This is the physical camera movement where the position of its axis moves during the shot. The camera movement can be in any direction, although in general when we talk about travelling it is usually forwards (avanti in Italian or in in English), backwards (retro in Italian, out in English), sideways or in a circle. Traditional travelling is carried out with the camera on rails or hand-held, although the first known camera travelling shot is that seen in the film shot in a Venetian gondola Panorama of the Grand Canal Seen from a Boat (Panorama du Grand Canal vu d’un bateau, 1896) by Alexandre Promio, a cameraman working for Lumière. Segundo de Chomón is credited with the first "dolly shot", with the camera moving on wheels, and this was used for narrative purposes in the slow movements seen in the feature film Cabiria (1913) by Giovanni Pastrone, and in the air travelling shots seen in Napoleón (1927) by Abel Gance. In 1976 the cinematographer Garrett Brown invented the “Steadicam” stabiliser which reduces the vibration experienced by the cameraman when travelling with a hand-held camera, this being used for the first time in Bound for Glory (1976) by Hal Ashby, and shortly afterwards in The shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick, in the tricycle rides of the child Danny through the corridors of the hotel.
The traditional travelling is carried out with the camera on rails or hand held, although the first camera movement travelling which is known is the film shot in a venetian gondola Panorama of the Grand Canal scene from a vessel
Some of the most celebrated travelling shots in film history are those of Colonel Dax advancing through the trenches among the soldiers in Paths of Glory (1957) by Stanley Kubrick, the walks of the psychopathic murderer protagonist in Fear (Angst) (1983) by Gerald Karlg (with a system created by the cameraman Zbigniew Rybczynski which makes the camera move along with the actor), the virtuoso sequence shots with a hand-held camera from Mikhail Kalatozov in both The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli, 1957) and I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba, 1964) and the progress of the leading couple through the hallways and kitchens until they arrive in front of the scene of the nightclub in Goodfellas (1990) by Martin Scorsese.
I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba)
There are cinema fossils which are searched for by the palaeontologists of this art and cinema fossils which simply appear miraculously. I am Cuba is among the latter as it meant discovery as unexpected as finding a Siberian mammoth preserved under the sands of a tropical islandJ. Hoberman
I am Cuba / Soy Cuba | Mikhail Kalatózov, 1964, Cuba/URSS
In 1959, with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, relations between the island and the Soviet Union were at their closest. In the framework of Soviet-Cuban cultural cooperation, the film I am Cuba (Soy Cuba) was co-produced in 1963, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov and involving a large Cuban-Soviet technical team led by the cinematographer Sergei Urusevski, who also worked with Kalatozov on the Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli) which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1958. It is a film in four episodes which traces the history of Cuba from before the Revolution to the battle in the Sierra Maestra. Among the stories, one narrator (representing "the voice of Cuba") says things such as “I am Cuba, the Cuba of the casinos, but also of the people”. Its masterful staging and editing, in the tradition of the best Soviet cinema, transformed this "Caribbean story" into an original socialist epic which, paradoxically, was not very well received either by the Soviet authorities or the Cuban leaders from The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) who considered it extremely stereotyped. Forgotten for decades, it was rediscovered and restored to its rightful place 30 years later by North American film-makers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Kalatazov, who died in 1973, never saw the posthumous tribute they paid to him in 1993.
