A documentary by Yanara Guayasamín. In Spanish with English subtitles. Playing Monday and Wednesday, December 1 and 3, and next Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, December 5, 8 and 9, at the Vancity Theatre.

Next year marks a half-century since the Cuban revolution, and it’s difficult to guess how history will unfold as the original guard dies off.

Eschewing background context or any but the simplest of titles, Cuba: The Value of Utopia consists entirely of interviews with old-timers recalling the battle in the hills and cities against super-corrupt, CIA-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in the years before Fidel Castro’s triumph in 1959.

That may sound a tad dry, but the real-life characters, filmed by writer-director Yanara Guayasamín in a variety of colorfully dilapidated settings, are fascinating, and their recollections convey a picture of faded but still vivid ideals.

Some of the more memorable guides on this two-hour tour include crusty poet Felix Contreras, who bemoans the low expectations of “these kids today”, and opera singer Marta Cardona, whose romantic history is part of the picture. Other witnesses are ordinary citizens who took part in the work of forging a new nation.

There’s also some grainy footage of Fidel at a dinner party, telling a somewhat grisly anecdote he seems to have delivered too often. The polite nods of his audience-who look like they just want to get to the salad bar-tell us much of what we need to know about the whimper with which old dreams die.