You Think the Earth is a Dead Thing.
While pruning, chopping and harvesting, local farmers on the French Island of Martinique explain the long-lasting impact of slavery & colonisation on their lives and their island’s biodiversity. Lively interviews alternate with tranquil scenes of lush greenery and beautiful dangling bunches of bananas… wrapped in plastic.
About the film.
Available online, 15 Oct - 14 Nov ‘21
$12 / $9 conc (passes available)
2019 | 70’ | France | French & Creole | Florence Lazar
The French island of Martinique has been horribly scarred by colonisation. Unchecked for decades, settlers treated the island’s banana plantations with a carcinogenic pesticide which in turn has jeopardised all life on the island.
You Think the Earth is a Dead Thing narrows its lens to focus on Martinique as an emblem of the greater global ecological crisis, scrutinising the linked ecological and political histories of the island through encounters with its locals, who together explore alternative approaches to counter this environmental destruction.
Compelling, beautifully shot, and intelligent and deft in its exploration of complex histories and cultures, this documentary elegantly explores the role colonisation plays in today’s pollutions, the immense spaces and figures of resistance which maintain hope for Martinique, the role that ancestral know-how can play in rescuing the island, and the very identity of nature itself: a weary domesticated figure, a sick and dying entity, or the most powerful ally in a culture’s fight for survival?
Awards.
Best movie - Euganea Film Festival