This film is a MUST SEE! Please watch it and comment... Dialogue is necessary in regards to this...
Island of Flowers
Transcription of Narrative:
The Island of Flowers (Ihla das Flores) (1989)
ESTE NÃO É UM FILME DE FICCÃO
(THIS IS NOT A FICTIONAL FILM)
EXISTE UM LUGAR CHAMADO ILHA DAS FLORES
(A PLACE CALLED ISLAND OF FLOWERS EXISTS)
DEUS NÃO EXISTE
(GOD DOES NOT EXIST)
We're in Belem Novo, city of Porto Alegre, State of Rio Grande de Sul, Brazil, more precisely at thirty degrees, twelve minutes and thirty seconds latitude south and fifty-one degrees, eleven minutes and twenty-three seconds longitude west. We are now walking in a tomato plantation, and we can see, standing in front of us, a human being, in this case, a Japanese human being.
The Japanese distinguish themselves from other human beings by the shape of their eyes, their black hair and their characteristic names. This particular Japanese is called SUZUKI.
Human beings are biped animals, mammals, and are distinguished from other mammals, like whales, and from other bipeds like chickens, in two main respects: the highly-developed telencephalon and the opposable thumb. The highly-developed telencephalon allows human beings to store, relate process and understand information. The opposable thumb allows human beings to use their fingers in a pincer movement, which in turn allows for precise manipulation.
The highly-developed telencephalon, combined with capability of the pincer movement, gave human beings the possibility of making many improvements on their planet, among them… the growing of tomatoes.
A tomato, contrary to whales, chickens and Japanese, is a vegetable. The fruit of the tomato tree, the tomato has been cultivated since the nineteenth century for its nutritional value. The earth produces around sixty-one million tons of tomatoes per year. Mr. Suzuki, even working twelve hours a day, is responsible for a very small part of this production. The main function of the tomato is its use for food by human beings.
Mr. Suzuki is a Japanese, therefore a human being. However, Mr. Suzuki does not grown tomatoes with the intention of eating them. All the tomatoes produced by Mr. Suzuki are sent to a supermarket and exchanged for money.
Money was created, as far as is known, by Giges, king of Lydia, a large kingdom in Asia Minor, in the seventh century before Christ. Christ was Jew. The Jews have a highly-developed telencephalon and an opposable thumb, therefore they are human beings.
Before money was created, all economies were based on direct exchange. The difficulty in evaluating the amount of tomatoes equivalent to one chicken and the problem of exchanging chickens for whales are the principle reasons that led to the creation of money. Nowadays, and since the second century before Christ, any action or object produced by human beings, as a consequence of the combined efforts of the highly-developed telencephalon and the opposable thumb, as well as everything alive or not alive, above or below ground, tomatoes, chickens and whales, can be exchanged for money. To facilitate the exchange of tomatoes for money, human beings created the supermarket.
Mrs. Anete is a Roman Catholic, biped mammal. She has a highly-developed telencephalon and an opposable thumb. She is therefore a human being. She came to this supermarket to, among other things, exchange her money for tomatoes. Mrs. Anete earned her money with the work she does. She uses her highly-developed telencephalon and her opposable thumb to exchange perfume for money.
Perfumes are liquids, normally extracted from flowers that give human beings a more pleasant smell than their natural ones. Mrs. Anete does not extract her perfumes from flowers. She exchanges, with a factory, a certain amount of money for perfumes. After that, Mrs. Anete goes from door to door exchanging the perfume for a slightly larger amount of money. The difference between those two amounts is called profit. Profit was once forbidden to Catholics, but now all human beings are free to make it.
Mrs. Anete's profit is small, compared to the factory's profit, but it's enough to exchange for one kilo of tomatoes and two kilos of pork, which is the meat extracted from pigs. Pigs are mammals, like human beings and whales but are four-footed. They are used as food by Japanese, Catholics, and other human beings, but not by Jews.
The food that Mrs. Anete exchanged for the money that was exchanged for perfumes extracted from flowers will be consumed by her family in the course of one day. One day is the period of time the Earth takes to rotate once around its own axis. Midday is time for lunch. A family is a community formed by two human beings, male and female, joined in matrimony, and the children born from this marriage.
