IN CANE FOR LIFE

A full-length documentary that examines the harsh lives of the itinerant harvesters who eke out a living cutting sugarcane in the midwest of the state of Sao Paolo. In Cane for Life investigates what may be the last generation of Brazil’s 800,000 sugarcane cutters in the history of Brazil, since the federal government has decided that by the year 2001 the harvest will be collected by mechanical means. Machines that cut an equivalent of 200 laborers a day are substituting workers, who manually cut over 38,000 pounds each of sugarcane a day. Social problems in small cane-dependent towns are already arising. Thousands of men and women are being laid off. The director and his crew spent seven months in plantations in the region of Dois Corregos, holding interviews and closely following the day-to-day life of the laborers for whom illiteracy, lack of health care, and exploitation are a common denominator.