American Experience PBS series: Fidel Castro

FROM THE FILM'S SITE:

Fidel Castro is a new two-hour documentary from American Experience on the controversial, charismatic dictator who has confounded American presidents from Eisenhower to Bush, while surviving a CIA-backed invasion, countless assassination plots, an economic embargo -- even the collapse of his benefactor, the Soviet Union.

Bosch and her production team interviewed exiles and defectors, foreign policy experts, journalists, scholars, former members of Castro's government - even his daughter, Alina Fernández, and former brother-in-law, Rafael Díaz-Balart. The first-hand accounts of people who lived through the revolution -- either participating in it, battling against it, or fleeing from it -- are interwoven with the observations of Cuba experts, including Harvard University's Jorge Domínguez; Norberto Fuentes, a writer once close to Castro and now living in exile; Washington University's William Leogrande; and Marifeli Pérez-Stable, a professor at Florida International University. The producers were unable to gain entrance to Cuba despite repeated attempts.