HeilmannCraigAnnotation1

Craig Heilmann, Film Annotations

1. Title, director, and release year? //Darwin’s Nightmare //, Hubert Sauper (2004) 2. What is the central argument or narrative of the film? It is a film set in Tanzania. People are starving even though the main export of the country is fish. This is happening solely because of greed. The companies that produce and sell the fish are so caught up in making money that they refuse to spare any profit to feed their own people. These starving people resort to scrounging around for any scraps they can, even if the little food they actually do find is bad and completely infested with disease. The film is an insight into how big businesses like these fishing companies can have a complete disregard for the human life and care only about making money. 3. What sustainability problems does the film draw out? The sustainability problem drawn out in this film stems from an organizational standpoint. Big business is the enemy here and cares more about itself and making money than the people who are actually making its money. The leaders of the company live well, while the fishermen, factory workers, and even security guards live in extreme poverty. They are paid low wages unsuitable to provide for their families or even just themselves. This brings about an increase in crime, disease, and drug use throughout the entire area, which brings up a different kind of sustainability problem, behavioral problems. The means in which these people cope with their problems are bringing them down even further. Death is no stranger to these people, as many resort to sex and drugs to deal with the struggles of life in poverty. Since they are poor and uneducated protection is not used and disease is spread. It is a terrible cycle, which will be very hard to break. 4. What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why? The parts I found most compelling were mostly linked towards the children and how they were raised in relation to the overall issues of the film. Because families were poor, people were stressed, and because they were stressed and most times uneducated it seemed like they often took out their frustration on the weaker ones; mainly the children. During the film you saw numerous accounts of grown ups beating their kids. Violence was a huge issue as you also saw fighting between the children as well. The drug use, especially with the younger children was also striking. You wouldn’t think that would be happening, regardless of the hard times each individual faced. 5. What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by? I guess the only thing that I feel hurt the film was the lack of factual information that was presented which would have made it a bit more real for someone who doesn’t really know much about the area or the problems going on in other countries than their own. Scaling out to make connections to the rest of the world would have helped a lot.

6. What additional information does this film compel you to seek out? Where do you want to dig deeper and what connections do you want to make with other issues, factors, problems, etc.? This film makes me wonder what Tanzania was like before the introduction of the perch into Lake Victoria. Were the main exports of the area still fish related or did they have other exports that got lost along the way? It seems like the introduction of the perch, although seemed like a blessing at the beginning, really only helped the owners of the companies producing the fish, leaving the majority of citizens in poverty and starvation.

7. What audiences does the film best address? What kind of imagination is fostered in viewers? Do you think the film is likely to change the way viewers think about and act on environmental problems? It is obvious that this sort of film is directed towards the people who are really the exact opposite of these people. People (Americans) who live comfortable lives and have never seen anything like this. It is meant to be an eye-opener to these people to not only help them appreciate what they do have, but maybe even promote them to make a difference, not just to Tanzanians, but to anyone who is less fortunate than they are. 8. What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film? As far as points of intervention go, the film left it very open ended. It didn’t appear to give many or any lists organizations to look up to help, but rather acted, like I said before, as an eye-opener to get people to react in a positive manner. It was a film meant for people like us to make us see how less fortunate people really live to encourage us to act and appreciate what we do have. 9. What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental educational value? To help the region, they could have given us some kind of list of organizations, which are acting to help these people so people who have the means to help people like this can do so. If you don’t make it easy for people to help in today’s society they rarely do.