Sequence shot I Am Cuba (1964) - The funeral procession
Film title: Я Куба / Soy Cuba / I am Cuba (Russian title: Ya Kuba)
Year : 1964
Director: Mikhail Kalatozov (The Cranes Are Flying, 1957 - Palme d'Or)
Country: USSR / Cuba (co-production Mosfilm + ICAIC)
Director of Photography: Sergei Urusevsky (The Cranes Are Flying, The Unfinished Letter)
Screenwriters: Yevgeni Yevtushenko (poet) and Enrique Pineda Barnet
Stabilization: hook harness worn by the operator, direct ancestor of the Steadicam (12 years before Garrett Brown's invention in 1976)
Camera: Mosfilm technique, Academy format (1.37:1)
Film stock: experimental infrared stock custom-made in a Soviet armaments factory for this film
Technical innovation: the first video assist in history, Urusevsky's personal television, brought from Russia, connected to the camera via a closed-circuit video system to allow Kalatozov to see the live feed.
Sequence duration: ~3 minutes
Method: TRUE single continuous shot, no hidden cuts, no digital stitching (impossible in 1964)
Trajectory: street → vertical ascent ~4 floors → lateral crossing into a cigar factory (entry through a window, crossing the workroom, exit through the opposite window) → flight above the procession for ~2 blocks → fade to black
Filming: 1962-1963 in Havana
Total production time: 3 years
Initial reception: critical and commercial failure in both the USSR and Cuba
Rediscovered: 1990s, by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, who financed its re-release in the United States (Milestone Films, 1995)
Documentary: I Am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth (Vicente Ferraz, 2005) interviews with surviving Cuban technicians
Havana. 1957. A narrow, crowded, sloping street. A funeral procession carries the body of Enrique, a revolutionary student killed by Batista's police. The Cuban flag drapes the stretcher. The demonstrators sing, raise their fists, chant his name. The camera is in the middle of them, at shoulder height, in the crowd, among the faces. Then it begins to rise. Not a wide shot from a distant crane, no, the camera itself ascends vertically, along the facade of a building, as if leaving the ground in thought. One floor. Two floors. Three. Four. The procession continues down the street. The camera reaches an open window and enters. Inside, a cigar factory. Women workers roll cigars on wooden tables. The camera glides between them, across the room. A worker takes a Cuban flag and unfurls it through a window toward the street, toward the procession. The camera follows the flag and EXITS through that window. And she doesn't stop. She doesn't come back down. She flies. She flies above the procession, at rooftop level, over two entire blocks, following the flag, the demonstrators, the martyr, the revolution that is beginning. Fade to black.
Why this scene is iconic
Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, two of the greatest living directors, personally financed the 1995 American re-release of I Am Cuba. They did so because they had seen this shot. PopMatters wrote: "You could watch it a dozen times before you tire of its beauty or understand how Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky achieved such a feat."
This is the most impossible single-take shot in this collection. Not the longest (Climax is 42 minutes). Not the most violent (Irreversible is 9 minutes). Not the most immersive (Children of Men). But the most impossible. Because in 1964, no technology existed to do it. The Steadicam wouldn't be invented until 1975 by Garrett Brown. Drones didn't exist. Cranes long enough to span two city blocks in mid-air didn't exist. Digital technology didn't exist. Video assist standard didn't exist. And yet, the camera ascends a building, passes through a factory, and flies over a street. In a single shot. In 1964. No one, including the technicians who made it, could recreate it today without VFX.
Bret Primack documented the method: "These remarkable shots were made by the camera operator wearing a vest, like an early version of the Steadicam, equipped with hooks." A hook harness, not a Steadicam (which relies on a counterweighted arm system), but a rigging system that allowed the operator to be suspended, hoisted, lowered, and transferred between different supports. The camera likely went from an operator on the ground to a pulley system for the vertical ascent, then to a cable system for the lateral traverse over the street, then to another operator in the cigar factory, and finally to yet another cable system for the final flight. Multiple operators, multiple supports, but a single camera that never stopped rolling.
Encyclopedia.com noted that the camera's tilted axes and unexpected angles evoked early Soviet agitprop films but that they "depart from traditional uses of such angles, thus undermining simple interpretations and challenging viewer expectations." This is also what makes the shot unique: it doesn't serve the propaganda it's supposed to embody. It transcends it. The shot's beauty is so overwhelming that it drains the message of its propaganda; only the image remains. The camera rising above the procession is an act of transcendence, not of communism.
How they filmed it
The ASC article "Flashback: Soy Cuba" is the technical reference source and reveals the most radical innovation of the shoot: "To allow the director to see these scenes during filming, the crew designed a closed-camera video system using Urusevsky's personal television set, which he had brought from Russia. This is probably the first use of what has only become a common procedure in recent years."
Video assist. The invention. In 1964, in Havana, a Soviet cinematographer connected his personal television to his camera via a closed-circuit system so that Kalatozov could see what the camera saw in real time. Today, every film shoot in the world uses video assist. In 1964, it was Urusevsky who invented it with a Soviet television, cable, and a camera that climbed a building. It's the technical equivalent of the invention of dental floss during the Battle of Stalingrad: no one expected it to come from there, and that changed everything.
