Bitter Sugar
by Leon Ichaso
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DVD details
Actor: Larry Villanueva, Luis Celeiro, Mayte Vil?n, Miguel Guti?rrez, Ren? LavanDirector: Leon Ichaso
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-02-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker Video
DVD Reviews of Bitter Sugar
DVD Review: Bitter SUgar
Summary: 2 Stars
This is my favorite Cuban movie and I ordered two of the same movie and I have only received one to this date...DVD Review: Great Movie!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is excellent. It really shows the reality of the health system and the opression that Cuban People face now a days.
GREAT FILM!!!
DVD Review: Bitter Sugar
Summary: 5 Stars
Great movie show the hardship of the people of Cuba in the late 80"s and the early 90"s.DVD Review: Very disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
If you want to see a totally plastic piece of propaganda, don't miss Bitter Sugar. The two protagonists are not so much actors as models and pieces of the film touched on being soft porn. A far better film to see is the story about Sandoval, the famous trumpet player who, with the help of Dizzy Gillespie risked everything to escape Cuba, in order to play the jazz he loves (even listening to American jazz such as Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, etc is illegal in Cuba, as it is not 'pro-revolutionary'). A few years ago I was traveling and doing aid work in Ctrl America and heading over to Cuba to investigate what Cuban life is actually like. Being from New Zealand I had often heard Cuba romanticised by people, I too had a naive romanticised image of the country. When I arrived it soon became clear that I was in the most controlled, propaganda-driven country I had ever placed foot in. Following my trip to Cuba I met a gay hairdresser in El Salvador who knew Cuba well and joked that Cuba was the only country in the world where one can sleep with a doctor or an engineer for a dollar-a-day. Sadly this joke sounded a disturbing ring of truth. There is no intellectual freedom in Cuba - yes, university is free in a financial sense but only as long as you get with `Castro's program'. When some people spoke to me about Castro, instead of using his name in speech a stroke of the chin was made, in the belief that if people around them heard what they were saying there would be trouble. In Cuba trouble often means jail. I met an old man who spent four years locked up for `eating beef' (only tourists are allowed to eat beef). He used to work in a hotel restaurant and was caught pocketing left-over meat off the plates of customers who had not finished their meals. The film 'I am Cuba' is a fascinating piece of propaganda from the other side, filmed with funding and help from the Soviet Union around the time of the Bay of Pigs crisis. Batista's Havana was hell for the Cuban people but Castro's Havana is no better. Unfortunately the acting done by the two main characters in this film is horrific and the film moves at the pace of a snail. As it is based on a true story that could have made a great film to illustrate a depressing truth about Cuba, it is a disappointment. DVD Review: GREAT MOVIE: THE TRUTH ABOUT CUBA
Summary: 5 Stars
LOVED THIS BEAUTIFUL MOVIE! THE ACTING IS SUPERB AND THERE IS A POIGNANT BITTER-SWEET SENSE OF HUMOR BEHING THE REALITY OF IT ALL. GREAT MUSIC TOO!
Description of Bitter Sugar
Studio: New Yorker Films Video Release Date: 03/13/2001In what may be the angriest portrait of Cuba ever made, director Leon Ichaso (Crossover Dreams) charts the journey of one young man from patriot to disillusioned dropout to angry rebel. Gustavo (Ren? Lavan) is an idealistic young Marxist scholar who dreams of attending the University of Prague. When he falls for an earthy dancer with a more pragmatic view of her homeland, who plans to escape to Florida, his ideals are systematically chipped away in the face of poverty, repression, corruption, and police brutality until it all becomes too much for him to bear. A far cry from the more romantic work of Tom?s Gutiérrez Alea (Strawberry and Chocolate), this film speaks volumes about a generation of exiles burning with anger and hate for Castro and his regime. It's also manipulative and heavy-handed, with Gustavo less a hero than a straw figure poised for a fall, and it's far less revealing than such self-critical Cuban features as Portrait of Teresa and Memories of Underdevelopment. But its vivid and passionate feelings of betrayal can hardly be dismissed. Ichaso shot portions of the film in Cuba and smuggled the footage out, but Santo Domingo doubles for Havana through the bulk of the feature. --Sean Axmaker
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