version) (as Jean Bouisse) Alberto Morgan as Ángel Celia Rodriguez as Gloria (in Cuban version) (as Zilia Rodríguez) Fausto Mirabal Production Shortly after the 1959 Cuban Revolution overthrew the United States-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the socialist Castro government, isolated by the United States after the latter broke diplomatic and trade relations in 1961, turned to the USSR in many areas, including for film partnerships. The Soviet government, interested in promoting international socialism, and perhaps in need to further familiarize itself with its new ally, agreed to collaborate with the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), and finance a film about the Cuban revolution. The director was given considerable freedom to complete the work, and was given much help from both the Soviet and Cuban governments. The film made use of many innovative techniques, such as coating a watertight camera's lens with a special submarine periscope cleaner, so the camera could be submerged and lifted out of the water without any drops on the lens or film. At one point, more than 1,000 Cuban soldiers were moved to a remote location to shoot one scene—this despite the then-ongoing Cuban Missile Crisis. In another scene, the camera follows a flag over a body, held high on a stretcher, along a crowded street. Then it stops and slowly moves upwards for at least four storeys until it is filming the flagged body from above a building. Without stopping, it then starts tracking sideways and enters through a window into a cigar factory, then goes straight towards a rear window where the cigar workers are watching the procession. The camera finally passes through the window and appears to float along over the middle of the street between the buildings. These shots were accomplished by the camera operator having the camera attached to his vest—like an early, crude version of a Steadicam—while also wearing a vest with hooks on the back. An assembly line of technicians would hook and unhook the operator's vest to various pulleys and cables that spanned floors and building roof tops. Reception Despite its dazzling technical and formal achievements receiving excellent support, and the participation of the renowned team of Soviet cinematographers Mikhail Kalatozov and Sergei Urusevsky (winners of the 1958 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or for The Cranes are Flying, another virtuosistic art film, and also in the midst of the Cold War), the movie was given