Bitter Sugar (1996)

Bitter SUgar

This is my favorite Cuban movie and I ordered two of the same movie and I have only received one to this date... June 1, 2008

Great Movie!!!

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!!! March 3, 2008

Bitter Sugar

Great movie show the hardship of the people of Cuba in the late 80"s and the early 90"s. September 26, 2007

Very disappointing

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. March 9, 2007

GREAT MOVIE: THE TRUTH ABOUT CUBA

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! August 18, 2006

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