Cubist Cuba: Memorias del desarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, 2010)

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

Abstract

Chapter in peer-reviewed edited book resulting from AHRC-funded project. As a sequel-of-sorts to Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968), Memorias del Sobredesarrollo (Memories of Overdevelopment, Miguel Coyula, 2010) is charged with both a look back at the last thirty-two years of Cuban history and a tentative view of its future. Yet its uncertainty and confusion fails to find a linear narrative and creates instead a collage of events, memories and hallucinations that assail the protagonist on his physical journey away from Cuba and his mental wanderings back to it. The film is partly a digital diary, which incorporates the first scenes in a Cuban feature to be shot in the United States, partly a record of instinctive and intellectual flânerie, and partly an investigation of memory that recalls the work of Chris Marker. As such, the past, present and future overlap in Memorias del Sobredesarrollo as the film comes to resemble a Cubist collage. Exploiting digital technology that is alternately rudimentary and sophisticated, the film explodes, as Cubist works do, the temporal definition of contemporary Cuba and the spatial limitations of its people and their cinema. This chapter provides a close and highly associative reading of the film and reveals its importance as both an example of contemporary production and a poignant comment upon it.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Cinema of Cuba:
Subtitle of host publication Contemporary Film and the Legacy of Revolution
EditorsGuy Baron, Ann Marie Stock, Antonio Pitaluga
PublisherI.B. Tauris
Pages105-132
ISBN (Electronic)9781786722539
ISBN (Print)9781784538149
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2017

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