Reviewed - I am Cuba: This influential propaganda film from 1964 still packs a punch, writes Donald Clarke.

SINCE its prominent re-release four years ago, Mikhail Kalatozov's achingly poetic propaganda piece - a tribute to the Cuban revolution in four dramatic acts - has seen its reputation rise ever higher.

Even if you weren't aware that Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola had long championed I Am Cuba, first released in 1964, you could not, on viewing the piece, help but notice ideas and techniques later to appear in those directors' films. Vistas and settings from the picture are alluded to throughout the Cuban section of The Godfather Part II, while Scorsese's wandering, inquisitive hand-held takes in Good Fellas carry traces of those in Kalatozov's picture.

It is, indeed, Sergei Urusevsky's stunning cinematography that really holds the attention today. Even the most committed old-school communist might balk at some of the bald rhetoric - mind you, the film's Russian and Cuban backers were apparently appalled by I Am Cuba's decadent leanings - but no sensitive person could fail to be entranced by the gorgeous, drifting shots that take us among sat-upon peasants, nightclub denizens and angry students.

Philistines not carried away by this spooky dream-world can, at least, have fun wondering how on earth the more unlikely shots were carried off. An essential revival at the Irish Film Institute.