Rovereto+Darwin's+Nightmare


 * Title:** Darwin’s Nightmare
 * Director:** Hubert Sauper
 * Release Year:** 2004

The central narrative of the film revolves around the fishing of Nile Perch, a non-indigenous fish introduced into Tanzania’s Lake Victoria. The invasive predatory fish had decimated the populations of fish native to the lake, and caused several to go extinct. The entire economy of Tanzania is now based around the Nile perch, which are caught and processed for shipment to Europe. The societal and environmental effects of this reliance on a single species of fish are explored in this documentary.
 * What is the central argument or narrative of the film?**

The film clearly shows the unbalanced effect of globalization, as the fish are caught and processed in Tanzania, and flown to Europe by Russian cargo pilots. The fish workers are paid very little to catch or to process the fish, and all the expensive fish that the Africans caught are sent off to Europe, still leaving the Africans poor. This is the case for any economic interaction between rich countries and developing nations. The rich countries will buy all the resources of the developing nation at low prices, and the little money the nation gets will not be enough to get them out of poverty. The local governments see only the immediate profit. The one processing plant manager that was interviewed, Dimond, feels the Nile Perch are a benefit to Tanzania, as they bring jobs and foreign investment. A minimum of 500 tons of Nile Perch are processed a day.
 * What sustainability problems does the film draw out?**

The local governments, instead of regulating the production and sale of the fish to increase to revenue gained and increase the quality of life in the local community, are more interested in the fish trade. The depth of poverty in the cities and villages is so great that suicides are common news among the fishermen. In one village of Tanzania, 40 – 50 fishermen died within the six months prior to the filming, having died of HIV/AIDS. With no other source of income, their widows become prostitutes to make money, and then they spread HIV to their customers, most of which are from that village. This problem is both about the prostitution and the education these people receive. There is little taught to these people about sex and sexually transmitted diseases like HIV. The local priest for the village where all the farmer deaths happened was asked about the problem. He said it was devastating, but when asked if he tells men to use condoms, he said he does not because pre-marital sex is a sin and so condoms are unnecessary. Prostitution seems to be an unfortunate draw for young women, as there are few options for making money and the ones that sell themselves to the foreign pilots and businessmen make the most. These women are therefore just as reliant on and victimized by the fishing industry as the fishermen.

The lack of an education is related to the poverty in the area. I’m sure the fish processing managers have a healthy income, but the workers sure don’t. Without money, they are unable to get an education, and will thus remain in this terrible situation. The one prostitute interviewed a couple of times in the film expressed a desire for getting an education, but there really was no way for her to accomplish this. Lack of education also leads to the abuse of substances to get high. Some of the homeless children burn the fish packaging and inhale the vapors to get high, which then makes them go into a deep sleep. They have no idea what the health implications are, and there is even the immediate danger of these children getting sexually abused while they are sleeping and are unable to wake themselves.

The lack of education ties into conflict and war as well, as shown by the interview with Raphael, the night guard at the fish research institute. The filmmaker is discussing war with him, and Raphael said that part of the problem is there hasn’t been war in while, and that is why things are so bad. He talks about how joining the army comes with an income and food. When asked if he is afraid of war, he says no, that war is simple; you just kill the people on the other side, and try not to get killed yourself. He said he does not feel bad for the people he is fighting, that it is war, and in war what you’re supposed to do is kill.

War is another huge issue always in the background during the film. There was the war in Angola and the Congo, and there are several regional conflicts going on at the time of the film. The Russian cargo pilots say that their planes come in to Tanzania empty, and they just come for the fish and leave. Later in the film, however, the navigator of the air cargo crew says that they bring huge cargo boxes, but he doesn’t know what’s in them. At one point in the movie an article in the local newspaper states that arms were being smuggled in through Mwanza airport (the airport in Tanzania) for armed conflict. At the end of the film, one of the Russian flight crew members admits that they brought tanks to Angola.

I found the layout and style of the film to be very effective in bringing the problems caused by the Nile Perch to light. The film relied on the emotion and the conveyance of this emotion to the viewer. I believe that this connection between the viewer and the people in the film could not have been done in a more effective and compelling way.
 * What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?**

As for specific parts in the movie, the scenes with the villagers and the fish frames hanging on racks was a sobering and depressing image that showed just how terrible life is in the shadow of the processing plants. These poor people have nothing to eat other than the discarded skeletons of the Nile Perch. The viewer can almost smell the stench of rotting fish through screen. These people have to walk through the fish waste and anything else that fall off the carcasses. The imagery of children playing with these carcasses made the whole atmosphere of the scene that much worse.

