Sons Of Cuba

Cuba, a country of 11 million, dominates world boxing. In the past 40 years, the Caribbean Island has won 63 Olympic medals in boxing, 40 of them gold. Cuban boxer Mario Kindelan, the man who defeated British hopeful Amir Kahn at the 2004 Olympics, was asked to describe the reasons behind his success. “Cubans are fighters in all walks of life,” he responded. “Ours is a small country, but we live to fight.”

Boxing, with its extremities of physical and emotional endurance, is naturally cinematic and has been mined extensively in both feature films and documentaries for decades. But rarely has the sport been used to provide a window into a hidden culture. With his debut film Sons of Cuba, British director Andrew Lang has done just that, to stunning effect.

Lang’s film follows a group of nine to 11-year-old Cuban boxers as they undergo an incessant and grueling training regime at the state run Havana Boxing Academy. The 25 young boxers are groomed to be champions and symbols of their country: ‘The standard-bearers of the Revolution,’ as Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro said. They are woken at four in the morning, five nights a week, to shadowbox in a bare yard. ‘Victory is our duty,’ is cried in unison. ‘We will be more like Che!’

But this is not, as Vertov termed it, ‘life caught unawares.’ Living in Havana, negotiating with the authorities and staying afloat by teaching English, Lang spent years tentatively gaining unparalleled cinematic access to this Cuban institution. By gaining the trust and acceptance of the Academy’s inhabitants, he has succeeded in providing an intricate and intimate mosaic of Cuba’s unique sons – their conflicts and camaraderie, tears and dreams, victories and defeats.

Shot and cut with a vivaciousness entirely befitting of its subjects, Sons of Cuba also quietly belies a poignant truth. “Sacrifice is the very soul of this sport,” the hard and watchful coach Yosvani continually tells his students as they train in the harsh paucity of the Academy’s gym. But sacrifice, we also learn, is the soul of Cuba’s revolution, and outside the walls of the Academy profound changes are taking place. Fidel is ill, invisible, and ceding power to his brother. ‘La Lucha,’ felt by every citizen of Cuba, is ending in defeat.

As such, Lang has ensured Sons of Cuba remains rigidly observational, entirely circumnavigating the need for an overt agenda or banal rhetoric. In this time of immense upheaval, he has allowed his subjects total freedom to speak for themselves. What they say, and what they don’t say, speaks volumes.

In its documentation of the end of Fidel’s revolution, Sons of Cuba is alive with the naked emotions of its subjects. But, equally, it is alive inference and implication. Cine Libre this may be, but in an entirely different way to originally intended.

Tom Seymour

Anticipation:

Heavy with festival awards, but a documentary of this type is fraught with potential failings.

Enjoyment:

Emotional but not exploitative, objective but not clinical, this is a top-drawer documentary.

In Retrospect:

More than just a contender.