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SEPTEMBER 11 / 11: Gates @ Soybomb on September 6thGATES is not an easy band to photograph. they almost always play in complete darkness, and they don’t make a point of doing any metal posing… but for the first time ever, i think i captured GATES in a complete and real way. every band member is represented (you can even sort of see some of their faces!), and the mood of the photos matches the music. LISTEN TO GATES: http://gatesritual.bandcamp.com/ JULY 28/11: A New Trailer, and an Update…Maximum Tolerated Dose is a film that gets more real by the day. What started in the spring of 2010 as an indeterminate project based on two unrelated interviews is now becoming something coherent and cohesive. The footage we’ve been getting, the interviews we’ve conducted, and the connections we’ve made have given the project shape and momentum, and I’m proud to present the above trailer to the public as a representation of where the film stands at the moment. If you think it’s as strong as we do, please pass it along to the people you know. This is a grassroots effort, and we need your help in spreading the word. The 2nd half of production for MTD is now underway, and it will take us to many more places before the end of 2011. Production is scheduled to wrap up at the end of the year, and the film will be ready and available in early 2012. There will be one last trailer released by the end of the year, a way to give a proper summary of the film before its official release. As we go into shaping the rest of film with our feet on the ground and our cameras rolling, it’s a really exciting time to be a part of this team. Story by story, shot by shot, MTD is coming, with your support. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to everyone who has supported the film so far with donations, contacts, promotion and support. We are framing the shots and editing them together, but you are the ones making this film. - Karol, on Behalf of the MTD Team. JULY 4/11: Pedal SoundsI finally finished this video that has long been simmering on the backburner! JUNE 25 / 11: Not Nameless, Not Faceless.
[jose valle carries a video camera as he works documenting a dairy / veal farm. rural spain, 2010.] This is my typical morning routine: I wake up, I stretch a bit, I make some coffee, and I reply to emails with my cat on my lap. Most mornings are pretty mundane that way, and I often scope facebook for any news stories that might be worth checking out. This past Wednesday, when I saw my friend Laurita’s status say something about 12 activists in Spain, but not followed by a link to any news story or investigation materials or footage, I instantly felt something was wrong. After fumbling my way through translating the Spanish, my heart sank. On the morning of June 22nd, 12 animal rights activists were arrested in Spain. The arrests are supposedly linked to a mink liberation from 2007, but the charges stretch further into the Orwellian territory of “unlawful association” as well. The arrests were targeted at the leaders of Igualdad Animal and Equanimal, two prominent animal rights organizations in Spain. Considering who was arrested, it’s hard not to see it as a decapitation attempt by the authorities, meant not only to directly disrupt antispeciesist organizing and put a chill into activism, but to try to irreparably damage the organizations in question. In my guts when I heard the news, though, it wasn’t the long term political consequences that I was worried about (that would come in the following days). In those first moments, I was just viscerally worried about my friends.
[rabbits wait in plastic trays for their fate as meat and fur. rural spain, 2010.] I met Sharon, Jose, and Javi (and so many other amazing activists) last year during a working trip to Spain. Jo-Anne McArthur and I had traveled there to document what the group was doing, and to make ourselves available to them to help in documenting their relentless work for animals. And work we did. During an intensive three week period, we attended and documented several days of bullfights, visited and documented rabbit killing at a small-scale local slaughterhouse, conducted investigations and executed an open rescue of six hens from an egg farm, and more. They were long days and even longer nights, and the activists that we worked with were some of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. Sharon, Jose and Javi, the founders of Igualdad Animal, have built a community that is tight and tireless; as we traveled around Spain doing the work, we were never more than a couple of hours away from a welcoming place to stay, a lovingly prepared meal, and more strong and supportive activists. As news continued to spread that morning of the details of the arrests, I couldn’t stop thinking about the things I had learned on that trip, and the precious insights that I gained from being around Sharon, Jose, and Javi, and the rest of the Igualdad activists: insight from Sharon, who works incredibly hard behind the scenes, who rarely steps in front of a camera unless it is necessary, allowing the work to speak for itself while she does hours of organizing at the group’s office, who always has encouraging words for those around her, who knows how to motivate and keep the energy of the group going; insight from Jose, who is an investigator down to the bone, who knows that wherever there is a door, that means there is a way inside and a way to expose the horror, who is always reading, researching, and engaging with the issues facing the AR movements today, who has the most hilarious one-liners that come out of nowhere, because he is always paying attention, even when he seems like he’s not; insight from Javi, who has been beat up so many times by police after jumping into bullfight rings or onto fashion show catwalks that it has become an annual inside joke, who is a patient and endless spokesperson, whether he is in front of a national TV news camera or talking to someone one-on-one doing vegan outreach in downtown Madrid, who often takes some extra part-time work to help support the group financially, who knows how to dance as hard as he works.
