Now! (EOTWS)
End Of The Week Shorts #23 extract: Now! (1965)
Now! is a short political film made by famous Cuban filmmaker Santiago Álvarez. This is an assemblage of various images and news reel clips depicting racial discrimination and violence during civil rights protests, put to a song by Lena Horne. Embodying quite the opposite of 'subtle filmmaking', Now! is then a call for action and revolt.
Álvarez's approach to filmmaking has been coined, and Now! is a perfect example of this, "nervous montage". This implies that his frenetic and fervent messaging is, in itself, seemingly hysterical, but it is only so for the purpose of rousing the audience in the same respect. What Álvarez then does with this film is unabashedly embrace the propagandistic nature of his cinema and his approach to montage, alienating those who could not be affected by it and invigorating those who are.
An interesting piece of film history from one of the founding filmmakers of Cuban cinema, Now! is worth a watch:
