Secret Cuba
Secret Cuba is an eight-part documentary series for Netflix and ZDFinfo . The history of Cuba from colonial times to the present is depicted.
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Secret Cuba |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German , English , French |
| year | 2016 |
| length | 8 × 43 (ZDFinfo) 8 × 52 (Netflix) minutes |
| production |
Gunnar Dedio ( LOOKSfilm ) Grégory Schnebelen (Interscoop) Igor Prokopenko (Format TV) |
| music | Jean-Claude Mejstelman |
| camera | Emeric Nicolas Jens T. Wagner Igor Korotkiy Pavel Medvedev Yuriy Gorbunov |
| cut | Markus Thüne |
content
The history of Cuba from the end of the 19th century until today is the subject of the eight-part history series that ZDFinfo broadcast from December 11, 2015. The reason for the production was the reconciliation between the USA and the Caribbean island, which was symbolically carried out by the reopening of the US embassy in July 2015.
The series begins with Cuba's colonial days and its long and bloody struggle for independence. The focus is on the eventful history of the 20th century. In eight 43-minute episodes, the series sheds light on diverse aspects of Cuban history - from sugar cane and slavery to cigars and Fidel Castro's revolution to Guantánamo Bay and the (re) opening of the US embassy.
The series makes use of previously unpublished footage. More than 100 hours were analyzed and re-sampled. Sources include the Cuban Institute for Cinematic Art ICAIC , the Russian Krasnogorsk Archives , and the archives of the Red Army and the KGB . Private sources could also be tapped. The series also features re-scanned footage from the Spanish-American War of 1898 - the first war ever filmed.
More than 50 international Cuba experts and contemporary witnesses were interviewed for Secret Cuba - both fighters and opponents of Fidel Castro and his predecessor Fulgencio Batista . Among them are Cuba's former secret service chief Juan Antonio Rodríguez Menier and KGB Latin America chief Nikolai Leonow, Che Guevara's comrade-in-arms Dariel Alarcón and CIA agent Félix Rodríguez , Fidel Castro's former lover Marita Lorenz and his former bodyguard Carlos Calvo, the step-daughter of Kuba's greatest mafan, Carlos Calvo , Cuba's most important contemporary author Leonardo Padura and the last head of state of the GDR and personal friend of the Castro brothers, Egon Krenz .
background
Secret Cuba is a production by LOOKSfilm ( The Truth About the Holocaust , 2014), Interscoop, Format TV and TV3 Catalunya in coproduction with ZDFinfo , in collaboration with the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel and funded by the Center National de la Cinématographie et de l'Image Animée and Creative Europe, the media program of the European Union . In addition to broadcasting the series on ZDFinfo, the series was shown in France on France Télévision as well as in Finland ( Yle ), Lithuania ( LRT ), Russia ( Ren TV ), Slovenia (RTV) and Spain ( TV3 ). Lead producer is Gunnar Dedio .
