Two Men & a Camera

The pretty, excited girl might have been chanting "We want a touchdown." But she was yelling something else, and for a moment the meaning did not register. Then it did, with a shock: "Cuba, si; Yanki, no!"

The girl was one of a mass of Cubans who crowded into Havana's Plaza Civica last summer to cheer Fidel Castro and shout hatred of the U.S. Hers was one of many memorable faces--faces of hate, sorrow, bewilderment--that dominated a new, hour-long documentary seen on ABC-TV last week. Billed as a "film editorial," it was designed to give viewers a look at the dangerous anti-American passions mounting throughout Latin America in the vacuum of U.S. policy.

The hour-long show had a rough-and-ready air about it. Frequently the sound was so bad that words were indistinguishable. Some of the camera work was shaky, some of the cutting rough. As an editorial, the program was impassioned rather than closely reasoned. But the report hit like a fist and left some haunting images in the viewers' minds: the despair of an out-of-work electrician's helper in a dirt-floored hut in Caracas; the satisfaction of a fisherman whose family has a fine new cottage in a Cuban cooperative--and the naively shrewd question of an old crone about how the family's wretched old furniture would look in the new house.

The documentary, first of a prospective series of six to be produced by TIME INC. and ABC-TV, is the work of Producer Robert Drew, 36. a former jet pilot and LIFE correspondent. His technique of candid-camera closeups and of eliminating an on-screen commentator is not new, but he uses it more deliberately and effectively than any TV show has before. Drew employs two-man crews (one man handles camera, one sound, and both also act as reporters and editors) instead of the usual unwieldy task force. Says Drew: "We would not move in with our lights and cameras and convert a worker's shack into a television studio. That way you simply don't get a feeling of reality." Using natural lighting, a stripped-down 16-mm. camera and, if necessary, a midget recording machine, Drew's reporting teams do their work unobtrusively, spend as long as a week befriending a family till they are willing to talk freely.

TV critics almost unanimously applauded the show. If Producer Drew's technique is obviously not applicable to all themes, Yanki, No! is an exciting start in a series that promises to use pictures, rather than what Drew calls "word logic," in bringing TV closer to reality.

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