The story of Eliza, the prostitute introduced early in the movie, was also a compelling, yet sad point in the movie. Eliza is a prostitute who has many of the airplanes crews as her clients. It seems as if she was trying to make the best of the situation she found herself in, and when interviewed one night by the filmmaker, she expressed the desire to better herself by getting an education, despite there being no realistic way of her accomplishing this. She was a very likeable person, but later in the film it is revealed that she was killed one night, killed by one of her clients. This brings the heartache and devastation of the Tanzanians’ situation to the viewer, and it was a very powerful device in the film.

The film was done so well that there are very few weaknesses to pick out. One of these that I found to be bothersome was many of the segments with the Russian flight crew. In many of these, it’s just the crew sitting around watching TV, or watching videos or pictures of themselves on their many world travels. I am not sure what message the filmmaker is trying to put forth with these segments. If is just to establish that the Russians feel no ties to Tanzania or its people, I think that is established through other means in the film. If it is there to show how different their lifestyle is compared to the people in Tanzania, that point is a fairly obvious one that didn’t need to be made. The only real purpose these segments could have served would be in showing the personal side of the people most likely involved in smuggling weapons into Africa, making the point that they are people caught up in all the problems of globalization, just like the people of Tanzania.
 * What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by? Why?**

The film best addresses people at least somewhat familiar with what globalization is, and the inequality it amplifies, along with the general current affairs in Africa. The film doesn’t really spend any time explaining the issues it presents, so if someone who had never heard of the things mentioned in the film, they would be lost to the meaning of that part of the documentary. It is a film that relies on the empathy and compassion of the viewers in order to get the full effect of the problems presented. I suppose that people who are extremely apathetic and unfeeling would not get much out of this film, but if anyone was not moved by this film, then any message conveyed in any way would be lost on them. The content and style of the film make it one more geared toward adults and adolescents, as the content is raw and uncensored, an aspect of the film that is part of what makes it so powerful. There are no illustrations or informational graphics to present onscreen, so it really requires the viewer to pay attention and to actively listen.
 * What audiences does the film best address? Why?**

I found the film to be incredibly effective as it is, but there are some things that could have been done to increase its environmental educational value. For one, more experts on the issues could have been interviewed, if only to lay a better framework for the viewer to follow. There are many issues in the film that it just expects the viewer to know about, and this could be remedied by segments that explain what wars are going on in Africa, what the poverty rate is in Tanzania, or what the governmental system in Tanzania is like. Some background could also have been given on past weapons trading between the industrialized nations and Africa.
 * What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental education value?**

There were no real solutions included in the film, as I believe it was intended to showcase the severity of the issues only, and that goal was accomplished quite well. However, some points of intervention in the problems with globalization would be to create stronger international regulations on the levels and direction of trade between industrialized and developing nations. These regulations should protect the local economies of these developing nations, hopefully who the result that there would be fewer instances of exploitation of these nations and their resources. Education initiatives should be required in these developing nations, again to prevent the exploitation of their populace, as well as improving the quality of life in these nations as the educated people become a larger portion of the population and begin to improve their country and economy.
 * What kinds of action and points of intervention are suggested by the film? If the film itself does not suggest corrective action, describe actions that you can imagine being effective.**

The film had me very interested in the Nile Perch, and just how it got into Lake Victoria and is now practically the nucleus for all these problems. I found a journal entry in //Ecological Applications// that details the devastating effect the introduction of the Nile Perch had on the Lake Victoria ecosystem. The Nile Perch is near the top of the food chain in the lake, and so the other fish in the river really had no defense against this new fish in their ecosystem. Populations of indigenous fish, like many species of Cichlid, plummeted, while the population of Nile Perch grew ever larger. Ironically, the very industry that was built around the Nile Perch is now causing the population to slowly decline, and this decline is now allowing the endemic species that are still in the Lake to bounce back.
 * What additional information has this film compelled you to seek out?**

I also looked into the war in the Congo that was mentioned in the film when talking about arms smuggling. I found a BBC news article that lays out a timeline of the Second Congo War from its official beginning on August 2, 1998 to its date of publication in January of 2001. The last event it lists if the assassination of Congolese President Kabila, reportedly performed by one of his bodyguards. His son Joseph took over as acting leader. After that, Three thousand Congolese soldiers who fled to Zambia following an increase in fighting were sent back to the Democratic Republic of Congo. An article published in 2008 from Reuters on the war said that the “conflict and its aftermath, in terms of fatalities, surpass any other since World War II.” The devastation of this war was astounding, and makes the issue of arms smuggling in the film that much more terrible.


 * References:**

Journal article about Nile Perch and its effects on Lake Victoria: < []>

BBC Congo War article from 2001: < [] >

Reuters article on Congo War from 2008: < [] >