Rum & Men is a photographic portrait on the site of the Saint-Maurice rum distillation plant making a brand known by some as LA BELLE CABRESSE. Production takes place in Saint Laurent du Maroni, on the border between French Guyana and Surinam, former Dutch Guyana - Amazonia.

A story by Julien Vandanjon-Rancoule, then a young freelance photojournalist, as part of an educational documentary filming assignment produced by Pole Production under the direction of Dimitri Tuban. Footage were shot on 27 October 2009, remastered in February 2022.

"La Rhumerie" is the property of the Prévot family, adventurers who, as many, came in the 19th century to try their luck in gold panning in Amazonia. But it is mainly the story of these men : the workers.

Work at the cane factory is thankless and dangerous. Sugar coats all the surfaces, making them sticky and attracting bees and wasps. Cane leaves must be handled with care, as the edges are sharp. Cane straw is highly flammable, as are alcohol vapours, and leaks can play a role in accelerating the start of a fire, or even an explosion.

The Guyanese climate, already hot and humid all the time, takes its toll on these workers, who toil in the noise and steam with the same gestures and the same piston-driven machines as when they were invented in the mid-19th century. A few metal guardrails and sheet metal plates seem to do little to protect their hands from the gargantuan gears that must be constantly fed, monitored and oiled...

Bushinengués, Creoles, these workers marked by their labour are a reflection of Guiana, which remains a land of pioneers, far from the big maps, far from all the comforts of a television that sends back an anachronistic image of this reality. You can see in their eyes a determination and pride that commands respect. Here we hardly speak. Because there's too much noise, or simply because everything that needs to be said has been said. They're tough, they're serious, but they're beautiful. This factory is their tool, it's their life, probably that of their parents and maybe their children. It's one of the last that didn't burn down and take everything. It's a collective effort to keep it alive, a synchronised dance.

"These men are the same ones who made my island, Réunion, the ones I grew up with. I saw these machines lying inert by the roadside, rotting in the old gully beds. The story of these men is a story that needs to be told and passed on. It's a task that I carry on today."

Rachel Weasel Fisher, aka Belette Demi-Sel is one-of-a-kind sailor of the tumultuous seas of the mind and creation. This must inherit some of it from her Britain roots even if she now lives and work in Montpellier on Mediterranean shores. Under her skillful hands, characters & creatures come to life on paper, on skin (she also is a tattoo artist) or in ephemerical fragile papercut installations.

She doesn't like being called punk because she is a very proud & sensitive person with a softy almost-childish fragile paper skin and a true love for things and people under a tough armor of criticisim and subtle dark humor. I say this is the best proof of it, as if portraying the world around her as a fantasmagoric bestiary of cute and adventurous animals were innocent and cute. Do not forget sometimes a thin paper sheet can be sharp & cut through skin as if by some of the most treacherous blades.

Her Art is deeply feeded by her attention to detail with a high degree of narrative construction in graphics depictions which reminds of the 19th century Cabinets of Curiosities and breathe inspirations of engravings and sketches from the explorers notebooks of another time.

She is definitely an Artist of the most plural identities, and a one to meet and follow.

Born in 1955.
Originally from the Plateau d'Albion, where dry stone grows at the base of Mont Ventoux. Hamlet of C., centre of half the Universe. Country roots. And elsewhere.

When I graduated as an architect in 1979, I tried, in the Manosque region, to link each project and construction to the six elements (space, air, fire or light, water, earth, plants), to the three times they have passed through, and to the culture of human groups and their way of appropriating the place.
Following a decisive encounter that made me a little more Sino-Reunionese than I was before, I landed at the end of 1989, with our children, on Reunion Island. Where I am a graft, alongside the stumps. Curious to understand the six elements and the spirit of their cultures. Many people live here, from countries with strong identities less than a thousand kilometres away, as well as several. What they have in common is a muted legacy from the colonial era, with its speculative plantation economy, experienced or endured. Slavery. Commitment. Migration. Mixed races. The accelerated presence of the Republic since the 1960s, and of Europe after that. Superimposed memories and complexities.
And so, since 1990, as an architect living and working on Reunion Island, I've been imbuing my work on the island with its six elements - which vary greatly from one part of the island to another - and with its history and cultures. By questioning them, by interpreting them according to by questioning them, by interpreting them according to contemporary needs, both local and universal to human beings, in order to protect as best we can, but also to connect and open up to as best we can.
And by passing on the knowledge, whenever possible.
So it was that in 1991-92, for the purposes of an urban planning study on a 20-hectare site in Bel-Air, photographs were taken of the old Kerveguen sugar factory, its remains colonised by sugar cane _ the very cane from the surrounding area that, once cut with a sabre, was transported there, pressed, distilled and processed _ and the sugar cane from its current surroundings and immediate surroundings.
Since 2020, I have been a member of A.F.A.C.974 (#).

(#) Association Familles Amies de la Capeline_ 974
Centre d'Accompagnement Pédagogique en Ligne et d'Innovation Educative (Centre for Online Pedagogical Support and Educational Innovation)

Raymond CARRETIER, architect d.p.l.g. n°0A 22590

Former student of French Gobelins Art Academy, Coryne BOYER lives and work in Reunion Island as an emerging but thriving portraitist, graphic designer and painter. Curiously, she do not consider herself as an activist but more as a decorative artist (her facebook pseudo is Cocodeco974) even if her work is made of interesting paradoxes and she pro-actively evangelists creators through workshops and training sessions. Most of her creation uses low-cost and often considered as sub-culture toolset like "bic" pens with mastery.

Her favorite subjects focuses on heritage sites from Asia to Reunion Island where places, animals and artefacts are depicted in a suspended state of decay : between melancholy, relaxation and some eerie expectation for the certainty of an imminent disappearance.

Diving into her work is like travelling into a world of creole urban explorers, as if a forgotten corrugated metal sheet house - slowly swallowed by vegetation - have been some lost civilization temple through the eyes of an humble commoner.

Coryne will share a glitch of her creative process with our audience during the "Heritages & Créolités exhibition" via a recorded video available on display.