Just Saw "Darwin's Nightmare" Today -- HOLY S**T

[Leopolds Ghost]

You must see this movie.

If this had come out during the "Seattle Movement" demonstrations... well. Things might be different.

Then again, it would get no publicity, just like poor people in the wake of Katrina. Screw that!

Anyone else seen this powerful documentary and wish to comment on the issues raised by it?

[Bullwinkle925]

1. I hadn't heard anything about it. Thanks for the 'heads up'.

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. You're welcome... be sure and don't eat beforehand

And you may not want to eat fish afterwards. In fact I think this film would do for fish what Cesar Chavez did for grapes... if distributed widely which it is not.

Hypocrite me, my family just cooked up a delicious red snapper in fennel and butter sauce... made up recipe. I couldn't really enjoy it as much after seeing "Darwin's Nightmare"... I won't feel good about myself if I find out it came from Africa... or the Gulf Coast.

I suggest that this filmmaker, for his next project, film the prophetic book "Bayou Farewell" by Mike Tidwell (a neighbor of mine).

[greiner3]

2. Several review sites rated it well;

But no, I have not seen it. I looked at the reviews and it has nothing what so ever to do with evolution. I'm sure it has great photography though.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. "Great Photography"?? No, I am sorry that is not what this movie is about

But thanks for confirming the general Western impression that all films about Africa are either nature documentaries, or white people rescuing or being rescued from bloodthirsty savages.

I'm hoping to see lots of replies saying "this film has nothing to do with the subject of evolution" to confirm my fear that the culture wars have gnawed away the soul of the left.

Bonus points to folks that see it and come away complaining that it has nothing to do with evolution..!!!

See it -- don't read the racist / right wing / paternalistic professional critics first.

(Unless you appreciate the snarky things they said about Michael Moore or Hotel Rwanda or their constant criticism of war movies that fail to take a pro-soldier stance).

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. Darwin's Nightmare: an In-Depth Critique

Darwin's Nightmare is a tale about humans
between the North and the South, about globalization,
and about fish.

http://www.1001productions.net/LM/DAR/Darwin1.html

Some time in the 1960's, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria as a little scientific experiment. The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world. Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo: Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark center of the continent.

This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots.

Origins of the Nightmare

"The idea of this film was born during my research on another documentary, KISANGANI DIARY that follows Rwandese refugees in the midst of the Congolese rebellion. In 1997, I witnessed for the first time the bizarre juxtaposition of two gigantic airplanes, both bursting with food. The first cargo jet brought 45 tons of yellow peas from America to feed the refugees in the nearby UN camps. The second plane took off for the European Union, weight with 50 tons of fresh fish.

I met the Russian pilots and we became "kamarads". But soon it turned out that the rescue planes with yellow peas also carried arms to the same destinations, so that the same refugees that were benefiting from the yellow peas could be shot at later during the nights. In the mornings, my trembling camera saw in this stinking jungle destroyed camps and bodies.

First hand knowledge of the story of such a cynical reality became the trigger for DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE, my longest ever cinematographic commitment."

The location

"In the Eastern Congo alone,
the casualties of war on each single day
equal the number of deaths of September 11th in
New York."

[Leopolds Ghost]

6. Survival of the Fittest: "In a Darwinian sense, Capitalism has won."

Survival of the Fittest?

A Director's Note

"The old question, which social and political structure is the best for the world seems to have been answered. Capitalism has won. The ultimate forms for future societies are "consumer democracies", which are seen as "civilized" and "good". In a Darwinian sense the "good system" won. It won by either convincing its enemies or eliminating them.

In DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish and the ephemeral boom around this "fittest" animal into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order. I could make the same kind of movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would
be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil. Most of us I guess, know about the destructive mechanisms of our time, but we cannot fully picture them. We are unable to "get it", unable to actually believe what we know.

It is, for example, incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery, their sons become soldiers, and their daughters are turned into servants and whores.

It seems that the individual participants within a deadly system don't have ugly faces, and for the most part, no bad intentions. These people include you and me. Some of us are "only doing their job" (like flying a jumbo from A to B carrying napalm), some don’t want to know, others simply fight for survival. I tried to film the personalities in this documentary as intimately as possible. Sergey, Dimond, Raphael, Eliza: real people who wonderfully represent the complexity of this system, and for me, the real enigma."

[Leopolds Ghost]

7. Reviews for "Darwin's Nightmare" -- yes, I am self-kicking this

Capsule Reviews

"A fascinating cautionary tale in the guise of a documentary showing how, in the age of globalisation, things can evolve in the worst possible of unforeseen ways. Witty, incisive, heart-breaking, angry, shocking, and very imaginative, it's yet further proof that Austrian film-makers are now getting things right." TIME OUT UK

“Fascinatingly detailed and enriched by the candor and dignity of its shockingly deprived interview subjects. Sauper also has an admirable facility for getting close enough to his remarkably unguarded subjects - the pilots, politicians, factory owners, etc. - to show them not as villains, but as people.” VARIETY

“Billed as a study of the Nile perch, a ruthlessly effective predator introduced into Lake Victoria 30 years ago, Darwin's Nightmare is in fact hardly about that at all. True, these giant fish are a constant presence in Hubert Sauper's sobering documentary, but the focus is not the lake's ecosystem but the personal stories of those who work in the fishing, filleting and transport industries that have colonised the Tanzanian shore.

Every day, vast Russian planes arrive in Mwanza airport in the north west of the country, leaving with a daily cargo of 500 tons of Nile perch destined for the Russian and European markets. What these planes carry on their way into Africa is a mystery that nobody wants to talk about, until a solitary, subdued pilot admits that he flies tanks and other weapons into Angola. That's where the real money lies. The fish are simply a bonus that fill up the planes on the flight back to Europe.

The cruellest irony is that while so much fish is exported to Europe, Tanzania itself is struggling to avoid famine, so a secondary industry has grown up drying and roasting the decayed, discarded fish carcasses, salvaging what nourishment remains.

How much blame can be pinned on the fishing industry and how much should more properly be attributed to Africa's wider problems is open to question, but this is a desperately sad story, told by people who accept their plight with astonishing serenity. It is a great injustice that not all of them live through to the end of filming.” THE TIMES

Notice the little snuck-in bit about laying blame "more properly" at the feet of Africa in the last paragraph! As if Africa's wider problems have nothing to do with the European resource extraction industries that employ many people on the continent.

[undergroundpanther]

8. Kicked

Nominated

[Leopolds Ghost]

9. Anyone else seen or heard of this movie?

It is playing on only one screen here in the DC area...

(Landmark, an art-house chain.)

[Leopolds Ghost]

10. Update: Link to other post (Images from the Film)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5530464