Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Fundación Televisa at L’Immagine Ritrovata in collaboration with Filmoteca UNAM and in association with Televisa S. de R.L. de C.V. Funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Special thanks to Guillermo del Toro.
The World Cinema Project (WCP) preserves and restores neglected films from around the world. To date, 54 films from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Central America, South America, and the Middle East have been restored, preserved and exhibited for a global audience. The WCP also supports educational programs, including Restoration Film Schools; intensive, results-oriented workshops allowing students and professionals worldwide to learn the art and science of film restoration and preservation. All WCP titles are available for exhibition rental by clicking "Book This Film."
INDIA | 1948
KALPANA
Director: Uday Shankar
WRITTEN BY: Uday Shankar, Amritlal Nagar
EDITING: N.K. Gopal
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: K. Ramnoth
FROM: National Film Archive of India
STARRING: Uday Shankar (Udayan & Writer), Amala Uday Shankar (Uma), Lakhmt Kanta (Kamini), Dr. G.V. Subbarao (Drawing Master), Brijo Behari Banerji (Uma’s Father)
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: India
LANGUAGE: Hindi
COLOR INFO: Black and White
RUNNING TIME: 155 minutes
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Uday Shankar Production
SET DESIGNER: K.R. Sharma
Restored in 2008 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the family of Uday Shankar, the National Film Archive of India, and Dungarpur Films. Restoration funded by Doha Film Institute.
A great work of hallucinatory, homemade expressionism and ecstatic beauty, Uday Shankar’s Kalpana (Imagination) is one of the enduring classics of Indian cinema. Shankar, the brother of the great Ravi Shankar, was one of the central figures in the history of Indian dance, fusing Indian classical forms with western techniques. In the late 30s, he established his own dance academy in the Himalayas, whose students included his brother Ravi and future filmmaker Guru Dutt (who worked as an assistant on Kalpana). After the closure of the academy in the early 40s, Shankar started preparations on his one and only film, many years in the making.
Kalpana, with an autobiographical narrative of a dancer who dreams of establishing his own academy (starring Uday Shankar and his wife, the great Amala Shankar – the film also marks the debut of Padmini, who was 17 years old at the time), is one of the few real “dance films” – in other words, a film that doesn’t just include dance sequences, but whose primary physical vocabulary is dance. A commercial failure when it was released, the film is now regarded, justifiably, as a creative peak in the history of independent Indian filmmaking.
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
Kalpana has been digitally restored by the World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory using a combined dupe negative and a positive print held at the National Film Archive of India.
The combined dupe negative was badly damaged and marked by lines, tears, dirt, dust, white marks and poor definition. The restoration required a considerable amount of both physical and digital repair in order to recover the beauty of faces, movements and costumes, and to reduce the aforementioned issues. The original sound was digitally transferred from the combined dupe negative. Digital cleaning and background noise reduction was applied.
The restoration has generated a duplicate negative, new optical soundtrack negative for preservation as well as a complete back-up of all the files produced by the digital restoration.
Image: © Courtesy of National Film Archive of India
INDIA | 1979
KUMMATTY
Director: Aravindan Govindan
WRITTEN BY: Aravindan Govindan
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Shaji N. Karun
STARRING: Ramunni, Master Ashokan, Vilasini Reema, Kothara Gopalkrishnan, Sivasankaran Divakaran, Vakkil, Mothassi, Shankar
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: India
LANGUAGE: Malayalam with English subtitles
COLOR INFO: Color
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes
PRODUCTION COMPANY: General Pictures Corporation
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in association with General Pictures Corporation and the Film Heritage Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.
Funding provided by the Material World Foundation.
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
Restored in 4K using the best surviving element: a vintage 35mm print struck from the original camera negative and preserved at the National Film Archive of India. A second 35mm print with English subtitles was used as a reference.
Color grading was supervised by the film’s cinematographer Shaji N. Karun.
Special thanks to Ramu Aravindan.
CÔTE D'IVOIRE | 1969
LA FEMME AU COUTEAU
WOMAN WITH THE KNIFE, THE
Director: Timité Bassori
WRITTEN BY: Timité Bassori
EDITING: Guy Ferrant
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Ivan Baguinoff
STARRING: Timité Bassori, Danielle Alloh, Emmanuel Diaman, Tim Sory, Marie Vieyra
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Côte d'Ivoire
LANGUAGE: French with English subtitles
COLOR INFO: Black and White
RUNNING TIME: 77 minutes
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Société Ivoirienne de Cinéma
Restored in 2019 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, created by The Film Foundation, FEPACI and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – to help locate, restore, and disseminate African cinema.
