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What could David Beckham’s BBC film say about the Brazilian Amazon? What could David Beckham’s BBC film say about the Brazilian Amazon?
(5 months later)
The news of The news of ex-footballer David Beckham going to Brazil might once have conjured images of him sprinting out across the hallowed Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Not this time, though, now that he’s hung up his playing boots. As BBC Worldwide recently announced, the former England star travelled to the Brazilian Amazon last month to make a 90 minute documentary film to explore “the isolation of the rainforest”, to experience life there, and to “discover the “real Brazil”.”
ex-footballer David Beckham going to Brazil might once have conjured images of “This is an unforgettable documentary set in the heart of the dense Amazon rainforest following David Beckham,” a BBC Worldwide statement reported Helen Jackson, the Managing Director for Content, saying. “Through his eyes, audiences will experience life in the jungle, something so distant from David’s life on and off the pitch and in the glare of the world’s media.”
him sprinting out across the hallowed Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Not But where did Beckham go exactly, and, more importantly, how will his film – due to be distributed abroad and shown on BBC One in June in the run-up to the World Cup held in Brazil – portray the Amazon and the people living there?
this time, though, now that he’s hung up his playing boots. As BBC Worldwide According to BBC One’s Charlotte Moore, also quoted in the BBC Worldwide’s statement, Beckham’s expedition was, or is, “top-secret.” However, photos of him meeting a Yanomami leader, Davi Yanomami – posted online by Yanomami organization Hutukara and distributed worldwide by NGO Survival International – make it clear he paid a visit to their territory in northern Brazil and suggest some Yanomami will feature in the film, although the BBC Worldwide’s communications office would not confirm that to me.
recently announced, the former England star travelled to the Brazilian Amazon Let’s hope it’s not the all-too-common, intensely irritating celebrity program that spends way too much time on the celebrity and not enough time on where he or she’s travelling or who he or she’s meeting.
last month to make a 90 minute documentary film to explore “the isolation of And let’s hope it doesn’t fall into the several centuries-old trap of portraying the Amazon as a largely or overwhelmingly “wild”, “pristine” and “empty” “land without history” inhabited by a few groups of stereotyped, exoticised indigenous peoples – and no one else – where nothing much has happened for the last few 100 years and nothing at all until the first Europeans arrived.
the rainforest”, to experience life there, and to “discover the “real Brazil”.” Multidisciplinary academic Susanna Hecht highlights this tendency in her recently-published book “The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha”, describing how what Brazilian writer da Cunha discovered during his expedition to the Amazon in the early 20th century was “completely at odds with the northern European tropicalisms which favoured an “empty” world, a largely natural, wild place inhabited by indolent primitives.”
“This is an Indeed, Hecht calls the “Upper Amazon” at the time of da Cunha’s expedition “probably as multicultural as any place on the planet,” and about the 19th century she writes:
unforgettable documentary set in the heart of the dense Amazon rainforest The Amazon was the object of treaties, armed incursions, and roving battalions. . . and deeply integrated into global commodity circuits. European and hemispheric players were prowling in the environs, looking for an excuse to intervene. While travellers marveled at the grandeur of the “untrammelled” Amazonian forests, at the time it was a geopolitical hot spot.
following David Beckham,” a BBC Worldwide statement reported Helen Jackson, the So what do we want to see in a film about the Brazilian Amazon, or what should audiences in the UK or abroad learn about it? I put those two questions to Daniel Nepstad, a tropical forest ecologist who has studied the Amazon for years and is the lead author on chapter 4 of the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group (WG) II report.
Managing Director for Content, saying. “Through his eyes, audiences will “Brazil has done what no forest nation has achieved in history,” Nepstad says. “It is the world leader in climate change mitigation because of the 70% reduction in deforestation in the Amazon that has been achieved since 2005. This has prevented about 3.2 billion tons of CO2 from going into the atmosphere and kept more than 80,000 km2 of rainforest standing.”
experience life in the jungle, something so distant from David’s life on and However, Nepstad acknowledges there is a “dark cloud behind this impressive progress related to climate change itself”, as summarized in his chapter of the IPCC WGII report.
off the pitch and in the glare of the world’s media.” “Basically, we no longer predict a late-century regional forest dieback driven by climate change in the Amazon,” he says. “Instead we predict a near-term regional forest degradation scenario, in which severe drought events – like we had in 2005, 2007 and 2010 – kill trees and make rainforests susceptible to fire, and which can kill up to half of the adult trees of the forest.”
