Memories of Underdevelopment
| Memories of Underdevelopment | |
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| Directed by | Tomás Gutiérrez Alea |
| Written by | Tomás Gutiérrez Alea Edmundo Desnoes |
| Starring |
Sergio Corrieri Daisy Granados |
| Music by | Leo Brouwer |
| Distributed by | ICAIC |
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Release date
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Running time
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96 minutes |
| Country | Cuba |
| Language | Spanish |
Memories of Underdevelopment (Spanish: Memorias del Subdesarrollo) is a 1968 Cuban film. Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, the story is based on a novel by Edmundo Desnoes entitled Inconsolable Memories (Spanish: Memorias del Subdesarrollo). It was Alea's fifth film, and probably his most famous worldwide. The film gathered several awards at international film festivals. It was elected the 144th best film of all time in the Sight & Sound 2012 poll. It was ranked by the New York Times as one of the 10 best films of 1968.
Sergio, a wealthy bourgeois aspiring writer, decides to stay in Cuba even though his wife and friends flee to Miami. Sergio looks back over the changes in Cuba, from the Cuban Revolution to the missile crisis, the effect of living in an underdeveloped country, and his relations with his girlfriends Elena and Hanna. Memories of Underdevelopment is a complex character study of alienation during the turmoil of social changes. The film is told in a highly subjective point of view through a fragmented narrative that resembles the way memories function. Throughout the film, Sergio narrates action, and at times is used as a tool to present bits of political information about the climate in Cuba at the time. In several instances, real-life documentary footage of protests and political events are incorporated into the film and played over Sergio’s narration to expose the audience to the reality of the Revolution. The timeframe of the film is somewhat ambiguous, but it appears to take place over a few months.
Alienation – Sergio’s isolated state and how his isolation affects him and those around him is one of the most predominant theme in the film. But alienation is present as a theme on another level: this film paints a picture of Cuba as an island country facing annihilation as a whole.
Underdevelopment - This term is often used to describe countries with a colonized economy that are insufficiently industrially developed. Sergio is constantly reiterating how underdeveloped Cuba is, so Cuba’s underdevelopment comes to be a predominant theme in the film. The documentary footage used also depicts images of Cuba’s underdevelopment.
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