[act-ma] Thursday, 2/16: "Darwin's Nightmare" - Free UPandOUT film screening
pf soto
pfsoto at mynas.com
Wed Feb 15 16:13:09 PST 2012
/Darwin's Nightmare/
[/climbing the evolutionary ladder on the backs of Africans/]
Thursday, February 16th, in Cambridge [please download & distribute
flyer <http://rule19.org/download-film/film-120216-Darwins%20nightmare.pdf>]
/<http://rule19.org/download-film/film-120216-Darwins%20nightmare.pdf>/This
is a tale about humans between the North and the South, and about
globalization, and about fish.
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. The new fish multiplied so fast ...its white
fillets are today exported all around the world.
The larger scope of the story explores the gun trade to Africa that
takes place under the covers -- Russian pilots fly guns into Africa,
then fly fish back out to Europe. 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. The hazards and consequences of this trade are
explored, including the pan-African violence propagated by constant flow
of weapons into the continent.
If it is a "survival of the fittest" world, as Darwin concluded, then
the capitalist interests that fund the gun runners are climbing the
evolutionary ladder on the backs of the Africans in this stark Darwinian
example. Much like the foreseeable extinction of the Lake Victoria
perch, and death of Lake Victoria itself, the Africans are in grave
jeopardy, even as they survive in the only ways they know how.
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.
/"...an extraordinary work of visual journalism, a richly illustrated
report on a distant catastrophe that is also one of the central stories
of our time./" ~ NYT
"/Sauper’s delicately horrific documentary is a short, sharp slap in the
face of the developed world, and a long overdue one at that/." ~ Austin
Chronicle
"/It immerses you in its reality one toe at a time, until suddenly you
are in over your head, gasping for air as the horror of the situation
reveals itself in all its savage devastation/." LA Times
"/This isn't Darwin's nightmare; it's our own/." Howard Schumann, IMdb
"/Mr Sauper has done something extraordinary. Without putting in any
bias, he has allowed this story to unfold on its own. I've never, EVER
seen a documentary like this/." ~B Merritt, Amazon.com
Director Hubert Sauper says:
"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. Hearing and
seeing the same stories over and over makes me feel sick. After
hundreds of years of slavery and colonisation of Africa,
globalisation of African markets is the third and deadliest
humiliation for the people of this continent. The arrogance of rich
countries towards the third world (that's three quarters of
humanity) is creating immeasurable future dangers for all peoples."
*
When/where*
243 Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor,
entrance on Windsor
rule19.org/videos <http://rule19.org/videos/>
Please join us for a stimulating night out; bring your friends!
free film, free refreshments, & free door prizes.
[donations are accepted]
/
"You can't legislate good will - that comes through education./" ~ Malcolm X
*UPandOUT film series* - see rule19.org/videos <http://rule19.org/videos/>
Why should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc
etc - for billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for
the loss of liberty and civil rights...
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