Review: Unfinished Spaces by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray, directors/producers

Abstract

Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray, directors/producers Unfinished Spaces Ajna Films, New York, 2011, DVD, 86 min., $19.99, http://www.shoppbs.org Early in the film Unfinished Spaces (Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray), we see the famous photograph by Korda of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, young, long-haired, bearded, in their military fatigues, playing an ironic round of golf on the erstwhile-restricted course of the Country Club (it needed no more name than that) in 1961. Prior to the revolution, the Country Club was off limits to the vast majority of Cubans—although as the son of a wealthy landowner, it would not have been so for Fidel had he chosen to fulfill his expected role in society—and the near-exclusive domain of the legions of North American tourists whose expenditures on the island accounted for a significant portion of the GNP. Apparently it was on those links that Fidel had an epiphany and vowed to convert the golf course, a symbol of capitalist exploitation and exclusion, into a symbol of revolutionary humanism and freedom of expression: he wanted to build the best art schools, not just in Latin America, but in the entire world. Thus opens the fascinating journey of Unfinished Spaces as it reconstructs the dazzling moment of revolutionary, utopian vision and shows the political agendas that initially endorsed and later foreclosed on the dream. The enthusiasm with which the revolutionary leadership and ordinary citizens sought to remake Cuba found magnificent expression in this ambitious architectural project of a world-class complex of art schools, with separate schools for fine arts, drama, music, modern dance, and ballet. The film juxtaposes gorgeous if elegiac photography of the five schools in their present state—some nearly complete and some skeletal—with archival film footage, photographs, and interviews. While the contemporary photography captures the beauty and …