User Reviews

I own most of the Chaplin Collection (with the exception of The Great Dictator, A King in New York and A Woman of Paris. I have still to see the last two while I love The Great Dictator) since, I think, a couple of years ago but just now that I have the intention of re-watch The Kid, The Circus, The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times and Monsieur Verdoux, and watch for the very first Limelight, I discovered this short film, you know I was like "well I will watch some shorts or whatever that comes as bonus material" and when I read the little description of Octavio Cortazar's Por Primera Vez on the back cover of the DVD of Modern Times I immediately check it.

And yes you can find this Cuban short film on the Chaplin Collection DVD of Modern Times and is Modern Times, as we see, the very first movie more than a hundred Cuban people saw. You know a place where still no one has ever seen a movie? asks Cortazar to the guys that work bringing the movies to rural areas with the mobile cinema and the answer the director gets is a yes "Los Mulos in the Guantanamo-Baracoa mountain rage". I just loved the part when the director gets what some of the people who have never seen a movie think about what is a movie: "it can be something important, because you are so interested it must be a very beautiful thing and of importance. Also can be a very big town that have a lot of things with importance", says one woman and another is like "a movie is, lots of things you see when you enter to the cinema. You see beautiful girls, you see marriages, cavalry, war and everything". And the last woman is more direct: "I'd like to see one, to know that it is, I don't want that nobody tell me". Then the movie is showed, some priceless faces of the people seeing their first movie, many laughs from them, kids enjoying Charlie Chaplin, amazed and finally ready to go to sleep. "And that's how, on April 12th 1967, in Los Mulos, mountains of Baracoa, more than a hundred people saw a movie for the first time". A recommended short!!

Following Castro's takeover years earlier, Cuba attempted to bring its country out of the dark ages somewhat with cultural and literacy programs. This film features one of the cultural programming ideas: Mobile cinema. Trucks manned by motion picture projectionists make sweeps of remote villages in Cuba in an effort to reach as many people as possible. The projectionists travel through villages with twice daily showings of Charles Chaplin's Modern Times. The film contains brief commentary by villagers and their children on what they think about cinema. Glimpses of Modern Times' screenings indicates the film was quite an event in the lives of these villagers.