(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The film takes us on a tour of 7 around the world where vast lands are changed to unfamiliarity for the sake of human growth, consumption, lifestyle and prosperity. These include the extraction of minerals for copper (Riotinho, Spain), coal for energy (Matra, Hungary), roads for transport (Brenner, Austria), marble for kitchens (Carrara, Italy), oil from tar sands (Ford McKay) or bare soil and mountains turned into homes for ever more people in ever-larger houses (California). All this requires unimaginable resources and technology, but it is also a painful story of man's apparent powerlessness and, not least, historylessness. A powerful and moving film in every way.
Human imprints
Aerial imagery of vast areas of change instantly reveals the imprint man has on the earth's surface: Roads, lines and fractures are like scars into a foreign soul. None of the contributors leaves any doubt as to what this resource extraction is doing on the ground. But everyone is giving up on being different. North of Sacramento, California, a worker says after removing larger hills and smaller mountains in a valley: “Urban development begins with the removal of land. The population is rising, they have to live somewhere, what can we do? ”This man's powerlessness is a pervasive theme in the film. In Carrara too, technology is in record time destroying the white marble mountain: "Soon there will be no more and we must search for Mars or the moon."
Powerlessness?
More nuanced, says an employee of Riotinho's mineral mine, who mines copper for an increasingly technological lifestyle: «The current depletion of resources is unsustainable. Either we reconcile our economy and consumption with nature's self-preservation or we continue the belief in the rational consumer, and this system will not exist much longer. "Powerlessness because we have given up a belief that things can be different. But also that we have given up learning from history. Man learns nothing from history, says the employee. "It is not just about the exploitation of the land but also the human exploitation of other people."
Man removes 150 million tons of rock and soil per day. today making man the most significant geological factor of our time.
Camus said in 1949 when the colonial powers entered Africa that "Today you no longer believe you can prevent anything. This is the essence of the problem. ”Today's people are dismissive of the individual's influence and insight into their own and others' lives. As if we have lost the belief that every human being has a greater or lesser sphere of influence.
In Brenner (Austria) you cut with a hydraulic drill plate through a large mountain. The project beats all records. Due to increased transport of goods and cars, another multi-lane road must be built. Here you are blessing the workers in a joint prayer to the local angel to guard the impending bore! The expert proudly states: "When we drill into nature's million-year-old stone, we must also respect it, hope it plays with what we do." It sounds like a sanguine hope.
One outside ourselves
In northern Hungary by the Matra Mountains, brown coal is extracted for energy. A few years ago, an 5 million-year-old smaller forest of fungal cypresses was discovered with 4-6 meters tall tree fossils.
At the National Museum, we are told that dinosaurs ruled the planet far longer than humans. They showed up for approx. 200 millions of years ago and became extinct about 65 millions of years ago. The difference is that humans change far more than other animal species under the conditions of the planet itself. The head of the coal mine: «I feel no connection to the trees that were once here. They are just an obstacle to be removed. ”But one employee says that during a vacation he visited a glacier which, in just a hundred years, is disappearing even though it has been there for millions of years. The sight made him deeply depressed. Alone in the last 30 years for huge changes. Coal mining is a co-influencing factor.
The statements here made me think that what we refer to as powerlessness may also have something to do with the fact that we have lost nature understood as the framework of cycle and cruelty and otherness which is not part of ourselves, but an outside. Unlike past times, we no longer have anything outside of ourselves, we do not live in relation to the seasons change, cycle, rituals to be looked after, death as a life horizon. This comfort in nature's great formation and life organism – we have lost it.
The film ends with sad images of American Indians driving through the Canadian countryside around Fort Mckay where for decades oil from tar sands has been extracted. Along the roads and far into the landscape of trees and soils, everything is gray and dead.
The film received the award from the Berlin Ecumenical Jury for its description of how human intervention destroys the planet.
