I arrived in Cuba last fall with only the sketchiest notion of what the movie scene would be like. There is little documentation in the Western world about the Cuban cinema since 1959 (or before 1959, for that matter), aside from references to the handful of Cuban films that have been shown at international festivals. The only comprehensive survey in the United States was an article published in this magazine more than three years ago. The present survey doesn't claim to fill the gap in any definitive way. I spent only two weeks in Cuba and had to report on other things besides movies. My direct experience of the Cuban movie scene consisted of: three theater visits, at which the Cuban movies I saw were one feature, one documentary, and two newsreels; another Cuban documentary seen at an exhibition; a tour of the movie studios, which included a viewing of two Cuban animated cartoons; a tape-recorded interview with Saul Yelin, who produced several of the early post-revolutionary movies and is now publicity director of the government movie agency; and informal discussions about movies with a number of Cubans-in-the-street. For background information on developments in the Cuban cinema since 1959 I have relied heavily on the special retrospective issue of Cine Cubano published at the end of 1964.