Four “N’s” from NOW MAGAZINE - Toronto

Under Rich Earth
Rich rewards
NNNN
By Susan G. Cole

Note to filmmakers: lack of resources is no excuse for making a crappy documentary. Malcolm Rogge used only his own hand-held camera and the photographs he took to make Under Rich Earth, and it’s a riveting story of community conflict with an anti-globalism twist.

The setting is Junín, Ecuador, where Canadian mining company Ascendant Copper wants to move in on the land. Farm communities are organizing to face down the “security forces” Ascendant has sent in to intimidate them.

Rogge is right in the middle of it, recording all the key moments, including a stunning sequence in which the protesters – without a single weapon – foil the interlopers. He talks, too, with Ascendant reps who think they know what’s going on while parked on Bay Street.

How did Rogge make such a strong film with so few resources? By using his own storytelling chops. They’re priceless.

UNDER RICH EARTH (Malcolm Rogge). Canada. 92 minutes. Subtitled. March 1, 7 pm, at Cinematheque.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Tuesday) February 24 to March 5, at Cinematheque and Isabel Bader. 416-968-FILM

This article by Christopher Olson was published in today’s issue of Montréal’s The Link:

Click here to download the complete article as a pdf

This land is most definitely our land

Under Rich Earth takes a look at the environmental impact of Canada’s mining concerns in Ecuador

by Christopher Olson

“The dispute about large-scale mining in Intag has been going on for over a decade and is a very complex one,” says writer, producer and director Malcolm Rogge, whose film Under Rich Earth will screen at Cinema Politica next week.

The film analyzes the environmental as well as social impact of Canada’s powerful mining industry from all sides.

Canadian mining company, Ascendant Copper, has mining interests all across South America and decided to set up a copper mine in Intag, a small community in Ecuador. Unfortunately for Ascendant Copper, the local inhabitants thought the land had something more to offer than copper.

Ten years earlier, the residents of Intag successfully fought off Bishi Metals, a Japanese mining company, who were also trying to set up a mining operation. They burnt the company’s buildings to the ground—a tactic they took out of their toolbox a second time in 2005 when threatened by Ascendant Copper.

“They did so basically out of desperation,” says Rogge, who has a degree in Law and Environmental Studies from York University, and who spent some time in Ecuador back in the late 1990s, when this whole issue began.

Returning to Ecuador in 2006, Rogge started filming just four months before all hell broke loose.

“Once I had heard that the company had actually resorted to using paramilitaries, I went to Ecuador right away,” he said. “The people of Intag were very curious, why a Canadian journalist travelling on a bus with a pack of film equipment was there, and wanted to make this film.”

That the Toronto Stock Market financed the mining project contributed in part to his interest in making the film. Rogge lives very near the Toronto institution.

While the company referred to the actions of the residents of Intag as an act of ecoterrorism, Rogge says the term is relative.

“There’s an old adage, one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.”

Based on an environmental impact assessment endorsed by Bishi Motors themselves, large-scale open-pit mining would have resulted in a gradual desertification of the valley of Intag. From their perspective, burning down Ascendant Copper was an act of self-defence.

“I don’t think anyone is arguing that these mining projects don’t have a massive impact,” says Rogge. “The question is where you build these mines.”

In order to get a balanced perspective, Rogge incorporated footage from multiple sources.

“I had to weave material together that was ultimately collected by dozens of people, but it was my own film. It was important to maintain that independence.”

At one point, says Rogge, Ascendant Copper told him they were making their own documentary film to counter bad press.

“In fact, people saw the company employees with cameras, and I know they have footage because they showed it to me when I met them.”

Forced to face the negative media exposure garnered by the project, however, Ascendant Copper was forced not only to relinquish their mining claims, but to change the name of their company.

“The Northern Miner, which is one of the leading mining newspapers in Canada, came to see the film in the Toronto International Film Festival,” says Rogge, “and they published an editorial the next week recommending it and saying that it serves as a classic example for Canadian companies on how not to handle community relations.”

But as before, no one in Intag can rest assured that the issue will ever be put to rest.

“Mining is not just going to go away,” says Rogge. “But up until that point, the whole issue of mining, and the balance between economic development and ecological impact had not been debated until these incidents. In many ways, that national debate was sparked by the events that took place in the film.”

