A new bunch of films for this ninth edition of the “Pêcheurs du monde” film festival in Lorient, with its tides, historical and current embarkations, and its poignant testimonies of strange beings that take root in the moving waters. We earthlings, would we forget that the blue planet is covered with 71% sea water? Who, then, would be more legitimate to live there? And yet, from all the seas of the globe, voices are disturbed:
Corexit, the cursed remedy. In the Gulf of Mexico, it was BP that massively dumped a very toxic dispersant to agglomerate and sink the huge mass of oil that escaped from a burning platform … in disregard of the ecosystems and the local population that contracts Since this fateful date of April 2010 of serious diseases and difficult to treat. In a region under oil infusion, everyone is silent, starting with the medical body that preserves its jobs. Las, this universe of prolific marshes, real nurseries for the adjacent ocean, sinks little by little under the water. The breakthroughs in oil research have destabilized these fragile lands in the face of minimal rise in water levels.
inimal rise in water levels.
Floating life Floating life . In India, the population of Lake Loktak, an immense lake in the State of Manipur, is accused of all evils. These “phumdis” fishermen who have lived for centuries in huts built on floating islands are expelled, their habitats violently destroyed by an enormous shovel under the eye of armed militias, when it is not the fire that devours these wonders Of light architecture. Victims of political struggles and economic interests that surpass them, these communities seek to survive, with their ancestral lifestyles. Recognizing that municipal waste dumps and neighboring industrial and agricultural activities defy the laws of the natural environment, the people they have, through transmission and observation, become acquainted with, these peoples struggle day after day. The violence that attacks their families and their villages is such that women are ready to defend the future of their children with their lives …
Concentrated in a few hands, capital does not care about these lives, sometimes enslaved. Such is the testimony of those elders of the cod fishery on the banks of Newfoundland, whom they recognize as a convict’s life, and yet glad to have crossed it collectively. In response to a question, one of them modestly admits that these bosses were not “sharing”.
Memory of fog .
Forgotten by saint paul For the same financial reasons, in 1930 Breton and Malagasy seamen were “forgotten” on the island of Saint Paul, 8 days away from Reunion Island, in the Indian Ocean. Lobster fishermen, they had finished the season and made some of the best preserves. In charge of protecting the places from the inclement weather, seven of them agreed to stay for three months. It was not until nine months later, the time to make a more profitable fishing in the Seychelles, that a boat will come to seek the scurvy survivors. From the outset, the armament had reduced the crew so as to save the cost of a doctor. A second departure will cause new deaths caused by beriberi. These sailors were unaware of these diseases caused by nutritional deficiencies. Must we add that war will save the guilty of any judicial sanction? The forgotten ones of Saint-Paul.
Beyond these unjust, exasperating, sometimes unbearable situations, we are struck by the warmth of the testimonies and the humanity of these people, ready to give their lives rather than lose respect for what they are. The cruelty of systems that could crush them does not seem to degrade them.
Laws and men. Another film marked our memories, deeply. It is a real epic of an artisanal fisherman, a small Irish island, which is being gradually withdrawn, like its peers, its fishing rights. Freshly entered the European Union, this country plays the card of the good pupil, preferring to sacrifice his artisanal fishermen, their communities and their cultures, rather than risk fines for insufficient protection of the salmon, subject to a strong European lobby of the Recreational fishing. Moreover, this remote region is chosen as a cod protection zone and ultimately represents a natural area to be valued as such. Assisted by the director who will follow him for eight years and seconded by the priest of the place who will write a number of letters, this discreet fisherman, more enthusiastic about a frugal and shared island life than the calculated movements of political strategists, Other islands, MEPs from his country, NGOs linked to artisanal fisheries and the environment to the European Commissioner for Fisheries. Day after day, season after season, by his modest presence and his few words drawn from his secular experience, he will lead to the adoption of an amendment in the 2012 fisheries reform that will give priority to the Iiens communities Of fishermen. A long citizen struggle to assert historical rights and experiential management of the local resource. Probably the longest and most laborious tide he had ever had to live, pushed by his sons who replaced him for fishing whenever he was to be absent.
Immersed in a network of close relations with their natural environment, their families, their communities, these artisanal fishermen defy, by this very fact, productivism, of which only capital structurally and destructurally constantly sets relations for the sole purpose of accumulation of capital And profits. Long remained on the margins of these financial games, these artisanal fishermen have preserved their values ??and ways of life. Capital today tends to seize the seas and oceans. The environment is good when it is used to justify the privatization of fishing rights, the creation of large marine reserves or the establishment of international platforms free of State controls; The main objective is to liberate the artisanal fishermen’s space and dedicate it more lucratively to the tourism, mining and energy industries or to the trade in pollution rights.
There were still other films, other lively and touching characters from the Mediterranean, Colombia, Sri Lanka, New England, Vietnam … A tale that wanted to be restorative, a re-composition of pieces of film shot by The fishermen themselves to share, with their loved ones, life on board, a creation whose cold aesthetics and mechanical noises denounced dehumanization and the total absence of music and light breathing … Impossible to see everything so choice was Vast. The world of fishing remains that of our blue planet, we are only the invited ones, and the world of relationships that characterizes it prefigures the cradle and the future of our humanity, is the message of this festival which pays tribute to him.
The Sea Ink