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
The 4K restoration of La femme au couteau was made from the 35mm original camera and sound negatives. The original camera negative was damaged by mold, dirt, and scratches, and therefore required an extensive amount of digital restoration. Director Timité Bassori supervised the picture grading.
TURKEY | 1966
LAW OF THE BORDER
HUDUTLARIN KANUNU
Director: Lüfti Ö. Akad
WRITTEN BY: Lüfti Akad, Yilmaz G Üney
EDITING: Ali Ün
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Ali Uğur
PRODUCER: Dadaş Film, shot in Yildiz Film Studios
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Ali Uğur
FROM: Dadaş Film
STARRING: Yilmaz Güney (Hidir), Pervin Par (Ayse, the teacher), Hikmet Olgun (Yusuf), Erol Taş (Ali Cello), Tuncel Kurtiz (Bekir), Osman Alyanak (Dervis Aga), Aydemir Akbas (Abuzer), Atilla Erg ün (Zeki, first lieutenant)
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Turkey
LANGUAGE: Turkish with French and English subtitles
COLOR INFO: Black and White
RUNNING TIME: 74 minutes
PRODUCER: Dadaş Film, shot in Yildiz Film Studios
Restored in 2013 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, Dadaş Films, and the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Restoration funded by Doha Film Institute.
Turkish cinema in sixties took place in a dream world. The movies of that era refused to look directly at Turkish society. Hudutların Kanunu, on which Yılmaz Güney met director Lütfi Ömer Akad, is one of the movies that changed this state of affairs. Akad’s genuine creative vision influenced Güney’s style as an actor: one can easily see the difference in Güney’s acting before and after Hudutların Kanunu. Akad’s influence was a positive one. . .
Güney’s natural performance marked a change in Turkish Cinema. This was the beginning of what would later be called “New Cinema” in Turkey. With its powerful cinematography and its direct and realistic depiction of social problems, Hudutların Kanunu is one of the early milestones of Turkish cinema. Given the manner of storytelling and the style of photography, one might almost say that Akad’s film is a Western.
Hudutların Kanunu depicts vital problems in the society of South East Turkey. Lack of education, no agriculture, and unemployment compelled people to live by the “law of the border” (Hudutların Kanunu) – in other words, smuggling. Hudutların Kanunu underlines the importance of education, which is the crucial element of socio-economical progress in third world countries. It also helps us to understand the reasons behind the ongoing, veiled war along Turkey’s South East border. Forty five years ago, Lütfi Ömer Akad was alerting Turkish society of the likely consequences if preventive measures are not taken in time. He alerted us with a great and lasting film, Hudutların Kanunu.
(Fatih Akin, May 2011)
Ömer Lüfti Akad’s Hudutların Kanunu comes as a revelation to first-time viewers – a work of great visual and dramatic force, of terrific purity and ferocity. It was made during the year that its star and co-screenwriter, Yilmaz Güney, made his own directing debut. And it’s not surprising for first time viewers to learn that this stunning collaboration marked a shift in Turkish cinema, and ushered in what became known as “the director generation.” Once again, the World Cinema Foundation’s advisory board member Fatih Akin has brought us a great and inspirational film.
(Kent Jones, May 2011)
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
The restoration of Hudutlarin Kanunu was made possible through the use a positive print provided by Nil Gurpinar, daughter of the film’s producer, and held by the Turkish Ministry of Culture.
As this print is the only known copy to survive the Turkish Coup d’Etat in 1980 – all other film sources were seized and destroyed – the restoration required a considerable amount of both physical and digital repair. The surviving print was extremely dirty, scratched, filled with mid-frame splices and sadly missing several frames. Although the film was shot in black and white, it was also printed on color stock resulting in significant decay. The restoration work produced a new 35mm dupe negative.
The World Cinema Foundation would like to specially thank Fatih Akin for recommending this title, and Ali Akdeniz and Nurhan Sekerci for facilitating the restoration process.