[javi and friends dance on a night off. madrid, 2010.] But beyond “the work”, there is something else, because we didn’t just work together. It would be impossible to work together under those circumstances and not become friends. In the off hours, when we weren’t doing “the work”, we swam together, watched ridiculous movies together, talked politics with each other, made meals together, drank energy drinks together, joked around with each other, bridged the language barrier together, drove countless hours together, went dancing together… That’s the thing about the media. It so often robs you of the little details, the fine grain and texture of daily life. People get slotted into neat little categories. In the case of Sharon, Jose, Javi, and the others arrestees, they have already been branded “eco-terrorists” in the mainstream Spanish media (with the help of Spanish law-enforcement). Outside of Spain, they and their co-accused have come to be known as “The Spanish 12.” In reality, they are neither. Like the animals they have rescued openly from places of exploitation, they are individuals. It’s a simple fact that they try to communicate over and over again through their activism: They are individuals. And as they now find themselves in cages, like the animals they’ve rescued and worked for, they each have their own experience, and they will all experience this next phase of their struggle for a better world differently. They are not, as the animal exploitation industries want us to believe about the billions of non-humans they abuse and kill every year, a stupid mass of eyes and moving parts following each other to their doom. Jose, Javi, and Sharon are thinking, feeling, loving individuals, not caricatures of “eco-terrorists” or faceless activists too far for us to care. As I and so many others mobilize to get “The Spanish 12” out of prison and back into the sunlight, I think of each of them, and how each one will enjoy their freedom in their own particular and beautiful way.
[toronto animal rights activists protest outside of the spanish consulate in solidarity with the “Spanish 12”.] To find out more about the case of the “Spanish 12” and get ongoing coverage: Coverage from Green is the New Red Coverage from the Vegan Police To donate to the legal defense of the Igualdad Animal activists, paypal funds to: ACTIVISMO [AT] IGUALDADANIMAL [DOT] ORG (or click the link above) Sign the official petition in support of the accused MAY 14/11: Project Nim - A Review
CROSS POSTED FROM MAXIMUMTOLERATEDDOSE.ORG ***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*** It feels strange, as a filmmaker, to take to the website of my current project to review another film that is currently showing around the world on a related topic. That being said, I was so moved (in sadness and anger) by this film, that I felt like I had to write something. I saw the film about a week ago, and gave myself a bit of time to process it. I don’t think I could’ve written something readable directly after the fact. I went to the screening of Project Nim (from HBO Films and James Marsh, Director of Man On Wire) at Toronto’s HotDocs festival with high expectations. It hasn’t been released widely yet (it’s premiering on July 8th), and the Isabelle Bader theatre was packed with doc-watchers. Before the film began, the woman introducing it spoke about the idea of “giving an audience credit,” and noted that James Marsh is a director that gives the audience a lot of credit to think for themselves. This only served to increase my expectations, as that is really my primary goal with any documentary project (whether photography or film): asking people to consider the images, and interpret them for themselves. This does not mean that I believe in objectivity - indeed, so many documentaries fall flat because they refuse to acknowledge the positionality of the filmmakers - but I think that images and film footage can be presented in such a way that is honest and not manipulative. I greatly value any documentary that strives for that goal. Project Nim is ostensibly the story a chimp christened Nim Chimpsky (yes, after the great Noam Chomsky), who was bred for use in a Columbia University study looking closely at animal language acquisition. Born of a captive chimp named Carolyn, the film opens starkly with a reenactment of Nim’s birth, and the almost instant removal of him from his mother (who had borne 5 other previous children, all taken from her for use in studies). It moves on quickly, and shifts to Nim’s early life living with a family, being dressed in human clothes, and essentially being treated as a cross between a housecat and a toddler. As he gets older and considerably more dangerous to his adoptive family, the study is ended and he is sent to a larger facility where he lives with other chimps, though the conditions are far from ideal. After several years there he is moved to LEMSIP in upstate New York and after several years there, he is “rescued” by a LEMSIP vet, the notoriously conflicted James Mahoney. He winds up alone at a “sanctuary,” the Black Beauty Ranch in Texas, where he lives alone. Isolated from any social contact whatsoever, Nim descends hard into madness and depression, and eventually dies