Luckily there are phenomena that are still able to surprise us. One of
these is the enormous success of Food for profit. For those who missed
it or who have lived on Mars in recent months, Food for profit is a
docufilm - it is the most relevant definition because it has the ethics
of a documentary and the aesthetics of a film - which is focused on
denouncing the system of intensive animal farming and the double thread
that links intensive farming, never declared as such by the European
Union, to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), i.e. the major source of
financing granted by the EU. The documentary film is a journey to
several European states that reveals what lies behind the apparent
innocence of our food consumption: a reality made of exploitation of
animals and people and land, widespread pollution, damage to
biodiversity, use of antibiotics and GMO.
In mid-April, Food for Profit was still in the top ten of the most
watched films at the cinema, more than two months after its launch, and
has grossed (so far) around 500 thousand euros. And to this must be
added the dozens and dozens of free screenings, where there were always
full houses. Raise your hand if you would have predicted only a quarter
of these numbers at the end of February, when the docufilm was launched
through an effective communication campaign. Let's say it clearly: if
there is still too little attention to the environment in Italy and
animal rights are mistreated every day, anti-speciesism is a topic
opposed even by comrades. Imagining that such a documentary film could
achieve such attention would have been an exercise in science fiction.
This alone should make us reflect. Because Food for profit confronts us
with our impotence. Faced with the theses of those who maintain that
people are tired, increasingly inactive and selfish and numbed by social
media, it will now be possible to oppose the mass phenomenon of a
documentary film that manages to extract itself from the niche precisely
because it chooses to tell in a powerful and direct way what concerns
us, all of us, managing to intercept our daily life made up of lazy
purchases of butchered meat at the supermarket. It does so by lashing
out clearly against the European institutions, undermining the thesis of
a certain progressive left for which "only Europe can save us". The
documentary film, which at certain moments recalls the best Michael
Moore (do you remember him?), then makes three requests which reveal its
character of "civil commitment": the establishment of citizen assemblies
to choose where to channel public money; a moratorium to stop the
construction of new intensive farms; the stop to public subsidies for
intensive farming.
Food for profit was written, filmed and "interpreted" by the journalist
Giulia Innocenzi. Known for having worked on a couple of Michele
Santoro's TV programmes, she then moved on to Le Iene and Report,
maintaining and refining a journalistic style made up of aggressive
tenacity, a camera focused more on her own face than on that of the
people interviewed, attentive reporting also to style as well as
content. In Food for profit Innocenzi elevates the characteristics that
have made it famous to the nth degree. First of all, it focuses on the
accessibility of the topic, giving a 5-year journalistic investigation a
cinematic feel that alternates subjective shots and contextual
interviews with clear infographics, explanatory drawings and grainy
films that testify, through the help of hidden cameras, the terrible
suffering imposed on animals. The docufilm maintains rhythm and tension
even when it supports the narcissism of Innocenzi herself: always in the
foreground, with the vigilante attitude of someone who solves things
alone and is the only one to oppose the plans of power. Although the
documentary film is supported by LAV, the historic animal rights
association, and although its communication is entrusted to a young
person from the Last Generation, no space is left for them in the
documentary, with Innocenzi limiting himself to having these entities
participate in the screenings collective (not even all of them), as if
to illuminate them with reflected light, his own, incapable of stepping
aside. In a critical piece with the ambitious title "In Food for Profit
there are all the wrong ways of doing environmentalism today", the
journalist Ferdinando Cotugno defines it as "a populist manifesto".
Reinforcing the idea that in this little Italy worn out by controversies
that tomorrow we will forget what matters is positioning. Here, however,
we are interested in the result. Food for profit is a tool that can
allow us to make ourselves known to those who would never speak to us,
to broaden the anti-capitalist reasoning that can be barely understood
in the documentary film, to savor the requests of those who have perhaps
become depoliticised, or have never been political, by providing us the
missing connections. Nothing else matters. It doesn't matter that Giulia
Innocenzi is basically a daddy's girl who studied at Luiss, because even
from the bourgeois something good can come out. It doesn't matter that
his journalism is a thesis and that indeed, in some places, it is not
even technically journalism but rather a staging, as when he subjects
some MEPs to phantom experiments involving six-legged pigs and which
however serves to aim the finger on the real genetic selection of
animals, making us wonder what might happen if such extreme points were
reached in the future. It doesn't matter that you put big industry,
owners and workers together in the same cauldron (to whom you however
dedicate in my opinion the most successful part of the
docu-film),failing to distinguish the different responsibilities. His
weaknesses should not be distracting. Food for profit should be
considered as a starting point, an entertainment tool on which to model
paths of activism and militancy. He has plowed the ground, now it's our
turn to sow.