But where I also put the same two questions to various Brazilian experts whose lives have been intimately linked with the Amazon, and what follows is some of what they told me.
did Beckham go exactly, and, more importantly, how will his film – due to be distributed Eduardo Neves, archaeologist, University of Sao Paulo:
abroad and shown on BBC One in June in the run-up to the World Cup held in The Amazon was fully and densely settled by the time the Europeans arrived in the Americas and these ancient fellows devised ingenious and apparently sustainable ways to live there. What I would most like to see in a film is the wonderful objects produced by the people who lived there in the past and which are now stored in museums in Brazil and abroad.
Brazil – portray the Amazon and the people living there? Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, anthropologist, National Museum in Rio de Janeiro:
According The Amazon region is being turned into a provider of hydro-power to the rest of the country and a number of transnational, highly energy-intensive industrial concerns, and its immense rain forest is being transformed into cattle country and monocultural, deforested agricultural land in order to feed China and other rich countries. . . I’m deeply disheartened to see that Brazil is losing its unique historical opportunity to create a tropically-oriented, ecologically sound, truly multicultural model of civilisation, and striving instead to mimic northern European socio-economic models — models that, besides being totally inadequate to Brazilian conditions, are proving themselves lethal to human and non-human environments.
to BBC One’s Charlotte Moore, also quoted in the BBC Worldwide’s statement, Beckham’s Felipe Milanez, political ecology researcher and former editor of National Geographic Brasil:
expedition was, or is, “top-secret.” However, photos of him meeting a Yanomami A non-exotic film and the serious challenges of the Amazon and its people. This means showing a real place inhabited by people who are part of the ecosystem, and deserve to be part of any debate about its future. . . The Amazon is still a very violent place for those who live there and are not getting any benefit from the hundreds of dams that are being built or the massive extraction of its resources.
leader, Davi Yanomami – posted online by Yanomami organization Hutukara and Lucio Flavio Pinto, journalist, Jornal Pessoal:
distributed worldwide by NGO Survival International – make it clear he paid a In 2011 there was a big flood in the Maranhão lowlands, one of the poorest areas in Brazil, in one of the poorest states, despite being the birthplace of former president José Sarney. The local population was cut-off. A helicopter arrived but couldn’t land because people were so starving and desperate, and so someone began to toss out food, medicine and clothing. A few kilometres away, the largest cargo train in the world, carrying the best iron ore on the planet from the Carajas mine, was also stopped by the flood. However, through a combination of money, technology and inventiveness, it was soon on its way again. About 500 men were contracted by the mining company Vale, the largest seller of iron ore in the world, to build dikes along the track and pump away the water. The train began to run again, earning US$30 million per day. Meanwhile, 1000s of Maranhenses were left to their fate. That’s the real Amazon.
visit to their territory in northern Brazil and suggest some Yanomami will
feature in the film, although the BBC Worldwide’s communications office would
not confirm that to me.
Let’s hope
it’s not the all-too-common, intensely irritating celebrity program that spends
way too much time on the celebrity and not enough time on where he or she’s
travelling or who he or she’s meeting.
And let’s
hope it doesn’t fall into the several centuries-old trap of portraying the
Amazon as a largely or overwhelmingly “wild”, “pristine” and “empty” “land
without history” inhabited by a few groups of stereotyped, exoticised
indigenous peoples – and no one else – where nothing much has happened for the
last few 100 years and nothing at all until the first Europeans arrived.
Multidisciplinary
academic Susanna Hecht highlights this tendency in her recently-published book “The
Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost
Paradise of Euclides da Cunha”, describing how what Brazilian writer da
Cunha discovered during his expedition to the Amazon in the early 20th
century was “completely at odds with the northern European tropicalisms which
favoured an “empty” world, a largely natural, wild place inhabited by indolent
primitives.”
