The Price of Sugar

Release: "The Price of Sugar"

Uncommon Productions presents The Price of Sugar, a film by Bill Haney, narrated by Paul Newman.

The DVD release of this film (23 September 2008) includes the short documentary film, "Hard Labours," about MSF's emergency obstetrics work at Jude Anne Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Synopsis

Just a few miles inland from the tourist-filled beaches of the Dominican Republic, hidden from view, thousands of dispossessed Haitians have toiled under armed-guard harvesting sugarcane, much of which ends up in U.S. kitchens. They work grueling hours and frequently lack decent housing, clean water, electricity, education or healthcare. "The Price of Sugar" follows Father Christopher Hartley, a charismatic Spanish priest, as he organizes some of this hemisphere's poorest people, challenging powerful interests profiting from their work. The Vicini family which owns some of the sugar plantations on which the film was shot has filed a lawsuit against the filmmakers in an attempt to block the film's release. This film raises key questions about where the products we consume originate and at what human cost they are produced.

It is the middle of the night, and Father Christopher Hartley and his elder colleague, Father Pedro Ruquoy, have driven down a lonely road to reach the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. There, a busload of Haitians ’ presumably illegal immigrants, but ready to pay the expected, and informal, ’fees' to enter the Dominican Republic ’ are stuck waiting at the border. Most of the travelers have paid a lifetime’s accumulated money to cross the border, but something’s held them up. They’re waiting for the trucks and buses to take them to the cane fields. There’s really nothing to be done for them, but Father Hartley does what he can, ultimately offering the only thing, and perhaps most precious thing, he has to offer: His prayers.

In ’The Price of Sugar,' filmmaker Bill Haney charts the heartbreaking plight of Haitian immigrants trapped in a modern form of indentured servitude ’ slavery is probably a better term ’ as they toil in the sugarcane fields of the Dominican Republic. Father Christopher Hartley, the son of a wealthy Englishman and a Spanish aristocrat, acts first as a guide, and then as a leading figure, in a graphic and dramatic cinematic tour of the harsh fields, the workers’ company-built bateyes (shantytowns), and, as much as possible, the luxurious homes and offices of the extraordinarily wealthy and powerful family who own the sugar plantations within Father Hartley’s sprawling parish.

You’d think Father Hartley would be a local hero. And the Creole-speaking Haitians are grateful for his help in getting them medical care, alleviating the worst of their wants, and providing spiritual succor. But many of the local Spanish-speaking Dominicans hate Father Hartley passionately, denouncing him as a ’devil' in demonstrations ostensibly whipped up by plantation owners.

So ’The Price of Sugar' delves not just into the plain and painful circumstances of workers who, incredibly in the 21st century, still must buy all their necessities at a company store. But director Haney also sketches out a less visible, but dominating, landscape of social, political, and economic forces all brought to bear on the sorrowfully expendable hands and backs of virtually-enslaved Haitian laborers.

Haney’s three-pronged documentary was filmed over three years, mostly in the Dominican Republic but also in Spain. ’The Price of Sugar' is narrated by Paul Newman. And, perhaps most of all, it boasts a ’cast' of people whose lives and struggles are now thankfully inerasable, a cast headed by Father Hartley, but populated by an array of powerfully opposed forces, their pawns and, most crucially, those Haitians who may be cruelly exploited in the shadows thrown up by global capitalism, but whose humanity still shines forth brilliantly.

More Information

More information about the film production and awards can be found at http://www.thepriceofsugar.com.

Distribution in Canada: Mongrel Media