In the wake of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro called on ambitious Cuban architects to create five National Art Schools on the site of a lush golf course in Havana. Castro’s vision, shared by a team of idealistic young people, was to situate buildings for art, music, dance, ballet, and theater on the grounds of a former imperialist symbol. The architects’ visionary plans clashed with the burdensome embargo on construction supplies in the early 1960s. These shortages led to the creation of a campus of structures at once uniquely local and universally utopian. The technology for erecting Catalan vaults, for example, was rediscovered by necessity because there was no steel for supporting large interior spaces. After a very few glorious years, Cuban architecture became rigidly aligned with Soviet construction methods and styles, and the Havana art schools and the architects themselves fell out of favor. The film tells the fascinating story of architectural creation, decay, and renewal.  NK