Indeed,
Hecht calls the “Upper Amazon” at the time of da Cunha’s expedition “probably
as multicultural as any place on the planet,” and about the 19th
century she writes:
The Amazon was the object of treaties, armed
incursions, and roving battalions. . . and deeply integrated into global
commodity circuits. European and hemispheric players were prowling in the
environs, looking for an excuse to intervene. While travellers marveled at the
grandeur of the “untrammelled” Amazonian forests, at the time it was a
geopolitical hot spot.
So what do we want to see in a film about the
Brazilian Amazon, or what should audiences in the UK or abroad learn about it? I
put those two questions to Daniel Nepstad, a tropical forest ecologist who has studied the Amazon for years and is the lead author on chapter 4 of the new
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group (WG) II report.
“Brazil has
done what no forest nation has achieved in history,” Nepstad says. “It is the
world leader in climate change mitigation because of the 70% reduction in
deforestation in the Amazon that has been achieved since 2005. This has
prevented about 3.2 billion tons of CO2 from going into the atmosphere and kept
more than 80,000 km2 of rainforest standing.”
However,
Nepstad acknowledges there is a “dark cloud behind this impressive progress
related to climate change itself”, as summarized in his chapter of the IPCC
WGII report.
“Basically,
we no longer predict a late-century regional forest dieback driven by climate
change in the Amazon,” he says. “Instead we predict a near-term regional forest
degradation scenario, in which severe drought events – like we had in 2005,
2007 and 2010 – kill trees and make rainforests susceptible to fire, and which
can kill up to half of the adult trees of the forest.”
I also put
the same two questions to various Brazilian experts whose lives have been intimately
linked with the Amazon, and what follows is some of what they told me.
Eduardo
Neves, archaeologist, University of Sao Paulo:
The Amazon was fully and densely settled by the
time the Europeans arrived in the Americas and these ancient fellows devised
ingenious and apparently sustainable ways to live there. What I would most like
to see in a film is the wonderful objects produced by the people who lived
there in the past and which are now stored in museums in Brazil and abroad.
Eduardo
Viveiros de Castro, anthropologist, National Museum in Rio de Janeiro:
The Amazon region is being turned into a
provider of hydro-power to the rest of the country and a number of
transnational, highly energy-intensive industrial concerns, and its immense
rain forest is being transformed into cattle country and monocultural,
deforested agricultural land in order to feed China and other rich countries. .
. I’m deeply disheartened to see that Brazil is losing its unique historical
opportunity to create a tropically-oriented, ecologically sound, truly
multicultural model of civilisation, and striving instead to mimic northern
European socio-economic models — models that, besides being totally inadequate
to Brazilian conditions, are proving themselves lethal to human and non-human
environments.
Felipe
Milanez, political ecology researcher and former editor of National Geographic Brasil:
A non-exotic film and the serious challenges of
the Amazon and its people. This means showing a real place inhabited by people
who are part of the ecosystem, and deserve to be part of any debate about its
future. . . The Amazon is still a very violent place for those who live there
and are not getting any benefit from the hundreds of dams that are being built
or the massive extraction of its resources.
Lucio
Flavio Pinto, journalist, Jornal Pessoal:
In 2011 there was a big flood in the Maranhão
lowlands, one of the poorest areas in Brazil, in one of the poorest states,
despite being the birthplace of former president José Sarney. The local
population was cut-off. A helicopter arrived but couldn’t land because people
were so starving and desperate, and so someone began to toss out food, medicine
and clothing. A few kilometres away, the largest cargo train in the world,
carrying the best iron ore on the planet from the Carajas mine, was also
stopped by the flood. However, through a combination of money, technology and
inventiveness, it was soon on its way again. About 500 men were contracted by
the mining company Vale, the largest seller of iron ore in the world, to build
dikes along the track and pump away the water. The train began to run again, earning
US$30 million per day. Meanwhile, 1000s of Maranhenses were left to their fate.
That’s the real Amazon.