On Screen
Toitu Te Whenua
The land that remains
T OMG that Climate Special Did anyone see it?
O
ne very special lady who just couldn't hold herself back when she saw the recent TV1 Climate Special doco made her feelings clear in a post on her own climate change Facebook page: Climate Friendly Eating. When it comes to health, Dierdre Kent is one of New Zealand's great battlers. From the '70s, she was a full time paid lobbyist for ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) and worked in that role for a decade. Today Diedre is a dedicated WFPB devotee and, in her own self-effacing way, humorously describes herself as "just an oldie trying to stay alive and not be someone who takes more and more medications with all their side effects." Here's what she said online. "Did anyone else notice in the TV1 documentary on climate change ... the things you can do personally? They completely omitted any mention of our diet choices. I understand the biggest change anyone can make to their own footprint is to eat less meat and more plants, yet this was omitted. Oh no we couldn't challenge our own culture. It's far too sensitive. Oh dear I wish Prof James Renwick would set a good example on this. The farm that produced 1 million tonnes of beef a year 'sustainably'. OMG. I think it was Poore and Nemecek in their research of so many farms round the world who concluded that even the most sustainably produced beef still has emissions miles higher than lentils or beans or fruit or veges. They could have interviewed Jono Drew on this," - Dierdre Kent.
he outcome of what Geoff Reid himself describes as "an incredible journey" for him, Tim Firken and Grant Nicholson is now freely available on Youtube. It's called Toitu Te Whenua- the land that remains. This documentary-style film on New Zealand's Bay of Plenty and lakes district paints two pictures. One of a sad and distressed landscape, the other of a land of immense beauty and potential, if we can only get it right. Here, in the space of 46 minutes, we are drawn on a journey from the dramatic heights of Mt Tarawera off to the east and the shellfish beds that once were an abundant feeding ground unfettered by the claws of industrial farming development. Sometimes the most chilling tales are told in the simplest of ways. Reid, has that kind of approach. Steadily he unravels the detail of what's been lost. His revelations don't come with backup support from Pakeha libraries, where we might easily find images from earlier days of people collecting pipi from the beach. It comes from the visuals painted by the lingering voices of the people he interviews as they lament the legacy they must now pass on. The idea that the land is our life and that to ignore its ongoing good health could lead to our peril is not a concept the English
were well acquainted with. New Zealand was, and still is, a place of conquest. The loss of our giant Kauri forests and the poisoning of the Canterbury water table by industrial dairy production are just two examples. Perhaps the sad irony of it all now is that we have to rely on our University boffins to tell us what a resource our giant Kauri really were - today, they call them carbon sinks. Ha, lol, back in the day they actually made handbasins (a different kind of sink) from kauri and you can see still see them if you visit the Kauri Museum in Dargaville. This is a movie that clearly makes its point but not so much with detailed academic explanations and complicated slides. The graphics in this doco are something special, a clear nod to the power that great visuals have in explaining a story. - Peter Barclay
A movie you may have missed
W
e haven't seen a lot of discussion, down under at least, on a movie I think deserves more attention than it seems to have raised so far. It's called Eating Our Way to Extinction and is available free on Youtube. Ah, and while I'm in a free movie promoting mood, so too is Grant Dixon's, The Big Fat Lie. You can find that on tubitv.com. The Extinction doco probably suffered down under because, in the beginning it was heavily promoted but then, when first released, it was only viewable in the northern hemisphere.
WFL sent a note to the promoters, and they responded saying it was complicated. Apparently it had something to do with release rights and other perplexing things us mere mortals wouldn't understand. We didn't, so we didn't say much about it. All jokes aside, though, this work is certainly worth your time. It's heavy on fact but the information they've gathered here is pretty gobsmacking. I think at this point I'll say no more because I'd have to start using terms like 'spoiler alert' and I hate it when people do that. - Peter Barclay
wholefoodliving.life | Summer 2022
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