I am Cuba: Breaking Free in Revolutionary Cinema

Experience the visual masterpiece I am Cuba: Breaking Free in Revolutionary Cinema on Wednesday, 18 March 2026, at 18:00, at the JHB Main Lecture Theatre in the John Henry Brookes Building. This Soviet-Cuban co-production remains one of the most stylistically ambitious films in cinema history and features revolutionary production techniques.

Through four distinct vignettes, the film depicts the transition from the Batista era to the momentum of the Cuban revolution. The screening uses gravity-defying camera work to capture the collective spark of resistance against systemic inequality. Following the film, we will examine the lasting effects of the revolution on the Cuban people and reflect on the film’s hopeful imagery in contrast to the subsequent challenges under the Castro regime with Dr Francesco Sticchi and Dr Neil Harris.

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Dr Francesco Sticchi is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University, UK. His latest monographs include The Politics of Monstrous Figures in Contemporary Cinema: Witches, Zombies, and Cyborgs Re-enchanting the Ends of the Worlds (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) and ‘Everybody Should Suffer As I Do’: Cinema and the Affective Economy of Neoliberal Authoritarianism (Zer0 Books, 2026), together with works in the field of film-philosophy and ecology of media. With Dr Maria Elena Alampi, he is the co-founder of the Cinematic Precarity Research Network.

Dr Neal Harris is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Politics at Oxford Brookes. His research focuses on critical theory, activism, and social transformation. His books include Critical Theory & Social Pathology (Manchester UP 2022), Capitalism and its Critics (Routledge 2022, co-authored with Gerard Delanty), Foundations of Social Theory (Routledge 2024), and Critical Theory and the Critique of Alternative Societies (Manchester UP 2026).

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