| 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem, PA 18015
Memories of Underdevelopment
1968 | NR | 1 hr 37 mins
Directed by: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Featuring: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados
In Spanish with English subtitles
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 onthe 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.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A/talkback with Antonio Prieto, Associate Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Hispanic Studies at Lehigh University.
Antonio Prieto
Antonio Prieto is Associate Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Hispanic Studies at Lehigh University, where he taught from 1984 to 2023. A native of Cuba and a 1.5 generation Cuban-American, his research interests center on Cuban, Cuban-American, and Latino literature and culture. He developed and taught a wide array of courses, including “U.S. Latino Literature,” “Spanish and Latin American Cinema,” and “Literature and Revolution in Contemporary Cuba.”