Episode list
| No. | Original title | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Slavery and the struggle for freedom | Since the discovery by Christopher Columbus , Cuba has always been coveted and ruled by the great empires of the world. Cuba's struggle for freedom was long and bloody - and was ultimately won with the help of the United States of America , which in return still owns the Guantánamo military base on the island to this day . |
| 2 | Sugar boom and dollar rush | Even as a Spanish colony, Cuba lived mainly on two export products: tobacco and, above all, sugar. The white gold made Cuba irreplaceable for the USA at the beginning of the 20th century - during World War I , Cuba became the richest country in the world because of its sugar - and then plunged into a deep crisis. To save Cuba from sliding into communism, the United States supported a young sergeant named Fulgencio Batista , who became Cuba's military dictator. |
| 3 | Mafia bosses and putschists | From the mid-1930s onwards, the booming economy and the corrupt bureaucracy in Cuba attracted not only American investors, but also criminals. The king of gambling, Meyer Lansky , took power in the island's casinos and gambling dens. Little by little, gambling, corruption and crime became an integral part of everyday Cuban life. A young law student named Fidel Castro rebelled against this - and attacked the Moncada military base with a group of like-minded people. |
| 4th | Dictatorship and revolution | After the failed attack on the Moncada barracks , Fidel Castro was in prison. His revolution had failed before it really began. But contrary to expectations, Cuba's dictator Batista released his adversary Castro. He went into exile in Mexico and gathered a new rebel force around him. An Argentine revolutionary named Ernesto "Che" Guevara also joined him. In the second attempt at revolution, most of them were arrested or killed immediately upon landing. But this time they didn't give up, they kept fighting for years. On January 1, 1959, dictator Batista fled the island. Fidel Castro moved victoriously into Havana and established his seat of government in the Hilton Hotel. |
| 5 | Bay of pigs and new love | While Fidel Castro and his "July 26th Movement" liberate Cuba from Batista's hated regime, the United States is watching with great concern the growing communist influence on the island. The US government and its intelligence services are convinced that Cuba is on the way to becoming an outpost of the Soviet Union . President John F. Kennedy organizes the Bay of Pigs invasion . The aim is to overthrow the revolutionary government. |
| 6th | Rubles and missiles | After Castro sees the US as his main enemy, the Soviet Union becomes his logical and most important ally. The Soviets are sending nuclear weapons to the island and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. One consequence of the crisis is the murder of John F. Kennedy - by a Castro sympathizer. |
| 7th | Military power and drug swamp | Cuba's fate depends on the development of communism worldwide. The end of the Cold War dramatically changes Cuba's allies - the development has serious consequences for Castro's Cuba and brings the island to the brink of famine. |
| 8th | State arbitrariness and distant hope | Fidel Castro handed power over to his brother Raúl . Under his government, Cuba moves and forges new relations with the USA. Cuba and the USA open their diplomatic missions, the embargo against Cuba is in question. What will the future of the Caribbean island look like? |
Interview partner (selection)
Dariel “Benigno” Alarcón Ramirez
Cuban revolutionary. He was one of the first to join Fidel Castro's revolution after Batista's soldiers shot his wife before his eyes. He was Che Guevara's friend and comrade in arms until his death in Bolivia.
Félix Rodríguez
The native Cuban was involved in several assassination attempts on Fidel Castro on behalf of the CIA . He was supposed to blow the bridges to the bay during the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was responsible for tracking down and arresting Che Guevara, interrogated him and was present at his execution.
Juan Antonio Rodríguez Menier
Co-founder and longtime head of the Cuban secret service. He joined Fidel in 1954 and was resident in the GDR and in Budapest, among other places. Menier smuggled a number of his agents into the CIA. In 1987, after eleven years of negotiation, he defected to the USA with key information and testified in Paris against Carlos "jackal" - and against Cuba because of his involvement in the drug trade.
Leonardo Padura
One of the most widely read and most important authors in Cuba. His book publications include novels, volumes of short stories, literary studies, reports and interviews, including the crime novel cycle "The Havana Quartet". In 2012 he was awarded the Cuban National Prize for Literature and in June 2015 the Spanish Princess of Asturias Prize in the literature category.
Cynthia Duncan
Granddaughter of Mafia boss Meyer Lansky, who was the unofficial gambling minister of Cuba's dictator Fulgencio Batista in the early 1950s. She experienced the 1959 revolution in Cuba.
Igor Ivanovich Kurinnoy
Soviet lieutenant general. He was on the staff of the 43rd Nuclear Missile Division in Cuba, founded only three years earlier, during the 1962 crisis. As one of 43,000 soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, he was transferred from Ukraine to Cuba with the 36 nuclear missiles on one of the 300 merchant ships . Siberia was specified as the destination of the trip for camouflage and appropriate winter equipment was distributed. Kurinnoj reports first hand on the adventurous circumstances of the secret transport and installation of the rockets in Cuba, a three-minute flight from the USA.