Under Rich Earth will be screened on Monday, Feb. 23 at 7:30 p.m. and will be screened in Room H-110, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. Director Malcolm Rogge will be attending the screening. For a full list of screenings, check out cinemapolitica.org/concordia.

Under Rich Earth will be screening at the historic ARRI Kino in Munich on March 15, 2009

BEST.DOKS 2009 – films that matter

Human Rights Watch, DOK.FEST and ARRI Kino proudly present BEST.DOKS, a programme of brand new, exciting and compelling films on human rights issues.

Eight films will be shown on Sunday mornings at 11.30 a.m., from 1st February to 22nd March 2009 at Munich’s ARRI Kino. The films and their issues will be discussed with the filmmakers and experts after the screenings.

http://www.dokfest-muenchen.de/

You can hear more about Under Rich Earth in this podcast from 12 February 2009, broadcast on Winnipeg’s Alert Radio. The interview begins about one third into the podcast:

Alert Radio - Interview with filmmaker Malcolm Rogge

A new mining law, one of President Rafael Correa’s priorities, has gone into effect. Here are two articles with very different points of view on this important development in Ecuador:

Ecuador: Mining Protests Marginalized, But Growing, by Jennifer Moore, published in Upside Down World

Canadian miners hail new Ecuador mining law: natives and environmentalists glum, published by the Canadian Press

Lay of the Land

Local filmmaker sheds light on grisly disputes in rural Ecuador

By DAVID SCHMEICHEL

From the very first moments of Under Rich Earth — the debut documentary from Winnipeg-raised Malcolm Rogge — it’s pretty much impossible not to be intrigued.

Shaky handheld video footage captures a group of Ecuadorian farmers as they face down gunfire from a posse of paramilitary goons.

Onscreen titles inform us the farmers and their families are fending off the advances of a land-hungry copper mining company — a Canadian copper mining company, no less — and have already spent weeks with just a thin steel chain separating them from the barbarians at the gates.

It’s a tumultuous time, to be sure, and Rogge’s documentary does an impressive job of depicting the drama that’s still being played out in Ecuador’s Intag Valley region, where struggles for control of the pristine farmlands have made the international spotlight.

Rogge, a former Winnipegger now living in Toronto, was first made aware of the conflict while doing graduate research for law school. Since he’d already worked for human rights and environmental groups in Ecuador, it seemed like a no-brainer to return with a camera in tow.

And it’s those cameras (some wielded by Rogge himself, others by the farmers or international observers who embedded themselves in the community as a precautionary measure) that provide us with a first-hand look at the situation as it unfolds.

At some points — in particular, the dicey scenario described above — the antagonists appear unfazed by the presence of recording equipment, or at least, not enough to keep their weapons holstered and their dogs at bay.

But at other times, one has to wonder whether the cameras may have prevented an already volatile situation from escalating even further.

“I think that probably had a lot to do with it,” says Rogge, who’s back in Winnipeg to screen his film at Cinematheque this Saturday and Sunday. “In the case of the confrontation that took place in the mountains, there was a German volunteer videotaping that, and there was another German woman who was photographing. It’s quite possible their presence may have influenced — or even helped to avert — what could have been a bloodbath on both sides.”

Over the course of Rogge’s documentary, which premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, we meet many of the driving forces behind the anti-mining movement: A kindly opposition leader who’s forced into hiding by rogue police squads, the devoted neighbour who regards him as something of a father figure, and an unflappable young woman who squares off against the aforementioned band of ex-soldiers.

We also spend time with one of the reps for the mining company, whose attempts to paint the townspeople as dangerous eco-terrorists grow increasingly sleazy in the face of Rogge’s video evidence.

“To really understand why there’s so much organized opposition to this company — this Canadian mining company — you have to understand the indigenous population in that region of the country is very strong,” says Rogge. “Their institutions are highly organized and established.”

And while the disputes have yet to be settled, the issue is by now a matter of national concern — proof the mining companies may have vastly underestimated their opponents, Rogge says.

“These are people who were born and raised here, and whose grandparents settled these farms. They literally know the land as well as they know their own bodies.

“And it’s such rich land, and the resources are so pure, and they’re so close to primary rainforests and mountain ranges that are completely wild. So these people are willing to put their lives on the line to defend that. They see the land as an extension of themselves.”

—

See the article in the Winnipeg Sun:

Lay of the Land