The Art of Documentary Filmmaking – Episode 2

Welcome to Talking Movies. In episode 2 of The Art of Documentary Filmmaking, we continue the conversation with international documentarian Stuart Tanner, who directed The Seeds of Sovereignty, and Matthew Kalil, who is a regular guest on Talking Movies.

ST: I think that for me was a really important thing to show, is how deep the whole culture maze and integrity of the Mexican situation we were filming in Oaxaca, and how vibrant it is, how that culture is very much alive, and what a wonderful thing it is.
The fact that that was under threat because America wants to promote the industrial model, wants to force Mexico into growing GMO corn, and also wants them to use that in their food, which they eat far more than the average American does. And they have, rightly, concerns about safety, concerns about the genetic contamination of their own native maize, and concern that this will gradually wash away all that deep cultural value, that wonderful nutritious food, and also damage biodiversity.

Yeah, I think you really effectively peeled back the story in terms of showing it from the Mexican standpoint, and I didn’t even know you could get different kinds of colour corn. So to me it was such an eye-opening piece, because it not only gave a very healthy and vibrant representation of Mexico, which I think often gets treated quite badly, it made it seem like such a rich, diverse place that you would want to go and visit. It really just made me feel much more in touch with the culture, the people, and it made the story much more intimate. It’s not one of those things happening in another country far away. And it did seem like a very personal film to you as well, because of the connection between you being in Iowa, where a lot of this stuff’s happening, and then sort of transplanting yourself in that situation. And I really hope that it has the social impact you’re hoping to get from it?

ST: So I mean the response has been very, very encouraging, both in Mexico and in the U.S. and other places as well.
It’s part of obviously a much bigger push by a lot of people in a lot of different organisations to encourage us to think about the food models that we use, and also to encourage us to think about powerful countries who subsidise their food to a huge degree, fostering it on other cultures and actually wiping out the smaller scale farming in those countries. And I think one of the interesting things about the Mexico story is that they’re at the leading edge of a battle, in a way, to preserve that. One of the reasons why biotech and the governments went after Mexico is because they don’t want Mexico to set a precedent of using the precautionary principle, which is a principle whereby you can say, well, we’re not going to engage with that. We don’t want that because we see there are risks involved. There are risks to biodiversity, there are risks to health, there’s risk to lower nutritional food. So we’re going to use caution and restrict it. America wants to not allow Mexico to use that precautionary principle because it sets a precedent for the whole world. Because believe me, the plan is to roll out this model right throughout the world on a much larger scale, including explicit plan for Africa by the biotech companies and big ag to roll out the model throughout Africa as well. So we are talking about documentaries.

Reflecting on your career, which is one documentary project that has really shifted your perspective as a filmmaker?

ST: Yeah, I’ve done quite a lot of what you would call issue-based documentaries. The harder part of the documentary spectrum because they rely on putting together an argument and they’re not necessarily singular character-driven pieces, which tend to be a lot more popular in a way. The argument has to drive the story quite a lot. But there was one documentary that we made, which is called Prophets of Doom. Catchy title.

Is that the PH because it’s radio?

ST: Right, right, right, right. Exactly. And it looked at the consequences of structural adjustment policies within Ghana, which were imposed by the World Bank, the IMF and many, many countries. And this is my first direct contact with the consequences of these policies, whereby the far better off nations who are the main supporters of the IMF and the World Bank go into other nations and say, well, we’re only going to do this for you, only going to make these loans for you. They’re only going to get the benefit of these policies if you remove subsidies for this and you do all these different things that we think you should do. Well, I saw the consequences of that in Ghana, where the World Bank had told government not to subsidise seeds for rice farmers anymore, because why do that when you can import cheap rice from America? So why grow rice in Ghana? They forced this policy on the country. I visited the area that used to be rice growing area. The entire area was finished, wiped out. It meant all the young people moved to the cities where there wasn’t enough for them to do. They got into all sorts of different problems and social problems and everything.
And there in the corner, what’s there? American rice, right? So it was a vision, I think, of how the free trade and the fair global system is tipped towards the advantage of the wealthier nations. You can’t tackle these things on the surface. That’s the thing with documentary. You can go to many situations, but there’s a point at which you think, well, there’s a system behind this. There’s something deeper behind. That’s what I’m interested in doing more, is to expose the systems that are creating the problems.

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