Some of the tomatoes exchanged by Mr. Suzuki for money and exchanged once again with the profit that Mrs. Anete earned from the exchange of perfumes taken from flowers have been made into a sauce for the pork. One of these tomatoes, in Mrs. Anete's judgment was not fit to be made into sauce and was thrown into the garbage. Garbage is everything that human beings produce, as a result of the combined efforts of the highly-developed telencephalon and the opposable thumb, and which, in the judgment of one human being, is not fit to be made into sauce. A city like Porto Alegre, inhabited by more than one million human beings produces around five-hundred tons of garbage per day.
Garbage attracts all kinds of germs and bacteria that, in their turn, cause diseases. Diseases seriously impair the proper functioning of human beings. Even when it does not cause disease, garbage looks extremely unpleasant and smells bad. Because of this, garbage is sent to certain places, quite far away where it can be dirty, smell bad and attract diseases freely. In Porto Alegre, one of the places chosen for the garbage to smell bad is called "Island of Flowers."
An island is a portion of land surrounded by water on all sides. Water is an odorless, tasteless and colorless liquid formed by two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Flowers are the reproductive organs of plants. They are generally sweet-smelling and have bright colors. From sweet-smelling flowers, perfumes are extracted, like those Mrs. Anete exchanged for money that was exchanged for the tomatoes. There are few flowers on the Island of Flower. There is, however, a lot of garbage and, in its midst, the tomato that Mrs. Anete judged unsuitable for the pork sauce.
There are also a lot of pigs on the Island of Flowers. The tomato that Mrs. Anete judged unsuitable for the pork to feed her family can become an excellent food for the pig and its family – in the pig's judgment of course.
It's important to remember that Mrs. Anete has a highly-developed telencephalon, while the pig doesn't have a thumb, let alone an opposable one. The pig has, however, an owner. The pig's owner is a human being with a highly-developed telencephalon, opposable thumb, and money. The pig's owner exchanged a small portion of his money for a piece of land on the Island of Flowers, becoming in this way, its owner. A piece of land is a portion of earth that has an owner and a fence. This piece of land, where the garbage is thrown, has a fence to stop pigs from going out and other human beings from coming in.
Employees of the pig's owner separate, from the rest of the garbage, organic material that is suitable for pig food. Organic material is everything that was once alive, in animal or vegetable form. Tomatoes, chickens, pigs, flowers, and paper are organic material. This paper, for example, was used for the elaboration of a history test at the school of Nossa Senhora das Dores. It was taken by the student Ana Luiza Nunes, a human being. A history test is a test of a human being's capacity to remember data relating to the study of history such as: "Who was Genghis Khan?" and "What were the two rivers of Mesopotamia?"
To live is to remember.
Some organic material like tomatoes and history tests are given to pigs as food. Those things that have been judged unsuitable for pigs will be used as food by children and women. Children and women are human beings with highly-developed telencephalon, an opposable thumb and no money. They have no owner and, what is worse, there are lots of them. Because there are lots of them, they are organized by the pig's owner employees in groups of ten are allowed to go inside the fence. Inside the fence, they can pick at all the food that the pig's owner's employees found unsuitable for the pig. The pig's owner's employees decided that each group of ten human beings should have five minutes to be inside the fence collecting organic material such as tomatoes and history tests.
Five minutes are three hundred seconds. Since 1958, the second has been defined as the equivalent of 9,192,631,772 radiation cycles of a cesium atom. Cesium is a non-organic material found in the garbage in Goiana.
The tomato, grown by Mr. Suzuki, exchanged for money with the supermarket, exchanged for money that Mrs. Anete exchanged for perfumes extracted from flowers, refused for the pork sauce, thrown into the garbage, and by the pig as food, is now available for the human beings on the Island of Flowers.
What places human beings after pigs in the priority of choosing food is the fact that they do not have money or an owner. Human beings distinguish themselves from the other animals by their highly-developed telencephalon, the opposable thumb and by being free. Being free is the state of one who has freedom.
Freedom is a word that the human dream feeds on, that no one can explain or fail to understand.
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