THE DARK SIDE OF THE CHEW - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Closing Gala Planet In Focus

Gum. The DIRTY secret.
The HEART of DARKNESS!
The desecration of body,
of soul, of Mother Earth!
The environmental PESTILENCE!

The Dark Side of the Chew (2014)
Dir. Andrew Nisker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Watching this film was so utterly repulsive that I found myself gagging and retching throughout. These aberrant expulsions and reflex actions had nothing to do with the quality of the film or lack thereof. In fact, the picture so successfully delivered an important Western Union to my brain that I could have no other response. You see, I hate gum. I have always hated gum. Even as a kid, the very idea of incessantly chomping upon an atrophied orb that I had to spit out, leaving the mindlessly masticated, gob-glistening wad of filth on the ground, sickened me to the soul. And believe me, I had to spit out that malformed plug of putrescence for others to step upon because the very idea of having to, God forbid, touch it with my fingers, if even to dispose of it, induced within me a need to blow chunks of bilious puke willy nilly.

I hated seeing people chew gum. I hated when those same people blew bubbles, cracked it and even worse, chewed it with their maws agape. Where, when, why and how I developed this hatred of gum is a mystery to me. All I know for sure is that I've always possessed this unhinged aversion to it. Worse yet, in middle-age-crazy, my hatred for gum has accelerated with such force that I still go apoplectic when I see and/or hear anyone chewing it, but now, I know that if I was allowed to legally carry a handgun, I'd be tempted to use it upon whatever miscreant displayed such bovine behaviour.

My victims could be man, woman and child. My aim would be so true that I'd show no discriminatory mercy. I'd fill anyone full of lead and proudly declare that I'd be much happier watching an endless loop of Divine eating fresh, steaming dog shit in John Waters's Pink Flamingoes than to ever again witness purported human beings chew their goddamn gum as if they were raised in Texas.

Andrew Nisker's The Dark Side of the Chew is, at least for me, both a blessing and a curse. His one-hour TV Ontario (TVO) documentary beads its eyes upon the environmental pestilence of gum and has given me even more reasons to justify my hatred towards it.

Appearing in the movie himself, Nisker shanghais us aboard his Conradian tugboat for a country-hopping journey into a veritable Heart of Darkness. Nisker is Willard. Gum is Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.

What Nisker discovers is an environmental Apocalypse!

Now!

What we learn, as Nisker himself learns, is that gum is one of the biggest environmental blights upon the planet. In days of yore, gum was derived naturally from a weird-ass tree in the jungles that once teemed with the Mayan Aztecs. However, when the natural source of gum started to dry up, almost to the point of extinction, gum manufacturers had to find a new sticky source to inject with oodles of sugar and surround with flavoured, crunchy candy. And what, pray tell, did those pesky corporate piggies come up with? Well, hold onto your hats, folks.

Gum is made of plastic!

Yes, plastic. And where, oh where, does most gum end up? You guessed it. On sidewalks. Now, if it just stayed there, accumulating like some toxic, viscous gunk on the pavement, ever accumulating until. . . what? Mounds of sticky filth - impeding byways and highways? Nope. That's no good. And get this: there isn't a city that doesn't spend enough money to feed the world's starving populations several times over for several millennia to clean gum off the streets. Where does it all go? Into the water. Yup, tons and tons and tons of plastic are steamed off the streets and into the sewers and back into the water. From gum. Your gum, Clarabelle Cow. And this is not much good for any living thing.

Gum chewers are chewing plastic (cancer) infused with sugar (diabetes) or sugar-free chemicals like Aspartame (dementia), then they're spitting it up onto the ground whereupon it's "cleaned" up, right back into the environment.

This, frankly, is appalling enough, but Nisker doesn't stop there. Nay, he takes us deep into the heart of gum's darkness and we learn more about it in one hour than one would think was humanly impossible. We discover fossilized gum, we travel to various manufacturers of gum and we even get a couple of tastes of "greener" gum options. It still adds up to the same thing - waste and pollution.

Nisker even seeks to test out the scientific and medical claims made by gum manufacturers. A few of these tests are downright illuminating. Not surprisingly, we learn there is no truth to the ludicrous claims, but worse yet, we learn that many of the claims are so outrageous that they seriously affect those who buy into it and subsequently use it upon our children.

Ultimately, Nisker's film is so exhaustive, he might well have just called it Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Gum But Were Too Ignorant To Ask. We get the history of gum, its sociological and culture impact and most of all, the damage it's doing to ourselves and our planet.

All of this is presented in a breezy, clever and entertainingly digestible fashion. (Except, for me, during closeups of people chewing the wretched stuff and the clever digitally animated ooze of gum that floods the streets and even chases Nisker at one point like a river of molten lava, is hardly the stuff of intestinal comfort. I can feel the mounting need to expunge like some character in Sam Shepard's La Turista, the desire to engage in the dreaded Aztec two-step.)