from a heart attack at 26 years of age. Now, let me qualify what I meant in the previous “ostensibly.” What I described above is a very rough sketch of Nim’s life, how he was used and where he lived. The film does indeed tell this story, but the central problem lies in the fact that it is told through the incredibly narcissistic (bordering on solipsistic) voices of the humans who had contact with Nim throughout his tragic life. As they guide us through the narrative, the film becomes less about the life and trials of a particular individual non-human, and more about the ethical abstractions of a group of people who have quite clearly made little effort to truly understand Nim’s perspective. Instead, there is constant hand-wringing, and lack of clarity and analysis: Nim’s first adoptive mother describes the connection she felt with him and the way he was made to be part of the family by dressing him in human clothes (not recognizing the psychological impact of such actions); his “dangerousness” as he gets older is framed in terms of animalistic violence (instead of framing it more honestly in terms of instinctual chimpanzee social dynamics); one of Nim’s handlers admits to having given him marijuana and being happy it calmed him down, while instantly absolving himself of the unethical behavior by saying that it was a “crazy time” in the early 80s; when Nim’s first adoptive mother visits him over a decade later in his solitary confinement at Black Beauty Ranch and insists on going into the enclosure to see him, she is viciously attacked and beaten, and remembers it wistfully by saying words to the effect of “he could’ve killed me but he didn’t, and that says a lot about his love.” This is just a smattering of the intense displays of narcissism throughout the film, and doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the interpersonal relationship politics of the people involved, which had just as much of an effect on Nim’s life as their direct relationships with him.
There is, of course, a difference objectionable interviewees, and an objectionable film. Unfortunately, Marsh provides virtually no context as to how Nim’s tragic life was made possible by a constellation of factors. While there is a great deal of information provided through titles and the interviews, Marsh does not give a broader history of the use of chimpanzees in research, any supplemental information about the different players involved in the research industry, or how much similarly damaging research on chimps still continues to this day. Furthermore, he fails to provide greater context for Nim’s life in particular, such as what happened to his mother, how Nim spent his last several years, and how he resisted his years of captivity in different ways. Instead, what we have is the presentation of an individual biopic, isolated from the factors that made it possible, and told from the perspective of anyone but the central subject. It’s a tale of abuse that is presented as relatively unproblematic, told from the perspective of the abusers, not the abused. If it were a human subject at the centre of the film, I would like to think that the audience would have been outraged. To say that James Marsh gives his audience a lot of credit is to say that his film asks tough questions and that the audience was forced to grapple with them. It doesn’t and they didn’t. The audience at the screening, for its part, seemed content not to be challenged too directly. The most audible reactions to the film were bouts of laughter when images of Nim in human baby clothes were shown, or when his handler discussed him being drugged with marijuana, or when Nim did anything identifiably “cute.” Other than that, the audience generally sat in silence, and clapped heartily when the film was done. As I left the packed theatre weeping at the tragedy, the conversations around me swirled about the beauty of the film and the cuteness of Nim. I hope that those conversations evolved into something more considered as they continued into the world outside the theatre, but that is sheer optimism. In a disconcerting sleight of hand, Marsh ends his film with the voice of Jim Mahoney. “Chimps have an amazing capacity to forgive. And they forgive us.” With everyone’s hands washed clean, a final title screen then appears, noting that Nim died at the age of 26 of a heart attack while still in captivity at the Black Beauty Ranch. Information that chimps in the wild often live to the age of 40 (and sometimes beyond into their 50s or 60s) and don’t generally die of cardiac arrest is left out, missing one final chance at providing any level of context to Nim’s life. It’s so sad for such a technically masterful documentary, beautifully shot, edited, and presented, to stop so painfully short. The line that separates Project Nim from being an embarrassingly narcissistic exercise in human navel-gazing to being a powerful story of a unique individual caught in a systemic hell is a thin one. When it premieres, it will be up to audiences to smash that line, to be critical of the entire structure of the film and the assumptions made by its human characters (and its director), and to do their own outside research to give Nim’s life the context it deserves. |
