Memories of Underdevelopment by Tomas Gutierrez Alea is regarded as one of the most important films of the New Latin American Cinema. Made in 1968, the film was revolutionary in its use of two very unique formal strategies; the sporadic placement of documentary media in the midst of a classic feature film. Alea, however, did not combine theses two media for purely aestethic reasons. The cinematic duality of Memories of Underdevelopment is in fact a formal allegory paralleling Cuba at that time. Alea examines the difference between the public image of Cuba and it's turbulent reality by means of his formal strategy. "The connection between these two types of encounters, the public and the private, and the two types of violence that spring from them becomes even more interesting and intertextual when we realize that part of the violence that ensues...finds the potential for its expression in the class differences that are represented..." (Miller 20) Alea manipulates the camera to both position the audience as a simple bystander in some in some instances and as a voyeuristic judge in others. In doing so the film demands the attention of its viewer, forcing the audience into the position of both observer and critic.