Nikolai Leonov
Former lieutenant general and head of the KGB in Latin America. Political foster father of Vladimir Putin . He brought the Castro brothers and Che Guevara together in Mexico in 1955 and accompanied Anastas Mikoyan on his trip to Havana in 1960. On this occasion he presented Che Guevara with a Marksman precision pistol "in the name of the Soviet people". Leonov was Fidel Castro's translator when he visited the Soviet Union in 1963.
Marita Lorenz
Beloved Fidel Castro and CIA agent. Born in Bremen , she met and fell in love with Fidel Castro at the age of 19. After the end of the relationship, she went to the USA, was recruited by the CIA and was supposed to murder Castro in Cuba on their behalf. She is the author of “Dear Fidel. My life, my love, my betrayal ”(2001).
Egon Krenz
Former GDR politician and last General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) . Through his work at the GDR youth organization FDJ , he got to know Raúl and Fidel Castro.
Bernd Wulffen
Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Cuba from 2001 to 2005. Wulffen studied law, Romance studies and political science in Frankfurt am Main , Berlin , Marburg and Pisa . In 1969 he entered the higher foreign service. After his time as an attaché in Spain, he took on tasks in Latin America and Asia . In 1986 he became ambassador to Kuwait , 1992 ambassador and coordinator of the world economic summit in Munich. He lives alternately in Berlin, in the Allgäu and in Tucumán, Argentina. Bernd Wulffen is the author of "Ice Age in the Tropics. Ambassador to Fidel Castro" (2006) and "Cuba in Transition - From Fidel to Raúl Castro" (2008).
Michael Zeuske
Professor of Iberian and Latin American History at the University of Cologne . As a child he lived in Cuba, where his father worked as a consultant for the GDR. He studied philosophy and history at the University of Leipzig with a focus on the history of Spain and Latin America. Numerous publications on Cuba, including “Island of Extreme. Cuba in the 20th Century ”(2000),“ A Little History of Cubas ”(2000) and“ Handbook of the History of Slavery ”(2013). Expert advisor for the "Secret Cuba" series.
Press reviews
"The documentary is elaborately produced, a lot of research has gone into it, many contemporary witnesses, scientists, fighters and experts have their say, among them Leonardo Padura, Michael Zeuske and even Egon Krenz."
“The film is conventional in its appearance, but interesting, informative and exciting (...). The authors draw the long lines of history there. You start with Columbus, with the island's long colonial history and the numerous attempts to gain independence, first from the Spanish colonial power, then from the indirect colonial power of the USA. There are patterns in the story, repetitions, similarities. The revolutions in Cuba always came from the east of the island to the west, from the poor areas to the rich. Cubans who were dissatisfied with politics were exiled to Miami not just since Castro, but much earlier. The US has not only viewed the island as its backyard since the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, but when it defeated Spain in the war and brought about the end of Spanish colonialism. "
“The dark sides are illuminated, the forgotten chapters are opened again. The Havana Mafia Conference of 1946, a kind of Potsdam conference in the world of organized crime, which was supposed to regulate the post-war order, is discussed in the film as well as the executions of Batista soldiers by the Castro rebels. "
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.christoph-links-verlag.de/index.cfm?view=3&titel_nr=406
- ↑ http://www.christoph-links-verlag.de/index.cfm?view=3&titel_nr=486
- ↑ https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/michael-zeuske/die-insel-der-extreme.html
- ↑ - ( Memento of the original from October 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/181439
- ↑ Dietmar Fischer: Secret Cuba - tonight on ZDF info. In: Cubanews.de. December 11, 2015, accessed October 16, 2016 .
- ^ Fritz Wolf: Secret Cuba. In: wolfsehtfern.de. October 1, 2016, accessed October 16, 2016 .
- ↑ Dmitry Vachedin: Viva Cuba libre - TV documentary shows the secret Cuba. (No longer available online.) In: de.rbth.com. December 11, 2015, formerly in the original ; accessed on October 16, 2016 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
