Kings County Cinema Society Presents Free Screening of

Kings County Cinema Society continues their classic movie screenings tonight with Memorias del subdesarrollo. Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment/ Cuba, 1968, 97min), a powerful portrait of Castro’s Cuba and one of the classics of the new wave era. “Sergio, a bourgeois intellectual living off of (seemingly tenuous) rental income as a property holder, decides to stay in Cuba. The conflict set up between his intellectual convictions and the reality of Cuban life in the wake of the revolution makes up the central problem of the film. The film presents a year in the life of the protagonist, a year culminating in the missile crises of 1962. What makes the film is the candid nature of it’s reflections on the role of the intellectual in political life – certainly THE hot topic during the summer of 1968. The film is also a stylistic tour de force, welding together neorealistic drama, newsreel footage, montages of life in contemporary Havana as seen from Sergio’s flat (through a telescope), and some filmed Shavian-styled debates amid the action. Far from being a typical propaganda piece, the films treatment of the future of the revolution was very open ended, candid, and thoughtful.” Still nearly impossible to find in the US thanks to the Cuban expatriate contingent, Tomas Guitierrez Alea’s film is a respected classic among Cuban cinema and 60’s radical works.