Tag Archives: Best Documentary

Corona Virus: Lockdown Journey Journal, Day 56 of Level 1, 25 April 2021

 

Sunday 25 April 2021, Day 56 of Level 1 😷

Corona Gratitude 🙏

#Grateful for a peaceful easygoing day; for it being warmer than the 18C forecast, cloudy with rain forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday; for a Social Media morning; for reading about ‘Nomadland’, tipped to win Best Picture at the Oscars early tomorrow morning, having to go and see it at The Labia; for a lovely coffee ice cream at Unframed on Kloof Street, the World’s Best Ice Cream Parlour; for a quick speed power walk when I got home, just as the sun was setting, beautiful sunsets from Camps Bay Drive and Geneva Drive, lucky to get my 300 Discovery points; for buying two last boxes of figs from Peppertree Café, the fig season finished now; and for being happy, healthy, and free. 🙏💙 Continue reading →

Movie Review: ‘Food Inc.’ puts one off fast food (and most food) for life

The Oscar ‘Best Documentary’ nominated “Food Inc.” blames the fast food industry for having created a sick food production industry in the United States of America, which exploits poor workers, treats its animals inhumanely, causes global warming, and makes its consumers sick or kills them!  The movie makers say they are “hungry for change”!   (‘The Cove’ won the Oscar in this category)

Food Inc. is not for the squeamish, and is likely to make one vow to never buy any products from a standard supermarket (other than Woolworths, and even then one is not sure how their suppliers produce their foods) again, to only buy organic foods, where possible, to pay more for good quality food, and to NEVER go near a fast food outlet again.

Robert Renner is the movie director and co-writer of the script, and used the work of investigative ‘Fast Food Nation’ reporter Eric Schlosser, and Michael Pollan, author of ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’, to highlight the problems in the USA food industry.

The movie starts with the supermarket shelves overflowing with brands that give the farm-like feel in their logo’s and pack designs (the “Farmer Brown”-type treatment), but this seems to be a fraudulent depiction of the production of meat products, 80 % of which is in the hands of 4 or 5 production and packaging companies slaughtering 10 billion animals annually.   Chicken production has been altered over time, and a chicken is ready for slaughter in 45 days, compared to double that time in the past, and has bigger breasts to meet market demands.  The big meat producers buy up the farmer’s production, and encourage the farmers to expand the size of their operation all the time, thereby pushing the farmers to get into debt with their banks.  This gives the meat companies power over their supplier farms, to dictate to them how to grow their chickens, and how they are slaughtered.  So, for example, chickens are raised in overpopulated windowless chicken houses, which means that the chickens can barely walk, and do not resist when they are put into containers to be taken to the food factories.   Similarly, pigs and cows are on top of each other on farms, are raised on corn instead of grass, and their skin is covered in faeces.  This leads to undesirable e.Coli and semonella which can contaminate the meat, which is then sold in supermarkets or processed into hamburger patties.

The mother of young Kevin, whose son died from E.coli which was in her son’s hamburger at a fast food outlet, becomes a food “advocate”, lobbying the USA government that food producers who are regularly having to recall their food products from supermarkets or fast food outlets should be closed down.  This is in the face of economic pressure on American politicians to permit such producers to continue producing cheap food.

The corn production industry appears equally corrupt and 45 % of corn produced is genetically engineered.  Corn is purchased below production cost by meat-producing farmers, to keep the cost of meat low.   Corn is a surprise ingredient in numerous supermarket products such as ketchup, chips and other snacks, cola drinks, canned soup and more.   Tomatoes have been genetically engineered to not go bad so quickly, says the movie.   Up to 75 % of the processed supermarket foods one eats in the USA contain genetically engineered ingredients, which can lead to cancer, allergies and problems with toxins.

The fast food industry in the USA has grown dramatically since the drive-ins were started in the 1950’s, and thereafter the McDonalds were started and expanded internationally.   For many families, the low cost of fast food is a more affordable means of feeding a family than is buying healthy fruit and vegetables.  One family is interviewed, and the husband’s diabetes medication takes a big chunk of the family’s disposable money for their food purchases, forcing them to find the cheapest food to feed the family.   A group of scholars is shown, and each of them know more than one person with diabetes.

The result is that more and more Americans are becoming sick, and even die, as did young Kevin, and Americans are becoming more obese.   76 million Americans have become sick from eating contaminated meat, 32 500 have been hospitalised, and 5 000 have died.    Food labelling regulations in the USA do not demand that genetically engineered products are specified on food labels.   The FDA and USDA are criticised for being weak in not protecting the lives and health of the American population.

The documentary spends quite some time on Monsanto, a powerful company which has produced genetically engineered soya beans.  The company does not allow farmers to clean their beans to replant them, forcing all farmers to buy them from Monsanto.   The company sends investigators to farms, and sues farmers who do not follow this directive. The farmers have no protection from the company, and most farmers cannot stand up to its financial and legal power.

The movie shows how much pressure is placed on farmers to tow the food producers’ line, in that filming in chicken houses was not allowed, and all the food companies declined to be interviewed for the movie.  Cameras were smuggled into some of the production sites via staff, to provide footage for the movie.

