THINK GLOBAL, ACT RURAL deals with environmental issues, a theme you already tackled in your feature La Belle Verte. What inspired you to make the movie?

 
Three years ago I began shooting footage of various subjects on my own, including an interview with Pierre Rabhi (founder of Colibris, Movement for Earth and Humanism), whom I’d known for a few years. Upon my return from Morocco, where I was filming some of his activities, I felt I needed to pursue this research and develop the project by meeting other people involved in similar activities around the world. So I left for India, Brazil, Ukraine, and Switzerland, to interview people who were offering credible alternatives to our system. I wanted to hear perspectives not only from theorists and veterans of different movements, but also from farmers and ordinary people, who are the true actors and inventors of change.

I didn’t want to make a film that would make people feel depressed or guilty. We do have the responsibility to change the system, yet responsibility is not the same thing as guilt.

The first step was to name-call the pipe dreams that are being fed to us. The truth is that a very small number of people are gathering more wealth each day, while the majority is getting relentlessly poorer. And the ecological problems are a direct consequence of our societal organization, which promotes exploitation, predation and profit, rather than the forces of life.
Once they have seen the reality, the damages it causes, people, in their soul and conscience, will write History, will act according to their own sense of justice and well-being.

With this film, I show that all over the world there are people who don’t know one another, yet are doing the same thing, share the same life philosophy, and utilize the land in the same way, on a daily basis.
Bringing to light both the simplicity and universality of their solutions was the real reason I made this film.

My wish is that after watching the film, people around the world feel hopeful, want to start acting right away - that they feel empowered to invent their own solutions.

I shot 170 hours of footage with my HD camera, on my own terms – the process mirroring the topic of the film.
I also wanted the camera movements to be free, alive, like eyes seeing and discovering, with no set rules. The editing followed an imperative for both clarity and rigorous construction, all the while maintaining total stylistic freedom in cutting and illustrating.
 

What are the main topics?

Firstly, we analyze the origin of the farming method that sprung from post-war arm stocks - an offensive agricultural method that attacks the soil.

Then, we explore how what could be called the genocide of farmers was set up. How, because of the profit imperatives of the chemical and petroleum industries and the theft of wealth in the profit of a minority, everything that the soil and the animals were generating for free was decimated, to be replaced by non-reproducing substances, and the excessive use of chemicals - thereby eradicating bio-diversity.

What was priceless in biodiversity was the freedom and self-sufficiency each farmer enjoyed, as they could keep and select the seeds which were most suited to their land's specificities.

The industrial powers came in to straighten out the situation, to foil the freedom, by confiscating and forbidding local seeds, by imposing non-reproducing seeds, which can only grow with the assistance of patented synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. These patents, by the way, are paid for by the people, to further enrich the farming industry.

This process leads to the slow death of the soil, which becomes a desert. It is virtual for the moment, as there is still some oil left. But once this is consumed, our land will be sterile, dead, unable to produce.

It is most urgent that we put a stop to this deadly production, which only profits a few and is endangering our food security. We have to mend the soil, bring back free, healthy and sustainable agriculture, which could give millions of people a job again. It is possible. The people must demand it. Politicians must vote laws to enable it.

Does patriarchy hold sole responsibility for this global mess?

Patriarchy is a phase (transient in the history of humanity) of imbalance between men and women. This imbalance castrates humanity of half its strength and creativity. It brings about the most violent and deadly drifts in our societies. It is an infant illness though, it's not incurable. The women's liberation movements that have been shaking our societies in the past centuries are the first step towards remedying this evil.
Infant illnesses can be very dangerous, and may jeopardize our young humanity. Yes, young. Because we came last in the living species order, and are probably the least adapted species in this world.
The main question is: will we pass this test?
Will we grow, or will we remain sick? If we grow, the future looks bright.
If we fail, and die, no one will mind. Quite the contrary: the animals, the plants and the bacteria which preceded us in the universe, which are every day suffering more from the empire of our arrogance, will probably benefit from our extinction.
We have to work, philosophically, on accepting that human beings are not superior.
To accept that, is to experience a violent wound to our ego, similar to the one we suffered when we were forced to accept that the Earth was round, was revolving around the Sun, which is itself merely a common star, comparable to the billions and billions of stars in a Universe whose size we cannot fathom.
Claude Bourguignon says that geneticists were upset when they found out that barley, while only a plant, has twice as many genes as man! Geneticists, in their boundless modesty, went on to call "junk ADN" that part of the barley genome they weren't able to understand. It is this thinking system we have to work on.

Humans self-proclaim to be the most evolved race. They should be smart enough to question this so-called superiority.

Can you give us some examples of solutions?

One of the solutions is going “back to basics”: to reclaim self-sufficiency with chemical-free food supplied through small, local facilities, to free ourselves and ensure our livelihood. It is what Vandana Shiva calls “reinventing democracy”. But this new democracy, which allows us to make a connection between the Earth and the food on our plate, is not at war against technical inventions and modern communications. It is not about returning to the Stone Age.