The Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee presents: Memories of Underdevelopment

Dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
1968, Cuba, 98 min
Spanish and English with English subtitles

The Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee is proud to present a special screening of the film Memories of Underdevelopment at Cinematheque, as part of MayWorks Festival of Working People and the Arts. Net proceeds will go towards the purchase of essential medical supplies, to benefit the people of Cuba as they endure the effects of the illegal US blockade.

The Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee was founded in 1991 as an expression of the support of the people of Manitoba for the right of Cuba to independence and sovereignty, and the right of the Cuban people to choose their own economic, political and social system. The aim of the Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee is to promote friendship and solidarity between the people of Canada and the people of Cuba.

One of the first Cuban films to achieve significant success abroad, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s intimate and densely layered Memories of Underdevelopment is a landmark work of the country’s cinema. Left behind by his wife and family in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, the bourgeois intellectual Sergio (Sergio Corrieri) passes his days wandering Havana and idly reflecting, 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. Appearing on the fiftieth anniversary of its release in a stunning new 4K restoration, Memories stands as a biting indictment of its protagonist’s disengagement, and an extraordinary glimpse of life in postrevolutionary Havana.