PM, the film short that led Fidel Castro to declare “Within the Revolution, everything, against the Revolution, nothing” in 1961

The film short that exposed a consolidating dictatorship

 

Screen grab of film PM by Sabá Cabrera Infante and Orlando Jiménez Leal

Sixty years ago, two young Cuban filmmakers, Sabá Cabrera Infante and Orlando Jiménez Leal, set out to record Havana's nightlife in working-class neighborhoods, and drew the ire of Fidel Castro. 

The film was banned, and a series of meetings were organized by the Cuban Communist Party and presided over by Castro, attended by artists, media directors, and government officials at Havana's National Library in June 1961. The outcome was Fidel Castro telling Cuba's intellectuals and artists “Within the Revolution, everything, against the Revolution, nothing,” making art subservient to the dictatorship. 

Ten years later, the international community would become aware of this in the Padilla Affair, a show trial against a Cuban writer that drew widespread condemnation of the Castro dictatorship.

Here is the film short.