Image: © Courtesy of Nil Gurpinar - Dadaş Films
SENEGAL | 1966
LE SÉNÉGAL ET LE FESTIVAL MONDIAL DES ARTS NÈGRES
Director: Paulin Soumanou Vierya
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Senegal
LANGUAGE: French with English subtitles
COLOR INFO: Black and White
RUNNING TIME: 28 minutes
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with the Ministère de la Culture et du Patrimoine Historique de Sénégal – Direction du Cinéma. Restoration funded by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project, the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and UNESCO―in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna―to help locate, restore, and disseminate African cinema.
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
The 4K restoration was completed using a 16mm print preserved by the Direction du Cinéma in Senegal. With special thanks to Tiziana Manfredi and Marco Lena.
BRAZIL | 1931
LIMITE
Director: Mário Peixoto
WRITTEN BY: Mário Peixoto
EDITING: Mário Peixoto
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Edgar Brazil
PRODUCER: Mário Peixoto
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Brutus Pedreira (themes from Satie, Debussy, Borodin, Stravinsky, Prokofiev)
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Rui Costa
FROM: Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo
STARRING: Olga Breno (Woman #1); Taciana Rei (Woman #2); Carmen Santos (The Whore); Mario Peixoto (The Man at the cemetery); Brutus Pedreira (Man #2 and the pianist); Edgar Brazil (The Man asleep at the cinema); Faciana Rei; Raul Schnoor
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Brazil
LANGUAGE: Silent
COLOR INFO: Black and White
RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Cinédia
PRODUCER: Mário Peixoto
Restored in 2010 by the Cinemateca Brasileira and Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, Arquivo Mario Peixoto, Saulo Pereira de Mello, and Walter Salles. Restoration funded by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways and Qatar Museum Authority.
Limite does not intend to analyse. It shows. It projects itself as a tuning fork, a pitch, a resonance of time itself. –Mário Peixoto
Then came the revelation of Limite, the first and only film by 21-year-old director Mário Peixoto. This was a film of transcendent poetry and boundless imagination. Once again, I found myself in a state of shock, not only because of the film itself, which was made in 1931 and forgotten for many years, but also for the evidence it bore, that of our creative diversity. –Walter Salles
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
Restored by the World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna / L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory in collaboration with the Cinemateca Brasileira and Walter Salles.
Image: © Courtesy of Mário Peixoto Archive/ Cinemateca Brasileira
MEXICO | 1950
LOS OLVIDADOS
Director: Luis Buñuel
WRITTEN BY: Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcorira
EDITING: Carlos Savage
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Gabriel Figueroa
PRODUCER: Óscar Dancigers, Sergio Kogan, Jaime A. Menasce
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Rodolfo Halffter
STARRING: Estela Inda, Miguel Inclán, Alfonso Mejía, Roberto Cobo, Alma Delia Fuentes
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Mexico
LANGUAGE: Spanish with English subtitles
COLOR INFO: B&W
RUNNING TIME: 80 minutes
PRODUCER: Óscar Dancigers, Sergio Kogan, Jaime A. Menasce
Restored by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project in collaboration with Fundacion Televisa, Televisa, Cineteca Nacional Mexico, and Filmoteca de la UNAM.
Restoration funding provided by The Material World Foundation.
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
LOS OLVIDADOS was restored in 4K from the camera and soundtrack nitrate negatives preserved at Filmoteca de la UNAM. The film reels were scanned at UNAM laboratory and the soundtrack was digitized by Cineteca Nacional de México.
Special thanks to Gabriel Figueroa Flores for his supervision of the grading process.
The restoration work was carried out by L'Immagine Ritrovata in 2019.
CUBA | 1968
LUCIA
Director: Humberto Solás
WRITTEN BY: Humberto Solás, Julio Garcia Espinosa, Nelson Rodríguez
EDITING: Nelson Rodríguez
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Jorge Herrera
PRODUCER: Raúl Canosa, Camilo Vives
PRODUCTION DESIGN: Pedro Garcia Espinosa, Roberto Miqueli
STARRING: 1895: Raquel Revuelta (Lucía); Eduardo Moure (Rafael); Idalia Anreus (Fernandina); 1932: Eslinda Nuñez (Lucía); Ramón Brito (Aldo); Flora Lautén (Flora); 196..: Adela Legrá (Lucía); Adolfo Llauradó (Tomás); Teté Vergara (Angelina)
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Cuba
LANGUAGE: Spanish
COLOR INFO: Black and White
RUNNING TIME: 160 minutes
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC)
PRODUCER: Raúl Canosa, Camilo Vives
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). Restoration funded by Turner Classic Movies and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.
