Although Darwin's Nightmare by Hubert Sauper, nominated for Best Documentary Feature, didn't win an Oscar, it's still worth checking out. Many of us in Washington, DC were treated to this poignant film at the National Archives this past Friday. We had to wait in a long line in the freezing cold, but it was worth the wait.

I first heard about the film in a story on NPR, which included snippets of the film, including the song "Tanzania, Tanzania," which was sung by a prostitute featured in the film.  I was very moved by her story and the story of many others featured in the film who live around Lake Victoria and struggle to survive.  Their stories of survival are connected with the Nile perch, which was introduced to Lake Victoria in the 60's.  It has destroyed most of the native fish species in the lake.  However, the Nile perch is prized for its white fillets which are exported worldwide, and are part of a thriving local and global economy.  A synopsis from the film's website explains, "This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World Bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots."  

This film reminded me of Life and Debt by Stephanie Black, which showed the lives of Jamaicans who struggle to survive in a globalized economy. Their challenges are similar to the Tanzanians. Director Hubert Sauper explains, "In Darwin's Nightmare I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish and the ephemeral boom around this "fittest" animal into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order. I could make the same kind of movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil.

It is, for example, incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery, their sons become soldiers, and their daughters are turned into servants and whores. Hearing and seeing the same stories over and over makes me feel sick. After hundreds of years of slavery and colonization of Africa, globalization of African markets is the third and deadliest humiliation for the people of this continent. The arrogance of rich countries towards the third world (that's three quarters of humanity) is creating immeasurable future dangers for all peoples."