A.N.S.W.E.R. Film Series
Memories of Underdevelopment
(Memorias del Subdesarrollo)

With a report and discussion of the film in relation to the Cuban Revolution today by ANSWER activist, Gloria La Riva

The word "subdesarrollo" or underdevelopment plagues everyone who lives in Latin America. It may mean a colonized economy or insufficient industrial development, or it just may come to mean the idea that foreign is better. The Cuban film MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, deals with this topic of underdevelopment in a number of ways. Primarily the film concerns itself with the life and thoughts of a bourgeois intellectual, Sergio, who has literally stayed behind the revolution even though his wife and friends flee to Miami. Sergio looks back over the changes in Cuba from the Cuban revolution to the Cuban missile crisis, the effect of living in an underdeveloped country, and his relations with his girlfriends Elena and Hanna. Cuba, B&W, 97min., 1968