Food Is a Weapon
1998, 4 minutes, 16mm and Super 8 to SD video
synopsis:
In histories of the Pacific Northwest Timber industry one often finds the opinions of white timber barons, loggers and consumers that view forests as obstacles to more ‘productive’ land applications serving agricultural or railway interests. In times of international conflict, we find the scrap heap piled with the sacred corpses of wild and human habitats, as empire builders mine natural groves for timber to feed the war machine and covert woodland acreage to arable land to grow food for armies. Behold in this brief eulogy the ghosts of the grand, old-growth trees who once ruled this mighty land in quiet commensalism from Shasta to Alaska, belied with the smiling faces of our forebears, ignorant barbarians wielding crosscut saws. Hail to the ancestors, may the ghost forest rise again.
credits:
score and fiddling by Lara Mulvaney
edit: RankinRenwick
footage supplied by Thomas Robinson/Historic Photo Archive