Educational Media Reviews Online

The title of the video Anecdotes About Fidel is an accurate representation of its content. This is a collection of brief reminiscences about former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and its use of the first name only is a reflection of its cozy relationship with the subject. The seeming randomness with which the pieces have been assembled gives the feeling you are viewing outtakes, and, in fact, the video says at the beginning that the footage was shot for the 2001 feature film Fidel, the Untold Story but has not been seen until now. Why it was thought there was a need to release such inconsequential supplemental material so many years after the feature is a question that begs for an answer.

There is no attempt to provide any background about the speakers in the video, particularly the Cuban ones. There is no narrator, and the person speaking is minimally identified. Melba Hernandez, for instance, is labeled as “Cuban heroine,” but those not intimately familiar with Cuban history over the past 50 years won’t know why she is a heroine. Some speakers are identified by titles such as Commandant or Captain. They presumably fought with Castro in the revolution, but their roles are unknown to the non-specialist.

The non-Cubans featured are better known to general audiences. They include Rev. Jesse Jackson, Prof. Angela Davis, Hank Aaron, Alice Walker, Harry Belafonte, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Nelson Mandela is also seen with Castro in archival footage. Wherever the speakers are from, however, what they have to say is of minimal value.

We learn Castro is a dynamic speaker who likes to use his hands. After becoming angry at a captured “counterrevolutionary” and grabbing him by the shirt and lifting him off the ground, Castro apologizes to the man. (“Once again, we understood his greatness,” the speaker says of Castro about this incident.) Angela Davis confesses she was nervous speaking to thousands in Cuba, and learns from Castro he gets nervous, too, before speeches. Gabriel Garcia Marquez gives a copy of Dracula to Castro, who tells Garcia Marquez he stayed up all night reading it. Alice Walker gives copies of her own novels to Castro, who says he enjoys reading them because he has to spend so much time reading official documents. She says of Castro, “He maintains his child’s mind, and that is very wonderful.”

If the material in Anecdotes About Fidel was worth releasing at all, it should have been included as an “extra” in the DVD release of Fidel, the Untold Story. Considered as a separate release, this video can be recommended only to those who collect exhaustively in Cuban studies.