A statement a the end of Kleber Mendoça’s Oscar-nominated film The Secret Agent sparked a reflection: can cinema still produce culture today? CAM Sugar label manager Alessandro Sugar reflects on the cultural duties and power of archives in the restless digital age.

Recently, I went to the cinema in my hometown in Italy to watch Kleber Mendonça’s latest film, The Secret Agent. I loved the film, its plot, its music, its colors, and Wagner Moura’s astonishing performance. Yet there was something else that stayed with me long after the lights came up and I headed back home. 

As the credits rolled, a final note appeared on screen. More than 1,300 professionals had worked on the making of the film. It was a simple statement of fact, almost modest. But it carried enormous weight. In a time obsessed with profit, speed, and surface level success, there was something deeply reassuring about that reminder. Culture is not an accessory. It is an engine. It creates jobs, demands discipline, fosters collaboration. It builds economies in ways that are organic, human, and enduring.

I found real comfort in seeing a director like Kleber Mendonça underline this truth. Culture is not a luxury to be indulged when convenient. It is a vehicle for sustainable growth, for civic identity, for shared memory. 

Perhaps the message resonated with me because I work in the arts myself. I am twenty five and part of my family’s music company, now in its fourth generation. My work specifically involves restoring and bringing back to life a catalogue of more than 2,500 Italian and French film soundtracks, written between the 1960s and the 1980s by some of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. 

Every day in the archives is a reminder of the power of art when it is created with depth, study, and sincerity. The music we restore is not simply a document of its time, it is living proof that work grounded in knowledge and honesty does not fade. 

There is something profoundly moving in encountering pieces written decades ago that still feel urgent, still feel alive. Each score is a testimony to an art that was never meant to chase the moment, but to outlast it. And that is why it remains timeless. 

What moves me most is their solidity. Their training was deep, their musical education uncompromising. The notes we uncover, the studio recordings, the correspondence, all reveal artists who had studied profoundly and who approached their craft with humility and discipline. There is an absence of superficiality that feels almost radical now.

Many of them lived through what we call Italy’s economic boom, the years after the devastation of the Second World War. There was less money. There were fewer shortcuts. There was more room for talent to emerge without noise. Some built their own instruments. Others experimented with sounds from distant cultures without ever leaving home. They composed together, they researched, they refined. They did not chase attention. They chased excellence. They did so alongside extraordinary session musicians, artists of remarkable skill who followed their vision and enriched it with their own talent through endless hours in the studio.

Over time, the tools to create art have become accessible to everyone. This democratization has brought extraordinary opportunities. But it also produced an endless stream of work that often lacks depth, formation, and staying power. 

We are flooded with output, yet starved for legacy.We are surprised by performances that feel empty, by films that are merely aesthetic exercises, by political statements that present themselves as brave but are, in reality, clumsy attempts at courage, subtle alignments with prevailing opinion so as not to risk being a truly dissenting voice. 

This is why KleberMendonca’s message matters. If we want art to return to being an instrument of knowledge and influence, we must invest in it seriously, and we must involve as many young people as possible.

In September, I experienced a small moment that captured this idea perfectly. I had the privilege of meeting Enrico Pieranunzi, an elegant man in his seventies and a lifelong friend and pianist of Ennio Morricone. We spoke about football and about the past. 

At one point he told me a story. After a concert, a fan approached him and asked whether he had once composed under the pseudonym Pulsar Music. In the 1980s, some of his soundtracks had indeed been released under that name. The fan explained that those records had become cult classics in Japan. Enrico smiled as he recounted his response. He told the fan that he had spent much of his life trying to distance himself from that pseudonym. What mattered to him was not the name. It was the music. He wanted the work to speak for itself. He said it lightly, almost playfully. But behind that smile was the certainty of someone who understands that real art endures. 

Time may pass. Trends may shift. But depth, discipline, and sincerity leave a mark.We would do well to remember Kleber’s message. Culture is not ornamental. It is central to personal growth, to economic vitality, to the shaping of how we think and who we are. As innovation and technology accelerate, as they rightly will, it is up to us to decide how they are guided. 

Without culture, they are directionless. Culture will save the world, if we choose to take it seriously.

Opening image: Restoration work on lost tapes in the CAM Sugar archive. Photograph: Mattia Micheli.