Andrea Turco
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
these is the enormous success of Food for profit. For those who missed
it or who have lived on Mars in recent months, Food for profit is a
docufilm - it is the most relevant definition because it has the ethics
of a documentary and the aesthetics of a film - which is focused on
denouncing the system of intensive animal farming and the double thread
that links intensive farming, never declared as such by the European
Union, to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), i.e. the major source of
financing granted by the EU. The documentary film is a journey to
several European states that reveals what lies behind the apparent
innocence of our food consumption: a reality made of exploitation of
animals and people and land, widespread pollution, damage to
biodiversity, use of antibiotics and GMO.
In mid-April, Food for Profit was still in the top ten of the most
watched films at the cinema, more than two months after its launch, and
has grossed (so far) around 500 thousand euros. And to this must be
added the dozens and dozens of free screenings, where there were always
full houses. Raise your hand if you would have predicted only a quarter
of these numbers at the end of February, when the docufilm was launched
through an effective communication campaign. Let's say it clearly: if
there is still too little attention to the environment in Italy and
animal rights are mistreated every day, anti-speciesism is a topic
opposed even by comrades. Imagining that such a documentary film could
achieve such attention would have been an exercise in science fiction.
This alone should make us reflect. Because Food for profit confronts us
with our impotence. Faced with the theses of those who maintain that
people are tired, increasingly inactive and selfish and numbed by social
media, it will now be possible to oppose the mass phenomenon of a
documentary film that manages to extract itself from the niche precisely
because it chooses to tell in a powerful and direct way what concerns
us, all of us, managing to intercept our daily life made up of lazy
purchases of butchered meat at the supermarket. It does so by lashing
out clearly against the European institutions, undermining the thesis of
a certain progressive left for which "only Europe can save us". The
documentary film, which at certain moments recalls the best Michael
Moore (do you remember him?), then makes three requests which reveal its
character of "civil commitment": the establishment of citizen assemblies
to choose where to channel public money; a moratorium to stop the
construction of new intensive farms; the stop to public subsidies for
intensive farming.
Food for profit was written, filmed and "interpreted" by the journalist
Giulia Innocenzi. Known for having worked on a couple of Michele
Santoro's TV programmes, she then moved on to Le Iene and Report,
maintaining and refining a journalistic style made up of aggressive
tenacity, a camera focused more on her own face than on that of the
people interviewed, attentive reporting also to style as well as
content. In Food for profit Innocenzi elevates the characteristics that
have made it famous to the nth degree. First of all, it focuses on the
accessibility of the topic, giving a 5-year journalistic investigation a
cinematic feel that alternates subjective shots and contextual
interviews with clear infographics, explanatory drawings and grainy
films that testify, through the help of hidden cameras, the terrible
suffering imposed on animals. The docufilm maintains rhythm and tension
even when it supports the narcissism of Innocenzi herself: always in the
foreground, with the vigilante attitude of someone who solves things
alone and is the only one to oppose the plans of power. Although the
documentary film is supported by LAV, the historic animal rights
association, and although its communication is entrusted to a young
person from the Last Generation, no space is left for them in the
documentary, with Innocenzi limiting himself to having these entities
participate in the screenings collective (not even all of them), as if
to illuminate them with reflected light, his own, incapable of stepping
aside. In a critical piece with the ambitious title "In Food for Profit
there are all the wrong ways of doing environmentalism today", the
journalist Ferdinando Cotugno defines it as "a populist manifesto".
Reinforcing the idea that in this little Italy worn out by controversies
that tomorrow we will forget what matters is positioning. Here, however,
we are interested in the result. Food for profit is a tool that can
allow us to make ourselves known to those who would never speak to us,
to broaden the anti-capitalist reasoning that can be barely understood
in the documentary film, to savor the requests of those who have perhaps
become depoliticised, or have never been political, by providing us the
missing connections. Nothing else matters. It doesn't matter that Giulia
Innocenzi is basically a daddy's girl who studied at Luiss, because even
from the bourgeois something good can come out. It doesn't matter that
his journalism is a thesis and that indeed, in some places, it is not
even technically journalism but rather a staging, as when he subjects
some MEPs to phantom experiments involving six-legged pigs and which
however serves to aim the finger on the real genetic selection of
animals, making us wonder what might happen if such extreme points were
reached in the future. It doesn't matter that you put big industry,
owners and workers together in the same cauldron (to whom you however
dedicate in my opinion the most successful part of the
docu-film),failing to distinguish the different responsibilities. His
weaknesses should not be distracting. Food for profit should be
considered as a starting point, an entertainment tool on which to model
paths of activism and militancy. He has plowed the ground, now it's our
turn to sow.
Andrea Turco
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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