[Price Index] [Catalog Search] [Order Form] [Bullfrog Films Home Page]

THE DECADE OF DESTRUCTION


4 video programs on 5 cassettes 55 minutes per cassette Grades 9-
Adult

Produced by Adrian Cowell

Adrian Cowell's brilliant documentary series, which aired on
PBS' "Frontline," about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest,
perhaps this century's worst environmental disaster. Imagine, if
you will, that one of the world's great filmmakers was there to
document the opening up of the American West in its most critical
decade, and you will have some idea of the epic scale of this
remarkable series.

Amazonia is the last great frontier the world will ever see.
Cowell began filming in 1980 when it was first opened up to
settlers and developers. He has documented the systematic
destruction of the rainforest there into late 1990 when for the
first time there was an indication that the fires were being
brought under control.

Each episode follows the real life stories of people caught up
in the frontier's web of need and greed, stories of personal
tragedy and great courage. The programs relate the individual's
struggle to the wider developments going on around them. Together
they illustrate the principal issues of Amazonia during the
1980's -- its decade of greatest destruction.

(Cowell's BANKING ON DISASTER is a distillation of some of the
material in this series.)

Series of 5 cassettes ISBN: 1-56029-027-7

Subtitle: In The Ashes of the Forest -- Parts 1 & 2

55 minutes and 57 minutes

The first film follows the saga of two colonists, Chico and
Renato, and a never previously photographed Indian tribe, the Uru
Eu Wau Wau. Renato is a landless peasant who has been lured into
the rainforest with promises of free land and big harvests. He and
his neighbors slash and burn the forest to clear the land, only to
discover that the soil is so poor their crops will not grow. In
retaliation for the settlers' incursions, the Indians kidnap
Chico's 7-year-old son. As the little boy's family searches for
the kidnappers, the government tries to make peace with the
Indians.

By the decade's end, the fate of Chico's boy is learned; an
epidemic kills many of the Indians; the settlers' farms have
failed; and more than 15% of the forest has been destroyed.

Awards: Blue Ribbon, American Film & Video Festival; Gold Apple,
National Educational Film & Video Festival; Special Jury Award,
San Francisco International Film Festival

Subject Areas: ENVIRONMENT, RAINFORESTS, LATIN AMERICA, POLITICAL
SCIENCE, HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, NATIVE PEOPLES, CURRENT
AFFAIRS

Part One ISBN: 1-56029-028-5 Part Two ISBN: 1-56029-025-0

Subtitle: Killing For Land

51 minutes

In Brazil during the past two decades, nearly 24 million small
farmers have lost their land, while almost half of Brazil's arable
land is now owned by 1% of the population. Millions of poor
farmers have migrated to the Amazon as homesteaders, and many have
moved onto massive ranches carved out of the rainforest by large
companies. These absentee landlords often leave the land idle and
hold it purely for speculation. Violence erupts when the squatters
begin to work the land and the landowners hire gunmen to frighten
them off.

Awards: American Film & Video Festival

Subject Areas: ECONOMICS, LATIN AMERICA, DEVELOPMENT,Social
studies

ISBN: 1-56029-030-7

Subtitle: Mountains of Gold

54 minutes

Brazil has one of the world's largest untapped gold reserves
and roughly 70% of its production is mined by freelance
prospectors, or garimpeiros, who pan and dredge gold all over the
forest on land licensed by the government to huge companies. The
film follows Jova, a prospector famous among his colleagues for
his illegal gold strikes, as he plays hide and seek with the
security forces of Brazil's largest mining multi-national. The
main threat to the company, however, is the huge mine of Serra
Pelada which is manually operated by garimpeiros. Mining's long-
range impact on the rainforest is likely to be the center of
controversy in the Amazon of the 1990's.

Awards: **** Video Rating Guide for Libraries

Subject Areas: MINING, ENVIRONMENT, LATIN AMERICA, RAINFORESTS

ISBN: 1-56029-032-3

Subtitle: The Killing of Chico Mendes

55 minutes

The series concludes with the story of Chico Mendes whose
brutal murder on December 22, 1988, provoked international protest
and brought worldwide attention to the problem of Amazonian
deforestation. The film follows his rise to prominence as the
leader of the rubber-tappers, or seringueiros. The seringueiros
have lived in the rainforest for over 100 years, susbsisting by
tapping native rubber, collecting Brazil nuts, and other
ecologically sustainable activites. Seeing their way of life
threatened, Mr. Mendes formed the seringueiros into a union and
led the fight to halt the devastation of the rainforest and to
create protected areas, called "extractive reserves," to be
managed by local seringueiros communities. As a result of Chico's
activism 12 extractive reserves, totalling more than 5 million
acres, are being created in the most hopeful development to have
come out of Amazonia during the 1980 's.

Awards: Gold Apple, National Educational Film & Video Festival;
American Film & Video Festival

Subject Areas: RAINFORESTS, DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENT,
INTERNATIONAL ISSUES, HISTORY, CURRENT AFFAIRS, LATIN AMERICA

ISBN: 1-56029-034-X


For Fastest Service
Call TOLL FREE (800) 543-FROG (3764)
or FAX (610) 370-1978

Bullfrog Films
Box 149, Oley PA 19547
(610) 779-8226
E-Mail: bullfrog@igc.apc.org