The film stock is the other innovation. Yate Subfusk (Medium) confirmed that "the near-perfect white of the palm leaves and the extreme contrast can only be achieved using a stock of experimental infrared film produced by the Soviet Union in an arms factory (Ferraz, I Am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth)." Custom-made infrared film, manufactured in a Soviet arms factory, for a Cuban film. The logistics of filming between Moscow and Havana during the Cold War, 90 km from Florida, are almost as dizzying as the shots themselves.
The procession itself required monumental choreography. Several hundred extras in the street (the procession), dozens more in the cigar factory (the workers), technicians hidden in the building to manage camera transfers, and a system of cables or pulleys for the final flight over the street. One IMDb reviewer estimated that this type of sequence "must have taken days, if not weeks, to prepare, and probably required government coordination to choreograph." In 1962-1963, Cuba's government was young, communist, and had a vested interest in the film being made. Castro personally supported the production. Streets could be closed. Extras could be mobilized. The Soviet Union paid.
The result on screen is so fluid it seems effortless. It's the ultimate illusion: a shot that defies the laws of camera physics of its time, and succeeds because dozens of Cuban and Soviet technicians synchronized for three minutes without a single one missing their entrance. Vicente Ferraz, in his 2005 documentary *I Am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth*, interviewed the surviving members of the Cuban crew—elderly, forgotten men who didn't even know that the film they had made had become a classic. The documentary's title, "The Siberian Mammoth," is what they called the film. A prehistoric Russian monster. Magnificent and incomprehensible.
What to observe when reviewing it
The Vertical Ascent (~1:00-1:30) The camera ascends the building. Look for the moment it leaves the ground. There is no apparent transition, no visible crane, no arm, nothing. It's the operator in his hook harness, being hoisted by a pulley system you'll never see. The movement is slow, steady, precise.
The flag emerging from the window (~2:00) In the cigar factory, a worker unfurls a Cuban flag through a window, towards the street. The camera follows the flag and EXITS through the window with it. This is the most virtuoso cut in the shot: the camera uses the flag as a guide to move from inside to outside without a cut and without any sense of vertigo.
The flight over the procession (~2:30-3:00) The last two blocks. The camera flies at rooftop height, above the crowd, following the procession as it moves down the street. This is probably a system of cables stretched between two buildings, the Cuban equivalent of a Spidercam from 1963, 30 years before the Spidercam was invented.
Did you know that?
"Je suis Cuba" is now a film in this collection with two articles dedicated to two different sequence shots:
The hotel pool (already covered in the collection): the camera travels across the rooftop terrace of the Hotel Capri, down the stairs, through the party, and plunges underwater into the pool. All in one shot.
The funeral procession (this article) the camera follows the procession, goes up a 4-story building, passes through a cigar factory, and flies over the street.
Both were filmed by the same team (Kalatozov and Urusevsky) in 1962-1963. Both defy the camera physics of their time. And both are acts of propaganda that transcended their propaganda through their own beauty. No other film in this collection—not Citizen Kane, not Touch of Evil, not Goodfellas—has two long takes of this level of technical audacity.
Urusevsky had been a war photographer on the Eastern Front during World War II; he had filmed Stalingrad. This experience explains his relationship to the camera: it's not a tool, it's a body. A body that can climb a building, cross a factory, fly over a street. The camera in *I Am Cuba* doesn't tell a story, it IS the story. And its movement is more political than the script.
The shot influenced Scorsese (the Copa Shot in Goodfellas, 1990, already in this collection, McConkey's Steadicam shot across the Copacabana kitchen), Paul Thomas Anderson (the opening of Boogie Nights, 1997, already covered, the crane descending into the nightclub), Stanley Kubrick (the tracking shot of the war in Full Metal Jacket), and more directly the tracking shot in Godard's Weekend (1967, already covered, 7 minutes 50 seconds over 300 meters of track, 3 years after Je suis Cuba). Without Je suis Cuba, the modern long take, as celebrated on this site, would probably not exist in its current form.
Sources
Steven Pizzello - ASC Magazine, "Flashback: Soy Cuba" (republished 2023)
Bill Gibron - PopMatters, "I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba)" (December 2007)
Learn About Film - "I am Cuba / Soy Cuba" (March 2025)
Yate Subfusk - Medium / Terrace Vista, "I am a Technical Masterpiece" (March 2018)
Vicente Ferraz - documentary I Am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth (2005, Brazil — broadcast on Sundance Channel)
Bret Primack - Syncopated Justice / Substack, "A Forgotten Cinematic Masterpiece" (January 2024)
Encyclopedia.com - "Soy Cuba"
IMDB Reviews - I Am Cuba (1964) — user reviews
Scanalyzer / Fourmilab - "The Amazing Tracking Shot from Soy Cuba" (October 2021)
Wikipedia - I Am Cuba
Also read:
A sequence shot from Atonement (2007) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/reviens-moi - The other great crowd shot that rises to reveal the magnitude of a collective destiny: Joe Wright in Dunkirk, 43 years after Kalatozov in Havana, same ambition, same elevation
Choreographing an action scene in a single take https://www.plan-sequences.com/blog-plan-sequences/chorgraphier-une-scne-daction-en-plan-squence-le-guide-complet - What Kalatozov achieved in 1963 with harnesses and pulleys, without a Steadicam, without a drone, without digital technology: the most ambitious preparation in the history of the continuous shot
