THE CUBAN GAME
Manuel Martín Cuenca, Spain, 2001 Wednesday 23 October 2002 11pm-12.10am
Beating the Americans has always been a national obsession in Cuba and when the revolution came in 1959 baseball became a battlefield. The Cuban Game tells this story - and through it, the 20th-century history of Cuba itself.
DIRECTOR INTERVIEW
"It didn't soften my heart to see Castro with a bat and a ball"
CASTRO CLOSE UP Our woman in Havana recalls a recent Fidel Castro rally
Fidel Castro inspects a model of the national baseball stadium
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Commissioner's
Comment Nick
Fraser
Storyville Series Editor
Baseball came to Cuba in 1899, when the Americans liberated the island from the Spanish Empire. This funny and captivating film tells the story of the only genuine obsession shared by all Cubans - the great game of baseball.
I love baseball, and it gives me a buzz to see that Fidel Castro loves baseball too. In fact he was an excellent hitter, as the archive shows in the film. But he also became displeased with the Cuban team, imprisoning some of them on trumped-up charges of fixing games.
By turns funny and tragic, the film is also an understanding account of a tortured relationship between Cuba and its overweening northern neighbour.
