[act-ma] Thursday, 2/16: "Darwin's Nightmare" - Free UPandOUT film screening

[pf soto]

/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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