One of the abilities of cinema is to portray what a country is going through… it is about putting the country’s face on the screen, but it’s also about enlarging one’s vision of that specific place.
-- Walter Salles
ICAIC was born out of the victory of the Revolution. Those of us who were about to attempt to found a national film industry from scratch faced a set of problems that we had to resolve immediately. Our problem was a basic cultural dichotomy, as in Lenin’s thesis on national cultures. We had an elitist cultural tradition that represented the interests of the dominant class, and a more clandestine culture that had already received wide exposure; however, at some point, all artistic expression started to be converted into products of a consumer-oriented culture.
Because the elitist and the popular were so intimately tied, because petit bourgeois consciousness and influences from Europe and North America were so dominant, our general cultural panorama at the time of the Revolution was in fact a pretty desolate one. This was during the sixties, when the most important film movement was the French New Wave. Films like Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour (1959) or Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) marked most of the subsequent decade. These influences alienated us from our indigenous cultural forms and from a more serious search for a kind of cultural expression consistent with national life and with the explosive dynamism of the Revolution. Yet this was a path we clearly had to travel. Anyone who picks up the tools of artistic activity for the first time is going to be vulnerable to outside influences.
With Lucía, I wanted to view our history in phases, to show how apparent frustrations and setbacks –such as the decade of the ’30s–led us to a higher stage of national life. Whenever you make a historical film, whether it’s set two decades or two centuries ago, you are referring to the present.
Lucía is not a film about women, it’s a film about society. But within society, I chose the most vulnerable character, the one who is more transcendentally affected at any given moment by contradictions and change.
-- Humberto Solás
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
The restoration of Lucía was made possible through the use of the original camera and sound negative and a third generation dupe negative provided by and preserved at the ICAIC.
The state of conservation of the negative was critical, due to advanced vinegar syndrome causing portions of the film stock to colliquate (melt) or stick together; the negative also appeared heavily warped and buckled, causing the image to lose focus throughout the film. Despite undergoing several weeks of drying and softening treatments, large portions of 8 (out of 18) reels could not be used. These sections were replaced with a second generation duplicate preserved by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv since
the film had been distributed in East Germany in the late 1960s.
All the elements were wet-scanned at a 4K resolution to eliminate or reduce heavy scratches and halos. Additional documentation was used to confirm that the film had been shot on two different film stocks–Orwo and Ilford–and graded according to the time-period depicted in the film. A previously unscreened vintage print preserved at the BFI National Archive was used as a reference.
The original soundtrack was in fairly good condition, with the exception of uneven and inconsistent background noise detected in
the mix which required careful dynamic noise reduction.
FRANCE | 1990
LUMUMBA, DEATH OF A PROPHET
LUMUMBA, LA MORT DU PROPHÈTE
Director: Raoul Peck
WRITTEN BY: Raoul Peck
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: France
LANGUAGE: French with English subtitles
COLOR INFO: Color/Black and White
RUNNING TIME: 69 minutes
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Velvet Film
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata/L’Image Retrouvée in collaboration with Velvet Film and supervised by Raoul Peck.
Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – to help locate, restore, and disseminate African cinema.
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
LUMUMBA, DEATH OF A PROPHET was restored in 4K using the original 16mm camera and sound negatives.
MEXICO | 1960
MACARIO
Director: Roberto Gavaldón
EDITING: Gloria Schoemann
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Gabriel Figueroa
ADAPTED BY: Emilio Carballido, Roberto Gavaldón
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Raúl Lavista
STARRING: Ignacio López Tarso, Pina Pellicer, Enrique Lucero, José Gálvez, José Luis Jiménez, Mario Alberto Rodríguez, Consuelo Frank
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Mexico
LANGUAGE: Spanish with English subtitles
COLOR INFO: B&W
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
MACARIO was restored from the original camera and sound negatives preserved at Televisa. Image scanning at 4K resolution and audio digitization work was completed by Filmoteca UNAM. Restoration of the picture and sound was carried out at L'Immagine Ritrovata in 2023.
Special thanks to Gabriel Figueroa Flores for supervising the color grading.
