Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Country: Cuba
Award: none
Movement: Post-revolution Cuban Cinema
Memories of Underdevelopment is a 1968 Cuban drama film directed and co-written by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. The story is based on a novel by Edmundo Desnoes entitled Inconsolable Memories. It was Gutiérrez 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 aspiring writer-turned-furniture-salesman, decides to stay in Cuba after the Revolution when his wife, with whom he has a falling out, flees to Miami with his parents. Sergio looks back over the changes in Cuba, from the Cuban Revolution to the missile crisis, the effect of living in what he calls 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 the 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 is 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.
Log in to comment.