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The Cosmic Joke
( English / 2 x 50 min. )
Country : UK
Production Co. : Antelope, IHB
Producer/Director : Michael Macintyre
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As human numbers soar and the earth’s resources
shrink, has a preoccupation with our survival set the
stage for our own
extinction? For John Steinbeck, the
American novelist, this was the
ultimate irony - a joke of
cosmic proportions. For June Goodfield, the
presenter of
this provocative double bill into the links between
cultures,
resources and population, it’s a problem that
needs to be resolved
urgently. Travelling between
Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco and Ghana, the
films look
at local solutions . In Indonesia, Goodfield inspects
community
health projects. In Morocco, she finds that
Islam can co-exist with birth
control programmes. But a
Catholic veto on family planning in Mexico -
where the
prevalent culture of ‘machismo’ results in thousands of
unwanted teenage pregnancies each year - prompts
exasperation and some
harsh criticism.
Taxi to Timbuktu
( English, French / 50 min.)
Country : USA
Production Co. : Fraction Films
Producer : Peter Day and Sylvia Stevens
Director : Chris Walker
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Alpha Gasana drives a taxi in New York City. "Where’re
you
from?"
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asks a passenger. "M-A-L-I, that’s Mali. The
country is
very poor and very dry, so we come here to make
some money and
sent it back to the family." Traveling
with Alpha from the US to
Paris and back to his village
on the edge of Sahara, Chris Walker’s
touching and
humorous film reveals the extraordinary sacrifices that
men
like Alpha - one of West Africa’s many thousands of
‘environmental
refugees’ - have to make to keep their
communities alive. Environmental
degradation has
wreaked havoc on their land back home, destroying its
capacity to support their families. Now their only chance
of survival is
to take on the dangerous or menial jobs
that Westerners don’t want.
Science for Survival
( English / 50 min. )
Country : UK
Production Co. : International Broadcasting Trust
Producer/Director : Ani King-Underwood
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Set in India, SCIENCE FOR SURVIVAL looks at a
people’s
movement - spearheaded by ex-nuclear
physicist turned activist and
ecologist, Vandana Shiva -
that has grown up against the perceived threat
of
‘reductionist Western science’. In India, argues Vandana
Shiva, the
introduction of high yielding crop varieties has
failed to take women’s
knowledge of seeds into account.
"A science which does not respect
nature’s needs and a
development which does not respect people’s needs
inevitably threatens survival," she claims. But is there a
meeting
point, the films asks, between western science
and indigenous knowledge?
Silk technologist Prabha
Shekar claims that, if done sensitively, the
fusion of
modern science with indigenous knowledge can provide
a powerful
way forward for poor communities.
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