You might want to watch/tape this. Might have some info on gambling during Battista era. Supposed to be very good in its own right.

On Sundance cable channel:
¶ tonight 7:30 PM (Eastern time)
¶ Jan 14
¶ Jan 25

I Am Cuba

directed by Mikheil Kalatozishvili

1964 - 141 mins - B&W

Parental Guidance SuggestedViolence, Adult Content

One of the most surprising cinematic rediscoveries of the 1990s was the revival of Russian filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov’s forgotten Cold War epic depicting, in intoxicating visual detail, the decadence and poverty of pre-Castro Cuba. Four didactic stories (co-written by poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko) are of secondary importance to the sensual and amazingly acrobatic black-and-white cinematography directed by Sergei Urusevsky, in which the handheld camera appears to fly over a Havana street and literally follow a bathing beauty into a hotel pool.

http://www.mk2.com/soy_cuba/site.html

http://www.sundancechannel.com/film/?ixFilmID=6689&rname=The%20Sundance%20Channel%20Schedule

Robert