Audience Member
Jeri Rice met Fidel Castro on her first trip to Havana in 2002 at a diplomatic reception. There he made an unlikely confession, declaring through a translator "I tried to create a utopia but I did not succeed, and I have no time to fix it." This may have been a mistaken translation or perhaps Fidel was being flirtatiously provocative. Whatever the case, it was the beginning of a ten year project that would lead to the making of this film.
Jeri had organized a trip to Cuba with 40 influential women from the Pacific Northwest, including U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell. It was the first of many trips that comprise Embargo. This documentary is a fascinating and compelling overview of the issues regarding the continued embargo and our long history with Cuba, it's people and culture.
I've watched Embargo several times. I needed to experience it and let the waves of recognition, nostalgia and surprise role over me as I learned so much about our relations with Cuba in the last 50 years.
Jeri and I are contemporaries with close ties to Cuba for similar and different reasons. We both lived through the period in the late Fifties when the United States experienced a brief romance with Fidel and the Sixties when the world was on the brink of disaster due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. We both remembered JFK and his tragic and controversial assassination. Jeri met Fidel and, by happenstance, I became friends with Fulgencio Batista's son, Roberto, in the 70's in Madrid and visited the family apartment several times. But that's a story for another time.
Here's Jeri Rice's story: she had a very successful career in high-end fashion retail in the Seattle, Portland, and the Northwest. She brought Espada to America, and several other luxury brands. Jeri led a sophisticated executive lifestyle, well-traveled and familiar with the fashion capitals of the world and beyond. The reason Jeri made the film, her first, was a growing awareness of the hardships caused by the embargo. The restrictions on the importation of food and medicine caused enormous suffering. Never before in history has there been such unrelenting hostility against a small island nation. The ban on travel to North Korea and Afghanistan and other nations hostile to the US is understandable, but not against a country which has been at peace with the US for over 50 years.
The film features interviews with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ted Sorensen, Nikita Kruschev's son, Nicolai, Historians Peter Kornbluh, Lamar Waldron, and various scholars and testemonials from others who lived through the era. We learn about the founding of the CIA's nefarious agenda, the Mafia, and the politicians who opposed Kennedy's restraint in dealing with Fidel, and the background of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. The revelations of the many private letters exchanged between Kennedy and Kruschev during the growing crisis are testament to forces surrounding these leaders who wanted nothing less than to start a thermonuclear war.
Not unsimilar to today's sabre rattling between North Korea's Kim Jong Un and Trump and his desire to trash Obama's agreement with Iran. There is clearly no profit in peace and all too much to gain in declaring war, especially for our present president. Also of interest, Eisenhower sending Richard Nixon to meet with Fidel who dismissed the new leader of Cuba and refused to aid the new regime, leading to Cuba's further embrace of Russia, for survival sake.
After watching Embargo, I have a much clearer view of the conspiracy theories concerning the assassination of JFK and, as a result, I see validity in these theories now more than ever due to the depth of the filmmaker's research. Bobby Kennedy's indictments of Mafia kingpins, the Washington establishment against Kennedy and the American Military Complex that Eisenhower warned us about, were seemingly all or partially responsible for the plot to kill Kennedy. Historian Peter Kornbluh reveals the complicity of the CIA and the Mafia in the many attempts to assassinate Fidel, including a co-incidental meeting of a CIA agent and a Mafia operative in Paris on the very same day Kennedy was shot in Houston.
This is an important film, it should be shown as part of our high school and college curriculum since, even in what questions it doesn't answer, it leaves us to question and take action to bring about the end to this harmful and ineffectual embargo separating our nations and further impoverishing the Cuban people. Thank you, Jeri Rice, for making this film which I encourage all to see and learn from.
here will be a screening during the week of the 55th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tense 13-day period, October 16-28th in 1962. Embargo will screen during this historic and relevant period of time at 11:00am on Saturday, October 21 and Sunday, October 22 at the Laemmle Pasadena Playhouse 673 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91101.
Embargo screened in Santa Monica at the Monica Laemmle Film Center beginning with a benefit screening on September 7, followed by Q & A with: Director: Jeri Rice, Vice President Los Angeles Port Commissioners: Dave Arian, Editor in Chief of Truthdig: Bob Scheer, American Author, Journalist and Public Speaker: Nomi Prins and author and American investigative journalist: Russ Baker. The event was hosted by: Aris Anagnos, Edward Asner, Jackson Browne, Hector Elizondo, Jan Goodman, Ed Harris, Brad Horwitz, Jerry Manpearl, Susan Sarandon, and the Arts and Cultural Bridge Foundation. The film opened to the public on Friday, September 8.
It opened in New York City at the Village East Cinema on September 15-21. Opening night was followed by Q&A with: Jeri Rice, Director; Peter Kornbluh, Director of the National Security Archive's Cuba Documentation Project; and Sandra Levinson, Executive Director, Center for Cuban Studies. Ambassador Anayansi Rodríguez Camejo, the Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations attended the opening and addressed the audience following the 5:30pm screening.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I saw the premiere of Embargo at Laemmle in Santa Monica and was pleasantly surprised to have the facts surrounding the Embargo of Cuba, JFK assassination, Bay of Pigs, Watergate and more revealed to me in this way. It all makes sense now!
It may take another viewing to absorb everything this movie explains in great detail by people who were first-hand witnesses to so many events that have shaped our history.
Equally surprised to hear LA Times journalist, Robert Scheer speak during the Q&A afterwards, who summed it up nicely: "..who would've thought it would take this woman to make what I think is the best movie I have seen on this subject."
A must-see film!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/20/23
Full Review
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