The Nightmare of Darwin

Set of themes of film

The film takes for starting argument the traffics around the airport of Mwanza, in Tanzania, on the edges of the Lake Victoria, but, according to the Réalisateur, it is not a film on the Lake Victoria, and even less on a Poisson, but well against the Mondialisation and its consequences.

A fish introduced into the Years 1950, the Perche of the Nile ( Lates niloticus ) replaced most of the 200 species different of fish autochtones (involving a modification of the Biotope and the extinction of many species) and its trade, became flourishing, feeds since nearly twenty years the tables and the restaurants of the countries of North, with exports which can exceed 500 tons of fish nets per day. The aforementioned pole is prepared on the spot in factories also financed by international organizations and 40% of the production remain to nourish the local population, instead of small local fish easier to preserve. Around this massive export all the traffics related to an intense and brutal urbanization develop (treatment plants): Prostitution, AIDS, various violences. The author insinuates without it to really show that the airfreighters (Russian or Ukrainian) do not return in neutral and could feed the traffic of weapons bound for the area of the Big lakes. This traffic of weapons that the poster of film underlines (the edge of the pole becomes there the silhouette of a Kalachnikov), is never shown during the documentary one - what generated a sharp polemic well after the exit of film.

Production

It is a Documentaire of Hubert Sauper (France - Austria - Belgium, 2004,1h50), a production supported by Arte and WDR. Turned as of 2001, for six months, distributed over 4 years, it was produced in particular by three companies. No comment appears in film, writing and carried out by Hubert Sauper.

Collaborator artistic, Assistant realizer: Sandor Rieder, Nick Flynn
operator Chief: Hubert Sauper
Sound engineer: Cosmas Antoniadis
Assembler: Denise Vindevogel
Assembler sound: Veronika Hlavatsch
Producing:

Edouard Mauriat
Antonin Svoboda
Martin Gschlacht
Hubert Toint
Hubert Sauper

Produces by the companies:

Thousand and one productions, Paris
Coop99 Film Produktion , Vienna (Austria)
Saga Film , Brussels

In collaboration with:

ARTE (France and Germany) and WDR (Germany) (Editor Sabine Rollberg) like VPRO Amsterdam, SVT Stockholm, YLE 2 Helsinki.

With the support of: National center of cinematography (CNC) - France -- Vienna Fund Film (FFW) - Austria -- Center Cinema and the Audio-visual one of the French Community of Belgium and the Walloon télédistributeurs - Belgium as well as the support of the Comité for the cancellation of the debt of the third world (CADTM) which animates debates around film.
Distribution: AD Vitam, with the support of the French Association of the Cinemas of Art and Test.

Price and Festivals

Price of the Best Documentary film European - Price of the European cinema 2004
Price Europa Cinemas - Mostra of Documentary Venice 2004
Grand Prix - Festival of film of the Environment of Paris 2004
Price of the Public - Between sights, festival of Belfort 2004
Grand Prix of Best Film - Festival of Copenhagen 2004
the Price of Best Documentary - Festival of Montreal 2004
Official Selection - International festival of film of Toronto 2004
Official Selection - International festival of film of Saint-Sebastien 2004
Grand Prix of jury - Festival foregrounds of Angers 2005
César of the best first film 2006

Polemics

The nightmare of Darwin was the subject of a sharp debate as for its “honesty”, as this extract testifies some to an article of Libération of February 27th, 2006 but also of the counter-enquiry carried out by Le Monde , the following day:

Nominated with the Césars in the category “better first film” also with the Oscars like better documentary, the Nightmare of Darwin , documentary of Hubert Sauper, sharp success in 2005, is disputed in number 635-636 of the review Modern times by the historian of the cinema François Garçon. By taking the example of the exploitation of the pole of the Nile in Tanzania in the town of Mwanza, at the edge of Lake Victoria, Sauper delivered a documentary catastrophe on the African daily newspaper crushed by the Western Libéralisme drawing to its only predatory profit in the renewable resources of the country. The film also speculates in a traffic of weapons conveyed on board large Russian transport aircrafts being used for export of fish.

