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Angela Davis, Fidel Castro, Jorge Risquet and dozens of others, too many to mention. Who is Jorge Risquet? It is certainly time South Africans found out who Jorge Risquet is, and this film does some justice to this amazing master of action and of negotiation, who looks more like a laughing Buddha than anything else. How deceptive appearances can be!



The film-maker Jihan El-Tahri has done an outstanding job on all fronts of the craft of film-making, as well as demonstrating a penetrating comprehension of the history. She is here in Johannesburg making another film, and she will be present at the first screening (starting 20h00) of “Cuba: An African Odyssey” in the Tricontinental Film Festival, on 14 September 2007 at the Cinema Nouveau in Rosebank, to engage in discussion with the audience after the show.



The Cuban military expeditions in Africa were fully and finally withdrawn in 1991 following negotiations that yielded the South African withdrawal from Namibia, the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the SACP and the ANC.



But the huge initiative of the Cuban doctors was already well under way by then. For example, Che Guevara’s daughter Aleida was working as a paediatrician in Angola in 1986 (and after that in Nicaragua). The Cuban doctors’ movement continued to increase until today it puts all other worldwide contributions to the fight against preventable disease in the shade. This is because it works from the inside out, while others work from the top down. Really, it comes from the heart.



As somebody in the Gambia says in the film Salud!, the most priceless contribution of the Cuban doctors is not the countless lives that they have saved and are still saving, but rather the example they are giving for the future. Unlike the Western exporters of alien, imposed systems, the Cubans are able to appreciate what can be done with the resources that are always available locally, and to develop these resources in a rational way.



In one sense the film Salud! is even more potent politically than “Cuba, an African Odyssey”. This is because it deals with what is happening now, and at a moment that we in South Africa have woken up to the fact that we have a gigantic health-care problem that has been badly handled, plus the launch of several campaigns including the SACP’s 2007 Red October campaign on health care.



The US negotiator Chester Crocker said of the final series of negotiations when the US and Cuba faced each other directly across the table: “The Cubans were equally well prepared for peace and for war”. Salud! shows the inseparable other side of the Cuban solidarity coin, as compared with the military, wherein the struggle continues today with undiminished power.



The film’s director, Connie Field, will be present at its first Tricontinental Festival screening starting 20h15 on 19 September at the Cinema Nouveau in Rosebank, ready to engage in discussion with the audience after the show.



The one problem these two film-makers did not seem to have solved is the titles, neither of which give any indication of the profound greatness of the themes that they deal with. It might not have been possible for some reason, but if these films had been called “How Cuba Changed The World” and “How Cuba Continues To Change The World” it would not have been an exaggeration.


Dominic Tweedie

Editor, The Shopsteward (COSATU)

http://groups.google.com/group/COSATU-Daily-News/web/film-review-cuba-an-african-odyssey-and-salud