Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Memories of Underdevelopment

Memories of Underdevelopment

This film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is the most renowned work in the history of Cuban cinema. After his wife and family flee in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bourgeois intellectual Sergio (Sergio Corrieri) passes his days wandering Havana in idle reflection, his amorous entanglements and political ambivalence gradually giving way to a mounting sense of alienation. With this adaptation of an innovative novel by Edmundo Desnoes, Gutiérrez Alea developed a cinematic style as radical as the times he was chronicling, creating a collage of vivid impressions through the use of experimental editing techniques, archival material, and spontaneously shot street scenes. Intimate and densely layered, Memories of Underdevelopment provides an indictment of its protagonist’s disengagement and an extraordinary glimpse of life in postrevolutionary Cuba.


Memories of Underdevelopment was restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). Restoration funded by the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.

Film Info

  • Cuba
  • 1968
  • 98 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.66:1
  • Spanish
  • Spine #943

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New interviews with film critics B. Ruby Rich and José Antonio Évora
  • New interview with novelist and screenwriter Edmundo Desnoes
  • Titón: From Havana to “Guantanamera,” a 2008 feature-length documentary on director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s life and career
  • Segment from a 1989 audio interview with Gutiérrez Alea
  • Segments from 2017 interviews with actor Daisy Granados and editor Nelson Rodríguez from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Visual History Program collection
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • Plus: An essay by author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

New cover by Danijel Žeželj

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New interviews with film critics B. Ruby Rich and José Antonio Évora
  • New interview with novelist and screenwriter Edmundo Desnoes
  • Titón: From Havana to “Guantanamera,” a 2008 feature-length documentary on director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s life and career
  • Segment from a 1989 audio interview with Gutiérrez Alea
  • Segments from 2017 interviews with actor Daisy Granados and editor Nelson Rodríguez from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Visual History Program collection
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • Plus: An essay by author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

New cover by Danijel Žeželj

Memories of Underdevelopment
Cast
Sergio Corrieri
Sergio
Daisy Granados
Elena
Omar Valdés
Pablo
Eslinda Núñez
Noemi
Beatriz Ponchora
Laura
Cruz
Elena’s brother
Credits
Director
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Produced by
Miguel Mendoza
Screenplay by
Edmundo Desnoes
Screenplay by
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Based on a novel by
Edmundo Desnoes
Director of photography
Ramón F. Suarez
Film editor
Nelson Rodríguez
Music by
Leo Brouwer
Conducted by
Manuel Duchesne Cuzán
Special performance by
Pello el Afrokán
Production designer
Julio Matilla
Costume designer
Elba Pérez
Sound
Eugenio Vesa
Sound
Germinal Hernández
Sound
Carlos Fernández

Current

The Breakthrough That Put Cuban Cinema on the Map
The Breakthrough That Put Cuban Cinema on the Map

By posing provocative questions about revolutionary politics, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea brought Cuban filmmaking onto the international stage.

Memories of Underdevelopment: Imaging History
Memories of Underdevelopment: Imaging History

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea brought cinema to the center of Cuban society with this richly ambiguous portrait of postrevolutionary Havana.

By Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

10 Things I Learned: Memories of Underdevelopment
10 Things I Learned: Memories of Underdevelopment

The producers behind our edition of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s masterpiece share stories they discovered from researching the film and the turbulent political climate that inspired it.

The Revolutionary Subjectivity of Memories of Underdevelopment
The Revolutionary Subjectivity of Memories of Underdevelopment

A new episode of Observations on Film Art examines how this landmark of Cuban cinema takes viewers deep inside its protagonist’s mind.