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Shuts and Failures

by Michael Maiello

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American Meat docufilm

by Donal 7/15/2011 - 9:05 pm   |

Above is a summary of the soon-to-be-released documentary American Meat.

Producer Alejandro de Onis and director Graham Meriwether explore the impact of the recent economic downturn on industrial agriculture. One farmer in Virginia, Joel Salatin, is leading a small but growing group of farmers who are looking to expand the influence of local small-scale farms. The film explores how the agricultural industry has brutalized the food production process, and become Americas #1 polluter. At the Producers Institute, De Onis and his team planned to bring farmers and communities to a digital dinner table by integrating the film within an e-commerce and social networking context.

The Meat team tries hard not to alienate or vilify the industrial meat farmers, seeing them as victims of the overall system.


Above avatar of Second Life reporter Draxtor Despres interviews the avatar of director Meriwether about the making of the film.

There was one quote from the director that I found interesting:

One of the really important things to us is that we don’t create a film that alienates people.  We want a film that gives a fair shake to industrial meat industry…And I found the people working for these large agriculture businesses are good people.  I just think they are stuck in an unhealthy and inefficient system.

I could say that a similiar approach and sentiment could be applied to a lot of our economic sectors, including the banking industry.

And on another note, there is something about the video interview using avatars that I find a little disconcerting. 

by Another Trope 7/16/2011 - 1:19 pm

Hey Alejandro and Graham, so good to see this project moving forward! I was so inspired by you guys at BAVC! I am still doing CSA, local meat now and hopefully some chickens too in the backyard. To the commenter above in re SL: avatar-based interaction can be very powerful and liberating as evidenced in my recent documentary about the Kansas To Cairo Project, where students from Cairo and Los Angeles collaborated on a large architecture project, merely using avatars of their own choosing. They truly reflected the inner self in name and appearance many of them told me, much more so than the physical appearance they were "given" by birth. Immersive virtual worlds are redefining a lot about human interaction and are, as all technology is, neither good nor bad, it is us who choose what we do with it!

by Draxtor (not verified) 7/16/2011 - 2:55 pm (re: Another Trope)

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