Director: Santiago Álvarez
Country: Cuba
Award: none
Movement: Post-revolution Cuban Cinema
Now! is among Santiago Álvarez’s earliest and most widely recognized works, now seen as a landmark in the agitprop montage tradition. Blending elements of documentary, newsreel, and experimental cinema, it also anticipates the modern music video form. The six-minute film juxtaposes still and moving images of racial injustice and civil rights protests in the United States with Lena Horne’s protest song “Now!,” set to the melody of the Jewish folk tune “Hava Nagila.” Banned in the U.S. for its political intensity, the song’s use initially prompted legal action from Horne’s record label, though the dispute was ultimately dropped after she personally approved Álvarez’s inclusion of it. The film stands as a powerful distillation of the racism and class inequality Álvarez witnessed during his time in the United States.
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