On this day in 1959, U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country following the victory of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement (M-26-7) at the Battle of Santa Clara, marking the successful conclusion of the Cuban Revolution.
The 26th of July Movement takes its name from the date of with a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, however, the movement bearing this name was not formally organized until the attackers were released from prison in 1955. Public resistance continued sporadically until November 1956, when 80 members of the M-26-7 returned from exile.
Soon after landing on the island, a separate revolutionary group, the "Directorio Revoluncionari Estudiantil" (DRE), unsuccessfully attempted an attack on the Presidential Palace in Havana.
Throughout 1957, armed resistance from groups such as the DRE and M-26-7 would escalate. After a failed offensive by the government against rebels in the summer of 1958, the rebels launched a major counter-offensive.
On December 28th, 1958, after a fraudulent election in favor of Batista, revolutionary forces reached the city of Santa Clara. Seizing equipment from an armored train intended to transport government reinforcements, the rebels quickly captured the city, prompting Batista to panic and flee to the Dominican Republic with a personal fortune of more than $300 million.
In the following days, revolutionary forces entered Havana with no resistance, and Castro established a provisional government. The 26th of July Movement later reformed along Marxist–Leninist lines, becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1965.
Batista later settled in fascist Spain, dying there in 1973 at the age of 72.
The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto "Ché" Guevara
Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto "Ché" Guevara
History Will Absolve Me by Fidel Castro
To the U.N. General Assembly, The Problem of Cuba and its Revolutionary Policy by Fidel Castro
r/Communism Cuba and Fidel Castro Megathread
r/Communism Another Cuba and Fidel Megathread
lecture from Michael Parenti about Cuba
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Saw Robert Eggers Nosferatu. My disorganized thoughts:
I've seen a bunch of people online talk about Eggers as if he was making mumblecore or otherwise affectedly naturalistic films. Drives me crazy. While he clearly is a nerd and has a thing for material history and weird lighting choices, his films are the opposite of naturalistic (at least in terms of story-beats and acting choices).
But I didn't love the movie. Fell into this pattern for me with Eggers' films. I love The Witch and The Northman, but I'm cooler towards The Lighthouse and now Nosferatu. In the two I don't love, I can't point to any one scene that I dislike or think was poorly executed. I guess I'd say the pacing is off. Nosferatu starts off at a high intensity and maintains that for 2/3rds of the film. Only the third act has what I would call rising and falling action. But in the first part of the movie every second, every element, is screaming at you that this is horrific. For instance, the scenes where Thomas meets the Romani peasants at the inn or travels up to the castle feel just as intense as the scene where Count Orlock is actively trying to kill him.
It's just too much. By the time you see the city engulfed by plague you're all burned out. Which means, at least for me, that you never really get that great meditative moment where your conscious mind falls away and you're totally absorbed in the film. Maybe that could've happened, in a differently structured/paced movie. But by the time we get to the half way point I'm so emotionally divested from what's happening on screen that I start consciously judging technical aspects of the film. Which is just never what I want out of my first viewing of a movie.
The other most recent horror movie I've seen is Heretic, a worse movie with a worse script predicated upon a facile view of religion (and I have, at best, active disdain for religion) but that I enjoyed watching much more.
This year, in my excitement for Eggers' film, I also watched the original 1922 silent film. I've never in my life watched a silent film and assumed I would actively dislike it, watching it only as an object of curiosity. But it was actually a blast. I had a much better first-viewing experience of that 102 year old film than I did Eggers' latest remake. It makes me want to try some other of the great silent films, in particular The Passion of Joan of Arc and Battleship Potemkin seem interesting to me.
And I want to just stress here that I didn't dislike the film. It looks gorgeous. The performances of Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, and Emma Corrin were all very strong. And I really liked Aaron-Taylor Johnson in this. I've seen some particularly sharp criticism of his performance but I thought he was considerably more compelling than Nicholas Hoult. And at first I was mixed on Lily-Rose Depp, but once her character really came to life in act three I was impressed with her. It's just the way that so much of the movie is coming at you full tilt, not giving you a chance to rest or ground yourself in the world or the characters, that makes it less than it could've been.
The original Nosferatu really impressed me. I watched it out of absolute boredom expecting to turn it off within 10 minutes but I was really captivated by it. To anyone reading this, it's 100% worth a watch if you're in a spooky mood.
Those two are fantastic, but there's hundreds more that are too. I'll recommend Vertovs "Man with a movie camera" and Chaplin's "City Lights"
Your experience is similar to what didn't work for me in VVitc
spoiler
h. The baby being killed and made in to flying ointment right away kind of made everything that followed obvious and inevitable and it took me out of the movie right then. If the baby dies right away then the villain is unstoppable and everyone is screwed. And I know enough witchy stuff that I was calling all the story beats as they happened and just generally not having fun. It's such a dismal movie with no bright points or levitt to distract from the grinding tension, so that didn't help either.