PHILIPPINES | 1975
Manila in the Claws of Light
MAYNILA SA MGA KUKO NG LIWANAG
Director: Lino Brocka
EDITING: Edgardo Jarlego, Ike Jarlego
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Miguel De Leon
ADAPTED BY: Edgardo Reyes
PRODUCER: Miguel De Leon, Severino Manotok
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Max Jocson
SOUND: Luis Reyes, Ramon Reyes
ART DIRECTOR: Miguel De Leon
STARRING: Bembel Roco, Hilda Koronel, Rafael Roco Jr., Lou Salbador Jr., Tommy Abuel, Jojo Abella, Juling Badabaldo
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Philippines
LANGUAGE: Tagalog with French and English subtitles
COLOR INFO: Color
RUNNING TIME: 124’
PRODUCER: Miguel De Leon, Severino Manotok
Restored in 2013 by the Film Development Council of the Philippines and Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project , LVN, Cinema Artists Philippines and Mike De Leon. Restoration funded by Doha Film Institute.
There are undoubtedly a few people left who still remember that day in Cannes 1978 when rumors started circulating about a small, low budget film from the Philippines. A ‘dirty’ film, as some claimed, once more proving Lu Xun correct when he observed that while some art might originate in the sewer, it can be so full of passion that it goes as deep as tragedy.
And perhaps even further, because Lino was one of the most physical filmmakers that cinema has ever had. A true fireball, he moved insatiably from one set to rehearsals of Larawan in Fort Santiago where he directed a very dedicated group of actors, then on to a TV set where he would shoot a TV show in addition to a film as good as A Streetcar Named Desire.
He possessed a remarkable vitality that was expressed fully in the large demonstrations he organized against Marcos’ regime. With the money he made with his commercial films he bought some sophisticated sound equipment that allowed him to cover the entire Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, Manila’s massive north to south transportation corridor. Lino knew all the arteries of this swarming city, and he penetrated them just as he penetrated the veins of the outcasts in his films. Sometimes a vein would crack open and bleed. And that blood oozed on the screen with Insiang, Jaguar, Bona, Bayanko, all of which were shown in Cannes. And then, just like that, he died, in a stupid, easily avoidable car accident.
I remember a dinner, five weeks after Marcos’ fall, when Lino had realized that the Aquino regime would lead nowhere. He was no longer the same, nor were his films. He even lost his ability to joyfully seize the moment, which he was able to spread around among his friends.
Still, when you watch Manila, you’ll be burned by a flame that never goes out.
-Pierre Rissient, May 2013
A film director can survive in a museum, on a field or in the jungle – first, second or third world. In the third-world jungle he will be judged by his ability to survive, by the way he insists on making committed films and on believing in the power of cinema, even if no one ever asked him to do so. The rest stands on its own two feet. The aesthetics is a consequence.
A third-world filmmaker necessarily has to reinvent his own brand new cinema, squeezed by the rule of immediate profit (tougher in cinema than anywhere else), and the risk of a brutal clash with power. These are the directors who affect us deeply. Satyajit Ray in the 50’s, Ousmane Sembène in the 60’s, Lino Brocka at the end of the 60’s, and again Lino Brocka at the end of the ‘70s and today. [...]
Ultra-fast, fiercely vital, unclassifiable, this little man exists right in the heart of his country. He knows and experiences all the contradictions of Filipino culture and cinema. Brocka is not a solitary hero, he is a public figure; though marginal, exposed, and slandered, he is protected by his fame abroad. He has some key traits in common with Pasolini: a respect for “lower” culture, a feeling for the beauty of the body, a willingness to dissect the social links that the bodies represent.
Brocka loves flinging his characters into the traps of mise en scène, he never turns away when they are overwhelmed by emotion, and once they are cornered, neither can we.
-Serge Daney, 1981
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
The restoration of Maynila: sa mga kuko ng liwanag was made possible through the use of the original camera and sound negatives deposited by Pierre Rissient, on behalf of Lino Brocka, at the BFI National Archive in the early 1980s. The state of conservation of the negatives was critical.
The negative was wet-scanned at 4K resolution. The digital restoration process required considerable effort due to the great number of issues affecting the negative: tears, scratches, warping, visible marks and halos.
Color decay was also a significant problem. The film’s cinematographer, Mike De Leon, attentively guided the grading phase and validated a positive print for reference.
