Film festival
Perhaps the most humbling and depressing part of it is that we’ll be faced with this gut-wrenching heart-penetrating conundrum for as long as our generation walks this earth. My little pounding soul sat in the middle of the Buenos Aires theater in my first attendance of the Independent Film Festival here, taking place in various locations throughout the city from April 11-23. After a relieving day outside the city’s concrete maze, I arrived back in time to see We Feed the World by Austrian Erwin Wagenhofer.
I carry the weight of the statistics in my mind and heart daily (every five seconds a child dies of malnourishment, every 4 second a person goes blind from Vitamin A deficiency, while tons upon tons of food is regularly disposed of), but to see the mind-boggling, embarrassing inequalities painted so vividly and in such clear contrasts through this documentary was… among many things, another opportunity to refocus and remember.
My deepest concern lies in that there exists among the comfortably-living beings (especially those in power positions) a belief that their lives are worth more than those who live impoverished. That for some reason being born in the United States or Western Europe means your life is more important than those born in other regions. We Feed the World shares an interview with the current CEO of Nestle, the largest food producer in the world, who states so ignorantly and egocentrically that the human race is the best it has ever been… making more money and living longer than ever before. What kind of change would ensue if these kinds of “leaders” were to stay for a week with a family whose mother boils rocks when her children can’t sleep, feigning cooking a meal so their minds will calm enough to be able to drift off. To live in communities that see the average person live to under forty years old. If only… To the contrary, this CEO’s current response to the company’s role in social responsibility is to maximize profit.
The “protestant ethic” that has spurred this capitalist madness has lost (at least in the most powerful cases) any sense of “protestant.” Material goods have passed on to next generations without the sense of values, of history, and of humility behind them.
Many powerful scenes and jaw-dropping stats live in me as I decompress by sharing with you, and reflexively we ask “and now?” “What to do?” To not run, to not hide, to look the situation in the face and act. Let ourselves be inspired…
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
- Robert Kennedy
I carry the weight of the statistics in my mind and heart daily (every five seconds a child dies of malnourishment, every 4 second a person goes blind from Vitamin A deficiency, while tons upon tons of food is regularly disposed of), but to see the mind-boggling, embarrassing inequalities painted so vividly and in such clear contrasts through this documentary was… among many things, another opportunity to refocus and remember.
My deepest concern lies in that there exists among the comfortably-living beings (especially those in power positions) a belief that their lives are worth more than those who live impoverished. That for some reason being born in the United States or Western Europe means your life is more important than those born in other regions. We Feed the World shares an interview with the current CEO of Nestle, the largest food producer in the world, who states so ignorantly and egocentrically that the human race is the best it has ever been… making more money and living longer than ever before. What kind of change would ensue if these kinds of “leaders” were to stay for a week with a family whose mother boils rocks when her children can’t sleep, feigning cooking a meal so their minds will calm enough to be able to drift off. To live in communities that see the average person live to under forty years old. If only… To the contrary, this CEO’s current response to the company’s role in social responsibility is to maximize profit.
The “protestant ethic” that has spurred this capitalist madness has lost (at least in the most powerful cases) any sense of “protestant.” Material goods have passed on to next generations without the sense of values, of history, and of humility behind them.
Many powerful scenes and jaw-dropping stats live in me as I decompress by sharing with you, and reflexively we ask “and now?” “What to do?” To not run, to not hide, to look the situation in the face and act. Let ourselves be inspired…
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
- Robert Kennedy
posted by Amanda Joy at 7:53 PM
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