Thomas Lehner -Los Refrigeradores - Hot nights, cold fridges

LOS REFRIGERATORES

Year: 2008
Director: Thomas Lehner
Lenght: 90 min
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English

Cuba on ice? Naturally it is served in cocktails at the beach bar. But for the island’s residents, keeping things in a cold, solid state is a matter of survival and constitutes a daily struggle. The Chinese brand Haier is dominant in Cuba. In the 1920s, a refrigerator factory was built in Qingdao, China, to supply the Chinese market. In 2006 Haier shipped 300,000 fridges to the island.The units are being made available to Cuban families by the government at subsidized prices.The refrigerators are passed down from one generation to another, caressingly maintained and restored.They are central to the household and confront their owners with the energy woes of a land that finds itself isolated at the end of the Cold War, no longer able to trade sugar for
oil: Ice is civilization.