For me, though, his movie makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I haven't been a madman for all these years. I now have an Encyclopedia Britannica worth of reasons to detest gum even more. And now, I even dream about gum and in my dreams I see a glob of gum crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and ending up into the eco-system, the food chain and into my mouth - to ingest the cud-chewings of plastic, spat out upon the sidewalks of the world.

It's enough to make you sick.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ Three-and-a-half Stars

The Dark Side of the Chew is the Closing Night Gala of the 2014 Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival in Toronto. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

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TRICK OR TREATY? Review By Greg Klymkiw - See Canada lie in great Obomsawin film

Chancellor Stephen Harper is the most insidious
of all Canadian Colonial Backwater Prime Ministers
in the "polite" genocide of our First Nations people.
Heil Canada! Heil Old Money! Heil Der Führer!
Heil Harper!

Trick or Treaty?
Dir. Alanis Obomsawin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are many things that disgust Canadians about Chancellor Stephen Harper, but for me, the worst is his refusal to properly deal with the egregious theft of Aboriginal Rights during the signing of the notorious James Bay Treaty, as well as the veritable litany of horrendously callous issues related to our First Nations People that he simply chooses to ignore. (The epidemic of murdered and missing Native women, anyone?) As the most vile Prime Minister in Canadian history (and we've had quite a few contenders for that dubious distinction in the Dominion of Canada), his record and public stance on the Native People of our country goes well beyond the pale. This pathetic Cowboy Hitler takes the cake.

Alanis Obomsawin's important body of work, including her new film Trick or Treaty?, confirms that Canada has always been the most insidious colonial backwater of them all and the genocide it continues to perpetrate upon our First Nations is perfectly in keeping with the country's sickeningly polite approach to decimating those who would dare get in the way of Old Money's needs to keep amassing money by just taking it (tactfully, graciously and ever-so sneakily, of course). Obmosawin's new documentary focuses upon a massive peaceful protest in Ottawa, the nation's capitol, that was designed to force Chancellor Harper (and, of course, the Governor General who represents the British Monarchy) to meet face-to-face with those First Nations Chiefs most affected by the over-100-year-old treaty which was designed and implemented to steal land and not allow any meaningful sharing in the decision-making process of dealing with said land.

The result of the James Bay Treaty has been abject poverty, skyrocketing rates of suicide and environmental destruction, all of which affects not just our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, but ALL Canadians. What affects the original inhabitants of this land IS our responsibility, but most of all, when any members of our nation are hard done by, our only real choice is to ensure our elected officials and bureaucrats are going to do the right thing.

Harper and his party of Totalitarian knuckle-draggers could care less. The power of this film is seeing the efforts of Native People trying to get him to address the problem - to give him a shot at something resembling redemption. We know in our heart of hearts it won't happen, but what's on view in Obomsawin's film makes us want it to happen nevertheless.

Top: Vile Canuck Bureaucrat (is there any other kind?)
Below: The True Heroes of every living Canadian

The core of the film involves a re-enactment of the 1905 signing of the James Bay Treaty (aka Treaty No. 9) in Moose Factory, Ontario. Presided over by the brainchild of this event, the late, great Dr. Stan Louttit, Grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk Tribal Council, presents some of the most damning evidence of Canada's wilful apartheid and genocide (take your pick, Canada's done both) against our First Nations.

One of the earliest 20th Century Canadian Nazis was a petty bureaucrat (bureaucrats are the pathetic dweebs who implement the desires of our foul politicians) who rose to power within the Department of Indian Affairs to eventually become its Obergruppenführer. In the film, Louttit brings our attention to Scott's evil when he reads the following words of the foul bureaucrat:

"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic . . ."

These are the words with which Scott extolled the virtues of Residential Schools - a horrendous program that forcibly wrenched over 150,000 Native Canadian children from their families and homes, shoving them into boarding schools designed to break their spirit and remove all vestiges of their culture from their hearts and minds. To do this involved physical and psychological abuse that was little more than torture. There was, of course, the added rampant sexual abuse, all of it perpetrated in the de rigueur fashion by - no surprise - Catholic nuns and priests.

So get this, in the film, Louttit exposes the fact that Scott, this paragon of forced assimilation, was also one of the chief bureaucrats present during the signing of the notorious James Bay Treaty where he and several others outright lied to the Native leaders about the content of the treaty and created an entire facade by which the First Nations representatives signed a document based on what the bureaucrats assured them was in the treaty as opposed to what was actually there. Louttit also exposes documentation which proves this fraud was perpetrated beyond any shadow of a doubt, so no matter what physically exists on paper in the treaty itself, the fact remains that the treaty the Chiefs signed is ultimately the treaty imparted to them verbally.

Native culture was rooted in an oral tradition and as such, especially during the time the treaty was presented, means VERY CLEARLY that the LIES of those Canadian politicians and bureaucrats present at the signing (all representing Mother England, our ruler) must, in fact, be taken as the ACTUAL TRUTH. The signatures of the Chiefs are actually "marks" (usually a single "X") since the men who signed the treaties could not read or write English and had to depend upon the aforementioned politicians and bureaucrats to tell them verbally what they were signing.

