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Cha-cha-cha and revolutionary Cuba...

Salut les Cubains (1963) by Agnès Varda

This 30-minute photo montage was filmed by Varda during her visit to Cuba in 1963. It explores Cuban society and culture after the Castro-led Revolution. Narration is provided by French New Wave icon Michel Piccoli and Varda herself.

Check out this article from the Guardian reviewing an exhibition, Cuba/Varda, that closed at the Centre Pompidou in Paris this past February 2016. Thousands of Varda’s photographs from Cuba were showcased for the first time in this exhibition, along with her award winning film Salut les Cubains. 

“Varda met Fidel Castro, after several attempts – it was a last-minute affair at his favourite seaside restaurant. “He was good-looking, nice, calm,” Varda remembers. She made him stand before two huge boulders, so he appeared to have wings of stone. In her film, she noted: ‘He incarnates Cuba the way Gary Cooper incarnates the wild west.’

[...]

“Varda’s aim for the film was to showcase her reverence for rhythm and dancing and she chose to edit her shots to a soundtrack of Cuban music, which set a joyous, fervent pace. She studied the contact sheets meticulously, then mathematically edited the images according to tempo. She dreamed of making the “film dance with fixed images,” and its energy still fizzles and scintillates today.”