Waiting for Fidel

Starring:Waiting for Fidel
Studio: Facets
Product Type: DVD

Description

Filmmaker Michael Rubbo travels to Cuba to make a film about Fidel Castro. In Havana, important Cubans promise him access to Castro as they chauffeur his crew about the country. Day after day, the hopeful party waits; but the Cuban leader remains ever elusive . . . .More a personal journal than a documentary, WAITING FOR FIDEL records each step of this wayward quest to meet Castro. Rubbo's decision to appear on-camera and interact with the participants went against documentary traditions, resulting in a freewheeling, groundbreaking film that has inspired filmmakers Michael Moore (ROGER AND ME) and Nick Broomfield (BIGGIE AND TUPAC, AILEEN WOURONOS: THE SELLING OF A SERIAL KILLER).

Customer Reviews:

"Are you using the advanced LSD therapy?".......2007-03-18

Am thinking it's usually good to title a review with the favorite line from the movie, which I've done.

Geoff Stirling (multi-millionaire) asks this of staff at the Cuban psychiatric facility. He also uses the aforementioned "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" reference while arguing for more individual initiative and self-realization than he perceives as existing in Cuba (which is funny because an outlandish allegory such as "Seagull" has little relation to the lives of homo-sapiens, as we are not able to physically transmorgify ourselves or visit paralell existences by sheer force of will).

In other words, Stirling is a 70s-era hippie-Libertarian-capitalist, and therefore is very entertaining to hear, but who also is slightly full of it (in the DVD-extras interview, Stirling claims there to be "submerged temples larger than St. Peter's" in a lake near Titicaca, although it's not Titicaca- not sure where this lake is).

I bet Stirling consults his horoscope before making stock trades.

Anyway, this is also a very interesting glimpse of '70s-era Cuba, well before all the concessions had to be made during the Special Period. The tour is guided, to be sure: the visitors are shown the best of Cuban society. But what they do see seems to be working well (the psychiatric facility evidences a degree of humanity that many right-wingers would naturally assume does not exist under Castro).

A great but too brief (less than an hour's running time) documentary.

"Did the U.S. make you a communist?".......2006-02-05

In the documentary film, "Waiting for Fidel" three men travel to Cuba with the expectation of interviewing Castro. The three men are--Joey Smallwood, former premier of Newfoundland, millionaire Geoff Stirling, and Australian filmmaker Michael Rubbo. The three men are driven to a gorgeous villa in Havana. The villa now belongs to the state, but pre-revolution, it was the property of an American textile millionaire. Here, at the villa, the three men wait ... and wait ... and wait. Meanwhile the extremely sincere Smallwood eagerly fills pages with questions he can't wait to ask Castro, and things become heated between Stirling and Rubbo.

While the men wait for Castro to show, they are guided through the highlights of Havana and the newly established socialist system. They visit a school, a building site, a mental hospital, and a university, and both Smallwood's and Stirling's reactions are comically predictable. While Smallwood is full of praise and open admiration, Stirling is plainly uncomfortable, and disapproving. It doesn't seem to matter what they are shown, one can predict their reactions, and there's an irony to this, as these two men almost become caricatures of their diametrically opposed belief systems. While socialist Smallwood soaks in everything, capitalist Stirling doesn't bother to hide his impatience and skepticism. Ultimately, this relatively short film (58 minutes), through the odd political coupling of Smallwood with Stirling, illustrates the dissonance between socialism and capitalism, and the improbability of ever swaying someone who believes in one political idea into accepting another (especially if the change is unlikely to bring personal benefit). And this of course, brings us to the larger question of how much one's experiences and exposure affects political and philosophical ideas.

The film is a little dated (at one point, Stirling mentions "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"), but it's still extremely interesting, and the updated post-film interviews with Rubbo and Smallwood are worth catching--displacedhuman

The benefit in waiting anxiously.......2005-03-03

A producer, a millionaire, and a former premier of Newfoundland travel to Cuba on the hope of interviewing Castro. For a variety of reasons, the interview is delayed. In the meantime, some Cuban officials take them on a tour of the island to witness various accomplishments of the revolution. They inspect a boarding school, a psychiatric facility for the chronically ill, a university, a housing construction site, and the beach at the Bay of Pigs. They meet various Cubans during the journey, and their journeys become the springboard for a variety of interesting political and economic debates.

The three personalities often clash on ideological grounds. The former premier is a socialist and the millionaire a capitalist. Yet, interestingly, the biggest clashes occur between the millionaire and the producer whose view of the revolution seems uncommitted but open. They clash mostly on the likely value of the film if, as it seems, Castro never appears to be interviewed. The millionaire believes the film will be worthless because the likely consequence of Fidel not showing is the film will not recover its costs. The producer cares less about the film's monetary success and more about its aesthetic and informational value. Clearly, these "practical" concerns betray and highlight their ideological commitments. Yet, ironically, it's precisely the anxious tensions and conflicts generated by waiting for Fidel that provide the film with its dramatic appeal.

Without a doubt, this is one of the best documentaries I have seen. It's apparent why Michael Moore would find this film seminal for his own work. I highly recommend readers purchase it.

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