Memories of Overdevelopment
| Memories of Overdevelopment | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Miguel Coyula |
| Produced by | David Leitner |
| Written by |
Miguel Coyula based on a novel by Edmundo Desnoes |
| Starring | Ron Blair Susana Pérez Lester Martínez |
| Music by | Dika Durbuzovic, Hayes Greenfield, Miguel Coyula |
| Distributed by | Pirámide |
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Release date
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Running time
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112 minutes |
| Country | Cuba |
| Language | Spanish, English |
Memories of Overdevelopment (Spanish: Memorias del Desarrollo) is a 2010 Cuban film. Written and directed by Miguel Coyula, the story is based on a novel by Edmundo Desnoes, also the author of the 1968 classic Memories of Underdevelopment. This independent film was produced by David Leitner and features Cuban actor, Ron Blair as the lead character. It is the first Cuban dramatic feature film with scenes filmed both in Cuba and the United States. After its world Premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, it went to gather several awards and honors. The International Film Guide described it as one of the best films Cuba has produced.
Sergio Garcet is an intellectual who abandons the Cuban Revolution and 'underdevelopment' behind only to find himself at odds with the ambiguities of his new life in the 'developed' world.
Highly episodical, the film consists of flashbacks, daydreams, and hallucinations comprising live-action, animation, and newsreel footage assembled to suggest the way personal memory works, subjectively and emotionally.
Production of “Memorias del Desarrollo” took five years, starting in 2005 and completed in 2010, with locations in five countries. According to Director Miguel Coyula, his first draft of the screenplay was a faithful adaptation of Edmundo Desnoes' novel. But as he began filming and editing simultaneously, he became aware of new possibilities, which would radically alter the narrative structure of the original novel as well as its characters. The film did not follow the traditional chronology of writing, shooting and editing. This required a new approach where pre-production, production and postproduction no longer needed to exist as distinct elements but rather as an integral interactive seamless process. This new way of working was not meant as a shortcut, but rather as a way of revealing new narrative layers of the work as it evolved to create the director’s personal vision.
Coyula would take advantage of everything around him that he thought would add to the film, heavily manipulating images digitally, into the film’s final highly fragmented narrative. For example, the scenes with the 9/11 footage, which the director had recorded years before; the Paris, London and Tokyo scenes, which were shot while Coyula was travelling invited to film festivals presenting his film Red Cockroaches. Most of the various location shoots were done without permits, trough favors from friends, and with a minimal crew consisting mostly of director Miguel Coyula, producer David W. Leitner and lead actor Ron Blair, easily adapting at a moment’s notice and without the constraints of a rigid schedule. The film's most decisive work however took place in the editing room. In several visual presentations Coyula stated that no shot in the film escaped digital manipulation of some kind, which included, green screen, compositing in recreating sets, double exposures, replacing backgrounds, changing lighting, weather conditions, performing digital art direction, and actors shot in different countries performing together on screen.
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