Sucre amer à Santa-Lucia
Bernard Mangiante
2000 - 90 min - Betacam SP - Couleur - France, Allemagne, Belgique

Santa-Lucia, located in the Holguin province 800 kilometres east of Havana. I most certainly needed distance in order to tell the story of the Cubans in a different way. My choice fell on this small town that had grown up around one of the 175 sugar factories found in Cuba. For centuries, the sugar industry has dictated its law in the town, and forty years of Revolution have brought little change.
"Harvesting is like war" is a phrase that springs to the lips of many Cubans. The sugar workers have not chosen to fight this battle, if indeed it is one – they were born into it, as others into the mines or the cotton fields. Does this battle, if one can call it thus, have a meaning for the Holguin people, a meaning for us ? I wanted to try to get a clearer picture of it all.
(Bernard Mangiante)