| The African
nation of Tanzania has a booming business selling fish to Europe,
but its citizens live in a state of horrific poverty and degradation.
Filmmaker Hubert Sauper uses his documentary Darwin's Nightmare
to explore the lives of these people, and those who come from other
countries to do business. As the film explains, sometime in the
1960s, some unknown party introduced Nile Perch into Lake Victoria,
setting an ecological downward spiral in motion. The aggressively
predatory fish consumed nearly every other species in the lake.
The perch grew to enormous size, creating a booming business selling
tons of filets to Europe. But few of the locals make a decent living
from this thriving business. The fishermen and others work under
dangerous conditions, earn subsistence wages, and are often unable
to support their families. Those children live in the street, scavenging
for food. The girls often become prostitutes, servicing the foreign
pilots who bring in arms for conflicts in other regions, and fly
out with the fish, leaving behind only the rotting carcasses and
heads, which many of the locals cannot even afford to eat. As disease
spreads and famine threatens, the ecology of the lake deteriorates,
since the smaller fish that eat algae and waste are no longer there
to maintain the water's purity. Darwin's Nightmare won a European
Film Award for Best Documentary in 2004. The film was selected by
the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art
for inclusion in the 2005 edition of New Directors/New Films. |