This powerful core of Obomsawin's film is deftly woven into the harrowing hunger strike implemented by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence who went on a six-week-long liquids-only program to demand a meeting with Chancellor Harper and Canada's Governor General David Johnston to address a variety of issues related to treaty rights and the economic, cultural and societal plight Native Canadians find themselves in because of said treaties like James Bay. Obomsawin also includes a pointed Native Studies lecture dealing with the exploitative aspects of Treaty No. 9 and an astonishing, by-foot journey undertaken by several young Native men across Ontario's icy tundras from the far north to Ottawa itself.

And what of Chancellor Harper in all of this? It's what he chooses not to do that's the most egregious action. Looming in the backdrop of many of the activities is the symbol of Canadian evil, the Parliament Buildings, our very own Reichstagsgebäude. Harper is nestled safely within and yet a woman is potentially dying at his feet, thousands of men and women are gathered and even engaging in several spectacular displays of Native culture and then, several young, brave men have travelled by foot, thousands of miles to be in Ottawa.

Where the fuck is Chancellor Harper? Would it have been too much for him to make a few public appearances and say a few words to the assembled (no matter how empty they would have been)? He's simply nowhere to be seen, nor heard from throughout the range of spectacular, impressive and deeply moving events captured by Obomsawin's film (including a monumental circle dance involving hundreds of people).

Trick or Treaty? was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It's somehow ironic that Harper, in his continued assault upon Canadian culture, is continually destroying the fabric of our cultural institutions and his vehement financial dismantlement of the Board itself is something we might, as a nation, never fully recover from.

At the end of her film, Obomsawin leaves us with a montage that's as heart-lifting as it's heartbreaking. It includes the powerful words of John Trudell. I'll leave you now, with the refrain:

Crazy Horse
We Hear what you say
One Earth, one Mother
One does not sell the Earth
The people walk upon
We are the land
How do we sell our Mother ?
How do we sell the stars ?
How do we sell the air ?

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars

Trick or Treaty? plays at PLANET IN FOCUS, the 15th annual environmental film festival in Toronto. Obomsawin will be present for the screening. If you haven't seen it, don't miss it. If you HAVE seen it, see it again. For further information, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

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RADICAL FRIENDS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - 2014 Planet in Focus Film Festival

Discovering Green activism
within cultural roots.

Radical Friends (2014)
Dir. Chihiro Geuzebroek

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Amongst all the documentaries dealing with environmental activism, director Chihiro Geuzebroek has hit upon a winning formula to detail something that's so often rendered with the sledgehammer of didacticism. First of all, she's the subject of the film, a personal journey undertaken by a cute, plucky "little Dutch girl" (of Bolivian heritage) which, frankly, goes a long way to rendering a picture that's not merely palatable, but includes a wealth of information in an agreeable, entertaining fashion. Secondly, the movie is equal parts earnestness and humour, the latter of which comes mostly from Geuzebroek herself and in sufficient quantity (and quality) to temper the potentially deadly effects of the former. Finally, the film really kicks in when it focuses upon her personal journey that's as much tied into exploring cultural roots as it is devoted to becoming the best activist she can possibly be.

Setting up her "thesis" as quickly as possible, delivering a smattering of her life and ideals and setting up her trip to Bolivia, all blasts along amiably and soon we're plunged into the meat of her journey proper as she allows us to follow her travels in the country she was not born in, but is quickly falling in love with as she connects with the country's progressively green approach to governance and also, uniting with her extended family. Experiencing Bolivia's environmental victories as well as its challenges on the Green front are all through Geuzebroek's eyes as she discovers them for herself. Scenes with her family are ultimately the most powerful and moving of all. On their on, they'd be plenty affecting, but against the environmental backdrop, they're positively heart-wrenching. The movie occasionally relies too heavily upon a series of cutesy-pie chalkboard-style animation that occasionally drove me right up the wall. I'll grudgingly concede others might not be quite so intolerant of them as I and in fact, might derive considerable pleasure from their overly jaunty, uh, quality.

Alas, these animated sequences border on the whimsical and compel me to be desirous of punching someone in the face. In fairness, though, I'll quote from James Cagney's character in Raoul Walsh's Strawberry Blonde: "That's just the kind of hairpin I am."

The film's denouement is somewhat unsatisfying if only because of the direction the journey genuinely takes. As a filmmaker, Geuzebroek gives it the old college try and put a positive spin on what happens, but a little part of me wished she'd ended her film before that, or perhaps waited to finish it if and when a more satisfying turn of events transpired. As the film is right now, it's kind of begging for a sequel. That might have even been the intent. If so, I do look forward to it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

Radical Friends plays during Toronto's 2014 Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival. The filmmaker will be present for the screening. For further information, check out the festival's website HERE.

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