The project, combining cultural anthropology and experimental video, is what might be termed "experimental ethnography." It grows out of questions concerning how to represent urban landscapes, and explores the reciprocal relationships between people and space: how we mark and are marked by the places we move through, how space is transformed into meaningful place. The documentary creates a collaged portrait of the Cuban capital, constructed from the stories of a diverse group of long-time city residents.

The video takes as its model the uneven and spontaneous process by which we come to know a place -- walking the streets, sitting in the parks, meeting the neighbors, seeing how people cook, and work and dress and amuse themselves -- in sum, through an accumulation of the thick details of daily life as it is lived in a given place at a particular historical moment. The video presents a unique and intimate portrait of a real place, Havana, which all too often is made to fulfill the utopian/dystopian projections and interests of politicians, exiles, world travelers, and others, who, regardless of the realities on the ground, are unable to detach from their long-held fantasies/nightmares about the little country that could, that did, that against all the odds, still (by a thread) is. All Roads Lead to the Sea provides viewers with an alternative image of the city, in which ordinary residents and "regular life" take center stage.

All Roads Lead to the Sea is grounded in the experiences of a small but diverse group whose commonality is the city itself. And while small details about the individual participants emerge, the focus is not who these people are, but rather, the city in which they live. Approaching its subject from the side, All Roads Lead to the Sea works cumulatively upon viewers, offering slices of a whole that we never see in its entirety. The structure of the video reflects the idea that knowledge is often partial and specific, and its acquisition more kaleidoscopic than linear. The intimacy of the stories revealed by long-time city residents is in resonant contrast to the video's visual style, which alternates between formally-framed observational footage and collaged segments that create points of view illustrative, yet literally impossible.

All Roads Lead to the Sea is sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts. Generous support was provided by Jerome Foundation and Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund.