The New York Film Festival presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center has just announced a special screening the classic Cuban film Memories of Underdevelopment / Memorias del subdesarrollo by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, as part of the Revivals section of the 54th edition of the festival.
When Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s 1968 film was finally released in the United States in 1973, it startled film critics and casual moviegoers alike. No one was expecting such a film out of Castro’s Cuba: a sharp, funny, pro-revolutionary period piece (the action is set in 1961, right after the Bay of Pigs) with a disaffected intellectual hero (Sergio Corrieri) who, as Vincent Canby wrote, “moves through Havana as if he were a scuba diver exploring the ruins of a civilization he abhorred but cannot bear to leave.”
The English critic Derek Malcolm wrote that Memories of Underdevelopment is “one of the best films ever made about the skeptical individual's place in the march of history.” The print was restored by the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory and financed by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.
The New York Film Festival's Revivals section showcases masterpieces from renowned filmmakers whose diverse and eclectic works have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of partners.
The 54th edition of the New York Film Festival will take place September 30-October 16.
