On November 12, Land Rush was screened at The Frontline Club as part of a cross-media event entitled Why Poverty?, which uses films, online and TV, to get people talking about poverty.
Land Rush explores the land appropriation debate in Mali. 75% of the population are small-scale traditional farmers who compete with rich nations that lease land, turning large areas into agribusiness farms.
Landrush Q&A at The Frontline Club
Director Hugo Berkeley and Kate Townsend, executive producer at BBC Storyville, discussed the makings of the film in the context of the Why Poverty? series.
Townsend explained that eight documentaries and 30 short films were produced by broadcasters around the world for the Why Poverty? project, including the BBC:
“They are going to be broadcast globally in at least 72 countries. We’re commencing on the 25th of November with a potential audience that we’re estimating of at least half a billion people. It’s a sequel to the Why Democracy? series that was broadcast by the BBC [in 2007]. We’re building momentum to what we hope will be an amazing achievement”.
Berkeley discussed the challenges he faced when making a film about land grabbing in Africa:
“People come at it with a very fixed opinion of whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing … we wanted to speak to the farmers in the region and find out from them … it was trying to keep that impartiality [that] was the most difficult thing in the film, to let the characters decide rather than the production team.”
He added that the issue of land appropriation can no longer be ignored, and that industrialisation in Africa should come with proper legislation to prevent exploitation of the farming population:
“The world food crisis in 2008 showed that this is a world problem. How we feed ourselves isn’t just related to the UK or the USA or to Mali. This is a problem that is going to be increasingly important for the whole world. Particularly in places like India, Saudi Arabia and food-poor countries. They are going to be more and more aggressive; that’s not a tendency that’s going to go away. That would only increase my keenness to see that legislation is in place to make sure that it’s done properly.”
His film highlights how divided Malian farmers are about foreign development projects; some are enthusiastic about change while others are reluctant and view it as an imperialistic threat:
“Malian agricultural policy just flip-flopped all over the place in the last 20 years. Twenty years ago, it was all about getting small farmers to produce rice to feed the country. And then in the late 1990s, they swung wildly in the other direction and said ‘our problem is that we don’t have any industry, so we need industry and factory’. If you’re a farmer in that area, you’re just sort of buffeted around on the winds of whatever is trendy in the development circles.”
Townsend urged the audience to spread the world about the Why Poverty? project:
“We are immensely proud of this body of films. They are meant to be launching pads for debate. Please go onto the website and encourage discussion on the forums. We want this to provoke argument.”
Click here to view the Land Rush trailer.
]]>In 1984 the world was shaken by the images of the famine in Ethiopia, described by Michael Buerk in his report for the BBC as “a biblical famine in the 20th Century” what followed was a global call to action. Live Aid organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure reached an estimated global audience of 1.9 billion and raised £150 million.
The images of the famine in Ethiopia were shocking, but nearly 30 years on, is the public immune to graphic imagery? How do you communicate poverty in the modern media landscape?
Much criticism has been levelled at Live Aid but there is no doubt that it galvanised a generation in a way that has not been done since. Join us as we discuss whether a message on poverty can harness global attention in a world more connected than ever before, and what the role of public figures should be.
Chaired by Paddy Coulter, a specialist in media and development with over 25 years professional experience. He is director of communications at the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at Oxford University’s Department of International Development, he previously worked as Director of Studies at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
With:
Jamie Drummond, co-founder and Executive Director of ONE, a grassroots advocacy and campaigning organisation that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa, by raising public awareness and pressuring political leaders to support smart and effective policies and programs.
Andrew Hogg, head of media at Christian Aid. Previously he was news editor of The Sunday Times and the Observer, and he was editor of The Sunday Times Insight investigative unit. He was also that paper’s Africa and Middle East correspondent.
Paul Vallely, a writer and activist on Africa and development issues. He is an associate editor of The Independent where he writes about ethical, cultural and political issues. He was the The Times correspondent in Ethiopia during the great famine of 1984/5. Vallely ghost-wrote Bob Geldof’s autobiography, Is That It? in 1985 and travelled with Geldof across Africa to decide how to spend the £100m raised by Live Aid. He was later involved in the organisation of Live 8.
Lilie Chouliaraki, Professor of Media and Communications at LSE. She has published extensively on the mediation of suffering, including the books The Spectatorship of Suffering, The Soft Power of War and The Ironic Spectator.
]]>Can the world feed itself? When the food system began falling apart in 2008, rich countries started buying up and leasing fertile tracks of the developing world. In 2009 alone, nearly 60 million hectares – an area the size of France – was purchased or leased in Africa.
In Land Rush directors Hugo Berkeley and Osvalde Lewat look at the situation in Mali where 75% of the population are farmers, but rich, land-hungry nations like China and Saudi Arabia are leasing land in order to turn large areas into agribusiness farms. American sugar developer Mima Nedelcovych’s wants to deliver change through his ambitious scheme, Sosumar. Unlike some of his competitors he considers the involvement of the local communities as key to the project’s success. However, many in the community remain unconvinced and see the plantation as nothing short of a neo-colonial outpost.
As Mali experiences a military coup, the developers are scared off – but can Mali’s farmers combat food shortages and escape poverty on their own terms?
Directed by Hugo Berkeley & Osvalde Lewat
Duration: 58′
Year: 2012
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