Movie: A Delicate Balance

The movie A Delicate Balance explores the effects of diet on personal health.  It has been scientifically proven that decreasing your consumption of animal protein reduces your risk of cancer, diabetes and high cholesterol.  You can watch the trailer below.  The full film is available to watch, free, on their website.

It shows exactly how animal proteins (meat, milk, eggs) affect the human body and shows the relationship between animal protein consumption and increased risk of disease.  It also shows how you can get the same amount of protein from plant sources, which also give you various nutrients and minerals as part of the package.

Not only does it cover the health impact of animal protein, it also covers the environmental degradation that is caused and explains how it is linked to poverty and starvation in non-Western countries.

I found it to be an informative movie with simple information described well.  The graphics used may leave a little to be desired but you can just listen to it as an audio file and get the same amount of information out of it.  It reminded me a bit of Food Matters.

Movie Review: END:CIV

Today I had the privilege of having the creator of END:CIV, Franklin Lopez, come in and talk to us about the film.  He explained how it was sparked by attending a talk about peak oil.  It was there that he first heard Derrick Jensen speak.  Franklin bought Derrick's books and this movie is a summation or introduction to some of the premises that are outlined within them.

It covers the death of the environmental movement, the greenwashing of products that we are sold and the destruction of the environment.  It forces us to confront the fact that the environment is our responsibility, that we are the ones who need to do something about this, that we must work together to halt the mindless consumption that the world revolves around.

This film is confronting, but it needs to be.  The issues that it covers are not small, are not going to go away and they need something to be done now.

Movie Review: Food Matters

This documentary looks at health from the point of view of good nutrition and prevention.  It explores the failings of modern medicine, the control that pharmaceutical companies have over scientific publishing and regulators and the health benefits of vitamins and minerals.

They look into the age of food, soil quality, agriculture, genetic modification and many other issues that people should consider when buying things to eat.  They explore a few studies (not many unfortunately) where vitamins cured depression, alcoholism and cancer.  I think that they needed a bit more science in this video as well as hard facts but documentaries are always trying to push a certain view point.  That said, eat your vitamins!

Movie Review: Meat the Truth

This documentary takes a look at the meat industry from an environmental viewpoint.  A lot of people think that the major causes of greenhouse gases and environmental devastation are things like cars, airplanes, keeping the lights on, etc.  This documentary shows how meat consumption is a big (and easy to stop) problem.

"Farming places more strain on the enviroment than the entire transport system globally." - Meat the Truth.

If you would like to know more about the environmental issues surrounding the meat industry, click here.

Movie Review: Born Into Brothels

I was lucky enough to watch Born Into Brothels in my Culture, Community and Enterprise tutorial.  It is one of those documentaries that is both sad and inspiring.  It is about a group of children in the red light district of Calcutta in India who learn the joy of photography and a woman who attempts to save them from being trapped in the industry.

Briski originally went to Calcutta to do some documentary photography and ended up becoming close with the children of the prostitutes that worked there.  She became rather attached to them and decided to teach them how to take photos, hoping to give them a better future.  The photos that they took were amazing and helped the children to gain confidence and also hope.

Briski helped to organise exhibitions for the children in order to raise money for them.  She worked with their families to try and get them into schools and away from the red light district.  However, a lot of them were refused places due to their past and some ended up returning to their families.

This movie was both saddening and inspiring.  I was sad to find out that this was still going on in the world; that women were born into prostitution and forced to continue on in their mothers footsteps.  I was inspired by the fact that this one person, Briski, was able to see this problem and raise enough money to get a lot of these children an education.  Not only that but this documentary sparked the creation of Kids With Destiny, which is aimed at providing an education and safe housing for children from the red light district.

Movie Review: The Dark Side of Chocolate

The Dark Side of Chocolate is a documentary about the child labour, slave trade and horrible working conditions that are part and parcel of the cocoa harvesting that goes on in the Ivory Coast.  Ever wondered what fair trade was about?  It's about stopping this from happening.

Children as young as 10-14 are taken across the country to the Ivory Coast to work on cocoa farms.   Their families send their children off to get paid work and the traders entice them with lies about money.  Some children are taken without their parents' knowledge.  These are the children that harvest the beans from the plants that fuel the chocolate craze in first world countries.

This film was created in 2010, only last year and yes, this is still happening.  What can you do?  Support fair trade, express your concerns to the relevant chocolate companies and sign petitions.

Movie Review: Earthlings

Earthlings is one of the most talked about documentaries in vegan and animal rights circles.  I avoided watching it for a year after going vegan because I thought I 'knew it all' already.

Little did I know that I still had something to learn.  I learned that no matter how many facts you know, how many books you read, how many rallies you attend or how many recipes you look at, nothing, NOTHING compares to actually seeing an animal suffer.

This documentary uses a lot of what some people call 'emotive' images.  I call them truthful images.  It goes through all of the various industries that we humans have created that exploit animals and use them as commodities; fashion, food, pets, circuses, research...

I recommend this for anyone who is having trouble connecting what is on their plate to something that is a living, sentient being that is capable of feeling pain and knowing suffering.

WARNING:  This movie is very graphic.

The movie is available to watch online for free.