La Chacina de "La Suerte"

Director: Jan Nimmo ( Spain/ Scotland - 22 minutes)

Jan's third film, La Chacina de La Suerte, continues the theme of production, but in this instance she focus on small scale slow grown meat production. As a regular visitor to La Sierra de Huelva, Southern Spain, she has become interested in the agriculture of the dehesa (cork and holm oak forests). One of its products is cured ham, arguably the best jamón serrano in the world... Many families still keep their own pigs and slaughter them in the winter months. The pig kill provides meat, sausages, black pudding and cured hams for family consumption for the year that follows. This process involves no chemicals, no pigs being transported by lorry, no supermarkets and no meat on plastic trays... This film documents the process (not for the faint of heart!) but it is also a portrait of a family who still grow and rear most of their own food and who know how to celebrate this!

Synopsis

Picadero La Suerte is a family run stables in Galaroza, in the heart of the Sierra de Huelva in north-western Andalucia, Spain. The owner, Iluminado, is a man who loves the place he lives and works in with a passion. Green and rich in water, Galaroza is a once thriving agricultural town which now like many other serrano villages has declined in population and its huertas (vegetable plots) and traditional methods of farming are also in decline. But Iliminado is an interface between the past and the present and he conserves many agricultural traditions as he grows his own vegetables, milks his goats, keeps hens and rears Iberian black pigs to produce meat, sausages and black puddings (Chacina) and exquisite cured hams for his family. This film documents the annual pig kill and the celebration that follows. It is also is a portrait of a family who are still in touch with what they eat.

DVDs will available for screenings soon contact Jan.

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