Image: © Courtesy of Film Development Council of the Philippines
CUBA | 1968
MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT
MEMORIAS DEL SUBDESARROLLO
Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
WRITTEN BY: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
EDITING: Nelson Rodríguez
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Ramón F. Suárez
PRODUCER: Miguel Mendoza
STARRING: Sergio Corrieri (Sergio Carmona Mendoyo), Daisy Granados (Elena), Eslinda Núñez (Noemi), Omar Valdés (Pablo), René de la Cruz (Elena’s brother)
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: Cuba
LANGUAGE: Castilian with English an French subtitles
COLOR INFO: Black and White
RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC)
PRODUCER: Miguel Mendoza
Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). Restoration funded by The George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.
I remember it as if it were yesterday. The film begins. A dizzying sound of drumbeats invades the movie theatre. Pulsating bodies take the screen. Dozens, hundreds of people, mostly blacks and mestizos, are dancing. Everything is movement and ecstasy. All of a sudden, gunshots ring out. A man lies on the ground - a lifeless body. Surrounding him, the deafening music and the rhythm continue. The beat is frenzied. The camera travels from face to face in the crowd until it stops at a young black woman. The frame freezes on her trance-lit face.
Thus begins Memorias del subdesarrollo, and watching it was like a shock to me. The film navigated between different states - fiction and documentary, past and present, Africa and Europe. The dialectic narrative took the form of a collage, crafted with an uncommon conceptual and cinematographic rigor. Scenes from newsreels, historical fragments and magazine headlines mixed and collided. In Memorias del subdesarrollo, Alea proved that filmic precision and radical experimentation could go hand in hand. Nothing was random. Each image echoing in the following image, the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Until then, having spent part of my childhood in Europe, I had a better knowledge of Italian neorealism and the French new wave than I did of the cinematic currents in Latin America. I admired Rossellini and Visconti and the early films of Godard and Truffaut - and with good reason. On taking the camera to the streets and showing the faces and lives of ordinary people, the neorealists and the directors of the nouvelle vague had fomented a true ethical and aesthetic revolution in films.
But Memorias del subdesarrollo carried with it something more. A point of view that was vigorous, original and, more importantly, pertained directly to us, Latin Americans. It was like a reverse angle - one that seemed more resonant to me than that which was prevalent in other latitudes.
- Walter Salles
I remember that soon after the Revolution, everybody (and I mean everybody) thought that our island could be transformed, from one moment to the next, into a sort of Switzerland of the Caribbean. We had everything we needed: the people, the weapons, the enthusiasm, and the opportunity to re-build our country from scratch. Only later did we understand that we were basically a farming country, that industrialization would take more time than we had hoped, and that our island was small, poor and underdeveloped. All of a sudden, everything that had once seemed within arm’s reach was further and further away. The new reality is a radical one. We don’t just need a new economy, new politics, a new society. We need a new way of thinking, and this will take longer. For now, we have to accept who we are and keep fighting, which brings me back to the concept of underdevelopment, but this time, of a moral and aesthetic nature.
Every day, to build our society, we have to confront the type of people we despise: those who think they are the only custodians of the Revolution, who believe only they know socialist morality, and who have institutionalized mediocrity and provincialism. The bureaucrats, with or without a desk, who talk to our people as one does with children, telling us what to show them, how to address them. And since these bureaucrats believe that our people are not ready to know the whole truth, they are ashamed of them, and suffer from a national inferiority complex. I hope, with my film, to annoy, provoke and upset all of them.
- Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
NOTES ON THE RESTORATION:
The restoration of Memorias del Subdesarrollo was made possible through the use of the original camera and sound negative and a vintage duplicate positive provided and preserved by ICAIC.
The camera negative is affected overall by advanced vinegar syndrome – in particular where the duplicate negatives of archival footage are edited into the film – causing a consistent ‘halo’ on the image. Most of reel 3 was irreversibly crystallized and half of reel 4 was badly compromised by decay. The duplicate element was used to replace the image in those portions. The camera negative was scanned at 4K, using wet-gate only for the most problematic sections.
The dual bilateral variable area sound negative showed a poor photographic definition, resulting in a harsh and raspy sound, with noticeable image spread distortion. Scratches, dirt and dust on the emulsion caused heavy crackles and clicks during reproduction. Sound restoration was able to reduce these issues considerably.
