Cinematic Poetry of Revolution: Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s Screenwriting in Soy Cuba

• In Event: Negotiating Socialist Internationalism: Latin America, the Soviet Union, and the Socialist Bloc

Abstract

This paper examines the role of Yevgeny Yevtushenko in the production of Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1964 film Soy Cuba, particularly as an anti-establishment figure within Soviet culture. As Yevtushenko was known primarily as a poet, I investigate the influence of this medium on the film’s documentation of Cuba’s revolutionary process. Yevtushenko played a critical role as a mediator in the cultural exchange between the Soviet Union and Cuba from the 1960s on. His intervention in Soy Cuba can thus shed light on the strong influence his model of dissidence would ultimately play for Cuban cultural producers, who were in the process of formulating their own ideas about the role of the artist within a socialist system.

Author

• Dasha Prokhorova, U of Pittsburgh