According to François Boy, “the indictment of Sauper is of a frightening effectiveness” but also overall manipulator. He recalls that the pole of the Nile was introduced into the years 1950 within the framework of a development program of the OECD which is disputed, of aucuns claim that it was introduced for sporting fishing by colonists, and that the only ones to be opposed to this type of policy at the time amounted in the rows of the extreme right-hand side. The film leaves think that the entirety of fish slips by towards the rich countries. However, according to Garçon, “74% of what are fished in Lake Victoria is not exported, and 40% of this total will be consumed on the spot”. In the same way, the magazines of BBC tallied approximately plane where one sees photographs of black soldiers carrying of the cases (implied of illegal weapons delivered by the Western countries) would go back to October-December 1997 and would be stereotypes of an action “registered in the international law” in support for the government of the Sierra-Léonais Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, reversed by a putsch.

Lastly, the film shows Mwanza like a pourrissante small town. However it is about the second larger urban center of Tanzania. “Exit social contrasts intra-African, the industrial local middle-class woman, the large park of cars, the modern buildings, all signs of industrial modernity which oppose the thesis ultramiserabilist of Africa scotchée with misfortune, stereotype conforms it is true with waiting of the Western spectator. ”. The realizer answers by a furious but little argued letter.

On the Corriere beyond Will be , critic film Italian, Paolo Mereghetti (author of an encyclopedia of the cinema) adds that according to him “ Garçon is not right to dispute this film for its lack of historical precision. Sauper wants especially to speak the language about the spectators, by using the cinema like an instrument of opening on reality, as a glance which is not satisfied with what he sees but pushes the spectator to be looked at beyond, in-depth, by instilling the doubt and by raising the questions to which others will have to find the answer ”.

François Garçon was interested in film because that Ci does not show the images of the weapons of supposed traffic. This one reproaches also skew altermondialist film (interview radio France Inter April 24th, 2006). It is advisable to specify that Mr. Garçon supports his demonstration on an information retrieval and not an investigation on the spot. Thereafter, and in order to answer this critic, whatever is legitimacy, Mr. Garçon supplemented his work by an investigation on the spot. The facts reported by Mr. Garçon showing possible handling are to date not disputed by Mr. Sauper.

During the emission of Freeze frame of April 30th, 2006, whose main theme is this film, one learns that the main issue of film is that the traffic of weapon is not proven (without one being able to exclude this possibility), that the weapons which were seized on the airport of Mwanza it were following engineering problems on a Antonov Year-12 which had to land in Tanzania; the 35 tons of weapons came from Tel Aviv and went in Uganda. According to Judith Bernard, one should not take this film for an investigation, documentary or a report, but for what it is, according to it: a tale, an account, that the Westerners perceived like documentary. The Westerners would have assimilated it as such by setting up logical connections of the narration to places where there was not because of nature of the document.

With reading on the monthly magazine Research , Nov. 2006: “The paradox of Darwin”. Scientific and historical explanation of the modification of Lake Victoria. Identical phenomena arrived at the Lac of Annecy 30 years ago.

Quotations

“the children of Europe receive grape and the children of Angola receive weapons for Christmas” - the Ukrainian aviator in film.

“the principle darwinien applied to our companies: “the best” system, most extremely, gained” - Hubert Sauper about his film.

“My films are as the radiological images of a lung on which one sees black spots. The images which it is necessary for the doctor to show the patient who it is sick” - Hubert Sauper

“This film is a declaration of love of the realizer in the African continent” - an American newspaper (Hubert Sauper is of agreement with this definition of its film)

See too

Films on similar topics

Genesis of a meal (1978), of Luc Moullet, On the production of bananas and tuna limps about it, in Ecuador, with the Senegal and in Brittany.
Pineapple (1984) of Amos Gitaï, denouncing a similar problem for the production of the Pineapple to the Filipino .
Eldorado of plastic (2001) of Arlette Girardot, déononcant the exploitation of labor immigrant in the greenhouses of the South of the Spain for the production under greenhouses of fruit and vegetables feeding the Europe.

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