Island of Flowers short film
From Mark Elrod's blog (http://www.markaelrod.net): The Island of Flowers (1989) is a short documentary film that I share with students at Honors Symposium. It is a provocative film that squeezes a lot into just 13 minutes. The film was written and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Jorge Furtado and has won numerous awards for short films. You can view a Portuguese language version here with English subtitles (you can skip the trailer). The version I use in class is in English and I think it works a little better than the Portuguese version. I recently finished writing a transcript for The Island of Flowers that you can read here. Sometimes the subtitles in the online version move too fast too keep up with the images. The film is basically about the lifecycle of a tomato that ends up a garbage dump on the Isle of Flowers, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Once there, the tomato becomes food for pigs while the people who live there are given the opportunity to use the garbage that has been rejected by the pig’s owners. I think The Island of Flowers is a film that raises more questions than answers, but it’s a pretty strong indictment against a system that places pigs at a higher priority of importance than human beings.
Poet. Lover of academy and porch.
