Memories of Underdevelopment

The Cuban Cinema reached full maturity with this now-classic study of a bourgeois writer who stays in Cuba after the revolution, despite his alienation from the new society and the loss of all his friends to Miami. Some genuine nostalgia for pre-revolutionary bourgeois innocence is expressed, but the writer's subjective reveries and misadventures are kept in perspective: outside of his luxury apartment, the people of Cuba are building their revolution, and defending it against Yankee imperialism. In the spring of 1973, Memories of Underdevelopment became the first feature-length film from post-revolutionary Cuba to be released in the United States. It received some of the highest and most enthusiastic critical acclaim ever given to a foreign film in this country (sample: “It is a miracle... a beautifully understated film, sophisticated and cosmopolitan in style, fascinating in its subtlety and complexity... a profound, noble film” -Peter Schjeldahl, New York Times).

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