An energetic example of direct cinema, the story of one of the thousands of people under the age of 35 who arrived in waves to the Isla de Pinos during the first seven years of the Cuban Revolution. Miguel, one of 12 children from a poor neighbourhood in Havana, and a member of the Vikingos gang, was sent to La isla to become a new man. Gómez’s portrait provides the family its dignity, respects Miguel’s youthfulness, and offers the viewer a deep dive into the issues facing marginal people in Cuba 10 years after the Revolution. In 1968, Gómez turned her camera on the Isla de Pinos (later named Isla de la Juventud), where marginalized people (young, black, poor, gay, religious, hippies) were sent not only to work for but also to benefit from and indeed make the Revolution through “hard work” and re-education. These “Pioneers of the future” would become the ageless face of the Revolution. Gómez made three documentaries there: En la otra Isla, Una isla para Miguel, and Isla del Tesoro. Together they portray La isla as an experiment in communist living, a world ruled by young people, a condensation of many of the dreams and failures of the Revolution’s experiments.

Susan Lord