On Feb 4, 2010, at 4:54 PM, ashok _ wrote:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 6:29 PM, Thaths <[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Zeenath Hasan
<[email protected]> wrote:
1hr 47min account at the supply end of another debilitating binge,
http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/reviews.htm
I was not actually that impressed with Darwin's Nightmare as a
documentary. It was sold to me as revealing a shocking truth
("Weapons
for fish") but in the actual documentary there was only one place
where a drunken Russian pilot (whose veracity is iffy) passingly
hints
at this supposed truth.
I saw this deeply flawed documentary when it came out ...Most of it is
a jumble of anecdotal video shown out of context.
e.g. oh the poor africans eating tail and backbone of the fish and not
the flesh parts ... while the fact is, in most lake traditions that
backbone and the tail are considered the tastiest parts of the fish.
Then there is the forced interview with the watchman at night ...
where the director asks pointed questions and forces a reply and wants
us to take the replies seriously. About the russians.... thaths has
said enough.
Some of the suggested horrors may be true ... but the documentary isnt
anywhere close to throwing some light on them.
The gaze of the docu-viewer & maker need not be in alignment for the
documentary to be able state a position on a shared yet multi-vocal
concern, which is not to say that non-conflictual perspectives are
requisite to the successful rendition of a contentious issue. So fish-
heads and tails might be favored portions, however the flaw is not in
the presentation of the content itself, but in the gaze of the
content-maker -- from the perspective of the content-reader.
The narrative logic of Darwin's Nightmare treats situations prevalent
in the Lake Victoria region to present the concept of globalization
in its bleak occurrences. The viewer does not have to see that the
very plane that brought the very guns raged a conflict zone in that
region to surmise the havoc wreaking impact of the non-ecological
transnational flow of goods.
Zeenath
