Darwin's Nightmare.

In the opening scene of Hubert Sauper's absolutely essential documentary, Darwin's Nightmare, an African air traffic controller in a dingy Tanzanian airport outbuilding swats a wasp. It takes some time, but the wasp's fate is certain. It is a telling cinematic moment because it conjures up so many metaphoric ideas - the Darwinian survival of the fittest, the "first world's" attitude towards Africa and the hopeless destiny of the trapped wasp. The air traffic controller looks at the camera, all human and goofy, as a huge Russian plane arrives in Africa. In that moment there is the human and the institutional, just as Darwin's Nightmare tells us about a systemic problem through the stories of those it affects. For Sauper this moment means something more. "It is the reflection of an 'inner reality'. I tried to express with this scene a feeling you may get, and I did get when I came to Africa first, in such a place at the end of the world: there is this lost outpost, the guy with this old radio control, insects, nothing happens until a huge noise breaks the silence. I think the scene is an introduction for the spectator to say: what you will see in the next two hours is not a 'normal' environment. Only if you push the 'on' button in your brain, will you be following the meaning of the story."

In the 1960s, a somebody threw a bucket of the predatory Nile Perch fish into the waters of Lake Victoria and within a generation they had eaten all of the local species and turned on themselves. Processing and exporting the large, oily Nile Perch to the EU is an enormous industry, but it has done little to help the people of Africa's Great Lakes Region. There are enough fish to sustain multiple daily cargo exports, enough to down enormous overloaded planes (the remains of which are strewn all around the local area), but not enough of anything stays in the country to feed starving Tanzania. Leaving their kids behind on the street, many farmers have moved to the lake to fish, living in makeshift slum camps where prostitutes and AIDS abound. "No fisherman dies from starvation," says Sauper. "They have a catalog of 'multiple choice' of how to die within, what, 24 months. Malaria, HIV, cholera, bilharziosa, to drown, be eaten by a crocodile, you name it. But: the ten children he left in the back country may starve, 300 miles away, because no one is left to work on the fields. And to fish on your own account means, what? To own a boat by stealing one?"

But when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but battalions, and this is just the tip of a tragic, programmatic iceberg. Every part of society that the Nile Perch industry touches, it damages, including the ethical judgment of those at the top.

Hubert Sauper, an Austrian who, when he's not on the road, lives in Paris, first came to Africa in the mid-90s. "My first encounter with this continent was being trapped in the middle of the worst of all civil wars. The one of the Congo in 1997. The result was the movie Kisangani Diary, a trip to Hell and back. Darwin's Nightmare is a musical comedy compared to that film."

He heard about the situation in Lake Victoria while shooting Kisangani Diary "by hanging out in bars with the aviators who flew humanitarian aid to the refugees in 1997. They were bringing cheap, genetically modified yellow peas to Africa, and flew back to the northern hemisphere with high quality, high protein fish fillets." He soon discovered, through rigorous investigation, that the planes were not only carrying in humanitarian aid, but also arms. Most of the film depicts the Russian pilots, who are often accompanied by local prostitutes, as being evasive about their cargo. But eventually, in the sad moments of the night, there is a confession. "Confession is a good word. How it came to it? By knowing those guys for years and having built up a real relationship of trust. I tell as frankly as I can what my own life is like, what my work is about, etc. I never have a 'double agenda' towards my subjects. But the nature of this kind of work is to be in constant conflict with the authorities, military, police, politicians. I did a lot of illegal stuff, including faking documents and disguising myself, to get to places where I had to be."

Most painful of all is the hopelessness of the children. Darwin's Nightmare tells many stories that are horribly sad, but nothing hurts so badly as the doomed future of these kids.

Ultimately, Darwin's Nightmare is a damning piece of journalism examining the effects of thoughtless globalization and Sauper is not necessarily interested in offering up answers, or ways to help. "My film is not about Lake Victoria, not about fish, not about giving solutions. As long there is life, there is always hope. The first step is to realize that we all have a problem, and to understand the real nature of the problem. The second step is to think, the third one is to act. In one way or another. All I can provide with my film is inspiration to think. The dilemma we are all living in this globalized world needs six billion solutions."

Darwin's Nightmare opens Friday, October 14, at San Francisco's Balboa Theater and on Monday, October 17, at the Rafael Film Center.

Posted by dwhudson at October 14, 2005 2:00 AM