Now!

Using newsreel footage and a song by Lena Horne, Cuban filmmaker Santiago Alvarez fired off Now!, one of the most powerful bursts of propaganda rendered in the 1960s.

Already in 1959, immediately after the success of the revolution, Fidel Castro issued an order to create a state institute for ‘cinematographic art and industry’, recognising cinema as “the most powerful and provocative form of artistic expression, and the most direct and widespread vehicle for education and bringing ideas to the public.” What this new production and distribution organisation lacked in resources and experience, it made up for in revolutionary enthusiasm. Santiago Álvarez, one of the founding members, famously said: “Give me two photos, music, and a moviola, and I’ll give you a movie.” What followed was a massive outpouring of mostly documentary shorts, often made from existing newsreel footage, where revolutionary editing techniques were used to tackle the pressing political issues of the time, from racism to imperialism—Now! being exemplary of that.

Travis Wilkerson, director of Accelerated Under-Development: In the Idiom of Santiago Álvarez (1999), provided perhaps the most lyrical description of Santiago Álvarez’s unique films, defining them as “always political, often didactic. They could be playful or deadly serious. They were born of rage, bitter irony, and an almost limitless solidarity. They could be raucous or silent, brief or monumental, laconic or verbose. They were prone to tangents, but could be as eloquent as poetry. They never sought perfection. They were never made with posterity in mind. They were made for the here and the now. They showed the world to be forever changing.”