Memorias del Subdesarrollo(Memories of

Underdevelopment.)

By Pablo Zequeira

“Titón”

• After Memorias del Subdesarrollo Titón makes other movies completely different from Memorias del Subdesarrollo that are still accepted as “good” films even though he never made easy movies just to please people or to make people laugh

• If they did find something amusing or comical it was not intentional.

• Titon has continuity in some of his films but not all• In characters of Guantanamera and Death of a

bureaucrat.

• Titón believed in the revolution and he tries to be

critical of it with intentions of progress.

Memorias del Subdesarrollo

• The movie stays current even by today’s standard.

• As with some of Titón’s film, Memorias del Subdesarrollo has certain continuity with some of his other films with the context in history.

• The characters in Titón’s transcend from one movie to the next and are often critiques of the Cuban Revolution.

• The thesis of the film is the drastic changes made in Cuba during the transition from a capitalist society to socialist one.

• While the people were fighting for the new and progressive they instead destroyed what was already in place and started from zero.

Sergio

• Sergio is a wealthy bourgeois who stays behind after his family and loved one immigrate to the United States

• This is something that drives the thesis of the movie.

• Sergio does not want to leave Cuba thinking things will change.

• He is a cultured Bourgeois who thinks things will change or return to the way they once were.

• The kiss his girlfriend gives him before leaving the country Sergio wipes it off his face the last time he sees woman a sign of his disapproval of the people who fled.

• Sergio is a Hyper—critical character in regard to the revolution and the Cuban people and predicts the decline of the Cuban society.

“La Habana la capital de las Americas esto pronto se va aparecer a Tegucigalpa.”

• Tegucigalpa was the capital of Honduras, an underdeveloped country in the 60’s.• As Sergio interacts with post-revolution Cuba he sees the store windows empty and the people of the

country decadent. The women wearing hairnets in public and the deterioration of the Cuban society do to socialist take over.

Other films by Titón

• Freza y chocolate-A movie with notable success based on the short story El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo by Senez Paz.

• A gay man and a young communist youth who become good friends.

• A queer film dealing with a photographer who is gay and cultured meets a communist youth who while not as cultured is still a smart person in comparison to the rest of his age group.

• Freza y Chocolate changed they way the Cuban public looked at homosexuals.

• Prior to the movie homosexuals were openly discriminated against to the extreme of being forced in to “rehabilitation camps”

• Fancy wording for concentration camps.• Sarcasm and irony make the movie the icon it

is today as with several other films by Titón

Filmography:

• 1950 Una confusion cotidiana (short 8 mm)• 1953 Il sogno di Giovanni Bassain (as student in

Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia, Italy)• 1953 El Megano 16 mm (Cuba)• 1958 La toma de la habana por los Ingleses• 1950 Esta tierra nuestra (First film after La

Revolucion)• 1960 Historias de la revolucion (First feature film)• 1962 Las doce sillas*****• 1964 Cumbite• 1966 La muerte de un burocrata****• 1968 Memorias del subdesarrollo.*****• 1972 Una pelea cubana contra los demonios.• 1974 El arte del tabaco (documentary film)• 1976 La ultima cena ****• 1978 Los sobrevivientes.****• 1983 Hasta cierto punto * (strongly censored. (Like

Waida in Poland Tarkovsky in Soviet Union , etc)