Darwin's Nightmare

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1 General Information
2 Cover
3 Information
4 Screenshots
5 Technical Specs
- 5.1 1cd version (French HardSubs)
- 5.2 2cd version
6 Links

[edit] General Information

Sociopolitical Documentary published by Arte, Others in 2004 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

One of several unforgettable shots in the searing Darwin's Nightmare shows grinning fish heads, their mouths gaping with razor teeth, boiling in a hissing cauldron, a jolting image that comes as close to hell as anyone wants to get, in a film that cuts deeper into the hidden operation of globalization than the environmental concerns suggested by the title. Through four trips to Tanzania in as many years, Paris-based Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper gradually works out in surprisingly elegant filmmaking how the provincial town of Mwanza functions as a module of globalized capitalism and sticks his pitchfork into the thicket of lies and problems that now defines Africa.

Unlike conventional human interest narratives about Africa (Hotel Rwanda, Sometimes in April, In My Country) which reliably keep a middle-class distance from the afflicted, Darwin's Nightmare's director casts his lot with the whores and outcasts, whether listening to the local prostitutes in the beer hall as their boozy European customers paw at them, or watching preteen street kids huff glue under cover of darkness. Viewers will not soon forget his nocturnal meeting with the scarily red-eyed Raphael, who guards a warehouse armed only with a bow and poison-tipped arrows (The last guard was hacked to death. That's how I got the job), and who would welcome the outbreak of war.

Thanks to the proliferation of monstrous Nile perch that eliminated all weaker species and now reign unrestrained as the alpha predator of Lake Victoria, the local economy, helpless before the monetary might of the World Bank and the IMF, has changed from farming to exporting this fish. The genial Indians who run a fish-packing operation claim there's a corresponding rise in the standard of living, but the advantages for a select few seem countered by new unforeseen depths of poverty for the defenseless many. The real horror of those cooking fish heads is that they constitute the paltry remains of the food resources left for the population to eat after Russian planes have hauled away tons of the flesh to foreign markets. Sauper underlines the grim irony that AIDS-ravaged Tanzania is feeding Europe while its own people are starving in a widespread famine.

With the nation's lifeblood flowing out and its social structure distorting, Sauper investigates how Mwanza assumes a role in the globalized arms trade run by Dutch and Czech weapons mills. As living conditions plummet, he also shows Christian evangelicals arriving to soothe the blindsided populace with a film depicting a white Jesus. Following unexpected paths, allowing themes to emerge as he questions and listens, Sauper advances his narrative without pushing, just fitting one piece to the next. But it's not about the fish: he is seeking to hook bigger and more rapacious predators.

[edit] Screenshots

[edit] Technical Specs

[edit] 1cd version (French HardSubs)

Name.........: Le.Cauchemar.De.Darwin.SUBFRENCH.DVDRiP.XViD-CRiMETiME.avi
Filesize.....: 704 MB (or 721,016 KB or 738,320,384 bytes)
Runtime......: 01:45:18 (157,956 fr)
Video Codec..: XviD
Video Bitrate: 797 kb/s
Audio Codec..: 0x0055(MP3) ID'd as MPEG-1 Layer 3
Audio Bitrate: 129 kb/s (64/ch, stereo) VBR LAME3.97b
Frame Size...: 576x320 (1.80:1) [~9:5]

[edit] 2cd version

files ................................: 699+696MB
language ...............................: English
subtitles ................................: Cn/Fr
aspect ratio ............................: 1.81:1
video resolution .......................: 640X352
video format .....................: XviD 1660kbps
audio format .......................: AC3 384kbps
finally format .............: 16:9 , NTSC , Color
DRF Average ..............................: 3.330