''Cuba and the Cameraman'' is a

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American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

written, directed and co-produced by

Jon Alpert Jon Alpert (born c. December 13, 1948) is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films. Life and career A native of Port Chester, New York, Jonathan B. Alpert is a 1970 gr ...

. The film is a

Netflix Original Netflix is an American global Internet streaming-on-demand media provider that has distributed a number of original streaming television shows, including original series, specials, miniseries, and documentaries and films. Netflix's original pr ...

and was first shown at the 74th Venice International Film Festival.

Synopsis

The film shows

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribb ...

over a course of 45 years through the lens of

Production

Alpert started visiting Cuba in the 70's. After founding the Downtown Community Television Center, he became increasingly interested in Cuba's policies. He said: "We heard that

Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 20 ...

was implementing the social programs that we were fighting for here in New York”. The film was edited from over 1,000 hours of footage, Alpert filmed since the first time he visited Cuba.

Reception

On review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film has an approval rating of 100% based on 8 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which uses a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

, assigned a score of 82 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "Universal acclaim".

Glenn Kenny Glenn Kenny (born August 8, 1959) is an American film critic and journalist. He writes for '' The New York Times'' and ''RogerEbert.com''. Biography Kenny attended William Paterson University, where he majored in English literature.

from

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

wrote: "In part because of its political blind spots, “Cuba and the Cameraman” is captivating. (Whatever you think of Mr. Alpert’s perspective, it’s interesting.) But it’s mostly worth watching because of human stories like these." David Ehrlich from

IndieWire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...

gave the film a B+ and stated: "If only Alpert had been a bit less genial, if only he had dug a little deeper — if only he had either taken himself out of the equation, or gone the other way and been much more introspective about his complicated feelings about Castro — then “Cuba and the Cameraman” could have been more than just a window into a foreign world. But windows are important; without them, we’d never be able to see through our walls. And this is as clear and wide a window as you’re ever likely to find." Sheri Linden from the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

said about the film: "As a decades-long, ground-level portrait of the country, his vibrant film is unprecedented." Neil Young from

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly large ...

wrote: "A work of old-school humanism that hovers between pro-Revolutionary fervor and a more objective documentary stance, Cuba and the Cameraman is sustained by the strong bonds of trust which the gregarious Alpert has evidently been able to maintain with Cubans from various echelons of this theoretically classless society."

References

External links

* * * {{Rotten Tomatoes, id=cuba_and_the_cameraman Netflix original documentary films American documentary films 2010s Spanish-language films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films