Viewers are asked to get involved, to lobby for better controls over the food production industry, to eat at home (and therefore not buy fast food), to eat together as a family, to lobby for fair conditions for workers in food production companies (many are illegal workers from Mexico, who are arrested regularly, while their employers are not), to grow one’s own vegetables and fruit, to eat only seasonal foods, to not drink sweetened beverages, to pressurise restaurants to specify the calorie count of each dish, to lobby for schools to not sell junk food or sweetened beverages, to support farmers’ markets, and to do “meatless Mondays”.  The movie ends off on a positive note, interviewing a farmer who supplies an organic yoghurt to Wal-Mart.  Initially he was opposed to supplying a national food chain, but realised that Wal-Mart is bowing to customer pressure, and they flag organic products in the store, which the farmer says is a good thing.

Food, Inc, Cinema Nouveau, V&A Waterfront and Cavendish, Cape Town. www.foodincmovie.com

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

Movie Review: ‘The Cove’ is a whale of an Oscar movie

Whales and dolphins are an emotive topic, and Oscar-winning Best Documentary “The Cove” pulls out all the stops in appealing to the hearts of viewers of its documentary about the dolphin capture and slaughter in Taija in Japan.

The story starts with Ric O’Barry, who was an actor in the ‘Flipper’ TV series many years ago.   When the beloved dolphin ‘star’ of the series dies in his arms, in a suicide he says, he saw the light, and realised that it is cruel to keep dolphins in captivity.  Dolphins are particularly sound-sensitive, and any noise in a captive environment will make dolphins kill themselves.   Since he became aware of this, O’Barry became a dolphin activist, and was arrested on many occasions, being caught whilst releasing dolphins kept in captivity.  

When he heard about the bottle-nose dolphins that are cornered into a cove in Taiji by means of a banging sound from fishing boats, and then captured for resale to dolphinariums and aquariums around the world, at an income of $ 150 000 each, or killed for the sale of their meat, he decides that he must get involved, despite the danger this entails.   He connects with the Ocean Preservation Society, which takes on his cause, and he and its leader Louie Psihoyos, a previous National Geographic photographer who becomes the executive director of the movie, assemble a team of dedicated activists that believe in protecting dolphins.  Jointly the team installs underwater cameras and sound equipment in the cove, as well as on the hillside overlooking it, in a dangeous operation, so that the torrid actions of the Japanese fishermen can be documented for the world to see.  The red sea water after each killing is enough to get every cinema-goer involved.

Two further themes run through the movie.  Firstly, much footage comes from the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) 2006 meeting in St Kitts, which reflects the Japanese registering new members they pay to vote in favour of their whaling activities.  Many of them are islands in the Bahamas.   In the Commission meeting many of these are filmed sleeping during the proceedings, and not knowing which whale types pass by their countries!   It shows the IWC to be an ineffective organisation, which does not concern itself with the preservation of dolphins and porpoises, even though they are defined as whale species.  It also documents the abuse of the Japanese in being allowed whaling for “scientific research” purposes.   This is what the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is fighting in the Antarctic, south of Australia, actively attacking Japanese whaling boats in this whale sanctuary, to prevent them from killing whales.  The Society’s founder and leader Captain Paul Watson is as determined to stop the slaughter of whales as is Ric O’Barry in stopping the slaughter of dolphins.

Secondly, the documentary presents information that the 23 000 dolphins that are killed in Japan annually are sold as whale meat, unbeknown to the Japanese population, that would not touch dolphin meat as food.   Despite this, a school feeding programme had intended to serve dolphin meat to children at Japanese schools, until the results of the research initiated by the Ocean Preservation Society proved that dolphin meat contains poisonous levels of mercury.  The dolphin meat school feeding programme was stopped as a result.

Each of the activists that participated in the dangerous mission, and the documentary producers and cameramen deserve an Oscar for their brave actions, which could have led to their arrest.  O’Barry, the initiator of the dolphin rescue action, has expressed his regret for ever making dolphin petting and dolphin training popular via the “Flipper” TV series.

Actress and singer Hayden Panettiere and her boxing champion boyfriend Vladimir Klitschko recently visited Taiji, Osaka and Tokyo to focus attention on her ‘Save the Whales Again!’ campaign, on the strength of the outrage that ‘The Cove’ has created, and to encourage the fishermen of Taiji to make their money from other means.

Recently producer Louie Psihoyos took on a sushi restaurant, called Hump, in Santa Monica, and exposed that it serves whale meat.  It has since closed its doors.

The documentary encourages viewers to take part in the campaign to save dolphins.  Its website www.takepart.com invites viewers to write to their leaders and to spread the word about what the Japanese are doing in Taiji; to learn more about the effect on dolphins of being kept in captivity; to calculate one’s own mercury exposure; to assist ‘Save Japan Dolphins’; and to send donations to the filmmakers.   More information about the movie can be read at www.thecovemovie.com.

POSTSCRIPT 23/10: Earlier this week Cape Town dolphin-lovers showed their support to the dolphins of Japan and of the International Save Japan’s Dolphins Day, by hanging three blood-covered dolphin replicas from the unfinished highway in the Cape Town city centre.  We are grateful to the photographer Jordi Matas for the use of the photograph (www.portfolio.jordimatas.net).

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com