Darwin's Nightmare (2004)

Forty years ago, a voracious predator was introduced into the waters of Tanzania's Lake Victoria where it quickly extinguished the entire stock of native fish. Its ecological impact aside, the Nile Perch became highly prized for its tender, plump fillets, hardly meeting the demand at elegant 4-star European restaurants. Huge, empty foreign cargo planes land to export the lake's gourmet bounty, taking out 55 tons of processed fish daily. In their wake, they leave starving villagers to scrounge a meal out of the discarded fish heads and rotting carcasses. With massive epidemics, raging civil wars, crime, homelessness, and drug-addicted children, the question becomes: what do the reportedly "empty" planes deliver to this destitute community? The answer is as shocking as it is devastating, and Darwin's Nightmare becomes a nightmare for all mankind.

Hobo Chang Ba to the Rescue!

Goshdarnit, i HAD NO IDEAR this film (Film? But it was all shot on digital video cameras...) was available commercially on DVD. The world must be corrupted.


If you feel comfortable with taking my word for it, I suggest you see DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE anyway, as fast as you can. I would further recommend that you do this alone. It's kind of like Nietzsche that way.
I'll say no more. I must be off.

Oh, and this is very important: WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T LET IT GET YOU DOWN! April 23, 2008

Great Documentary poor quality DVD

The documentary (I saw at the NY Film Festival a few years ago), was excellent and memorable prompting me to purchase the DVD. However, something seems to be missing in the dvd; perhaps the inadequate subtitles or the quality of the sound recording because I found it a strain to comprehend the dialogue during most of the film.

March 7, 2008

How much of life does this really represent?

I lived in Kenya for almost four years, and visited Tanzania while I was there. I can say that I did see the side of East Africa which is depicted, including
- awful, awful conditions for street children.
- a class / race system which went European, then "Asian" (Indian) then African
- the worst sort of foreigners coming in and grabbing what they could, including money and women.

But what I remember most were the positives, and I don't see them reflected in this... February 22, 2008

A messy affair.

This freeform documentary sounded promising, but in the end fell far short of expectations. Which were not high to begin with. There must not have been much in the way of competition for feature length documentaries if it was nominated for an Oscar. The filmmakers need to clean up the mess because it's all over the place. There is no clear statement(s) being made and no real direction being taken. Watching the extras on the DVD, there is a second semi-feature broken up into sections that hints at something larger, but goes just as far as the documentary does; nowhere. January 23, 2008

Survival of the fittest

Frankly, when I picked up this DVD, I didn't know what to expect. I found it devestating, and it should be required reading for anyone who writes fantasy novels like "It Takes a Village."

The film starts with a Russian transport plane flying into a Tanzania airport bordering on Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world. From there two parallel stories take place, I thought. Actually it's more like two and a half. Allow me to explain.

Lake Victoria used to have countless native species of fish. Apparently some time in the 1960s, someone put a bucket of Nile perch in the lake. They're predators so they not only wiped out everything else in the lake but they're also wiping themselves out, eventually to leave the lake essentially a desert. (Some of the people in the fish business indicated that they used to send out like 500 tons of fish a day. It's now down to more like 55 tons.) So that's story one of the "survival" cliche.

People the interviewer talks to include a singer/prostitute, "girl friend" of many a pilot, a pastor, a journalist, the nightwatchman at the Fisheries Institute (who makes, incidentally $1 a day!) and others.

One finds that the fish that are caught, fileted and sent to Europe and Japan. The fish waste is collected by the many poor in the area who're forced to eat what remains. (You have to see where those remains are "processed" to believe it!) Children fight over what they can get together, thereby losing half the rice and what remains of the fish. Adults are largely HIV positive so they're death rate is overwhelming. That's story number 2 of survival:

Both the lake (fish) and the Africans who labor along the lake (people) are facing virtual extinction.

In the meantime, some UN officials are congratulating themselves as to the value of the fish on the economy--as if they're incapable of even witnessing what's really going on.

What's the "half" of the story? Well, when one asks the pilots what they bring into Tanzania on their planes, they assert that the planes are empty. But the journalist asserts that they're loaded with weapons for the various military activites taking place in Africa (Congo, etc.) One of the pilots even admits that towards the end of the film. But he says, in effect, "that's business."

Oh, and Eliza, the singer/prostitute is killed in the process of the film's production by one of her Australian "clients." And kids stoop to sniffing plastic from the fish packaging. (It wasn't clear to me why they did that. However, years ago I experienced the poor in Guatemala sniffing glue to help curb their hunger. I presume the sniffing served the same purpose for Tanzanian kids.) And the nightwatchman, who used a bow with poison-tipped arrows for anyone breaking into the institution he protects, actually looks forward to a war as it will lead to a better income.

In short, the story summarizes what you might call the darker side of globalization. Those of us in the "developed world," in the film's context, those of us who import the fish, have a fantasy of what it takes to get the fish to us. So we romanticize the concepts of globalization, applauding ourselves for giving jobs to the poor. There IS a darker side of that story, and this film, while painful, does a commendable job of exposing that side. November 27, 2007

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