Artivist Film Festival's Animal Advocacy Showcase, NYC

By Rational Animal intern, Nicole Mak

Edited and with contributions by Courtney Kistler

On January 26, 2012, in its eighth annual film tour and visit to New York City, the Artivist Film Festival and Artivist Awards showcased three films focusing on animal advocacy at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. Founded in 2003, the Artivist Film Festival uses film to raise awareness for international human rights, children’s advocacy, environmental preservation, and animal advocacy. Each film sought to convey to its audience issues of the animal industry and why vegetarianism and veganism were necessary responses to these atrocities.

The first featured was Together: Dancing with Spinner Dolphins, a short film showing spinner dolphins and their curiosity of the unknown. Only a few minutes long, the film sought to evoke a smile from the audience as they witnessed a dance between a snorkeler and three spinner dolphins. This film reminded us how beautiful we perceive animals in the wild to be, and in comparison to the next two films, eased us into the idea of living peacefully and sustainably with animals.

The second film was called Farm to Fridge by Mercy for Animals. For me personally, it is the most graphic animal rights video I’ve ever seen. As a former omnivore converted pescatarian, I have seen my share of animal rights shock and awe videos. This one, however, didn’t hesitate to bombard the audience with clip after clip of animals on American farms (most of them were factory farms) being castrated, crushed, beaten and hacked in the most inhumane and nauseating ways imaginable. Narrated by
Oscar-nominee and TV actor, James Cromwell, this film takes you on an eye-opening exploration behind the closed doors of the nation’s industrial poultry, pig, dairy, and fish farms, hatcheries, and slaughter plants – revealing the often-unseen journey that animals make from the farm to the American fridge, and eventually to the serving plate.

View entire film online; order free copy.

As I looked at the viewers’ heads in my line of vision, I saw many were looking down. Gasps and whispered cries could be heard all around me as the film revealed that it was common to smash piglets to the ground—headfirst—as a way to euthanize them.

Five minutes into this film I told myself I would become a vegan.

Seeing so much gore when you don’t expect it can be very mind altering. I don't think anyone in the audience left that theater feeling unaffected by that film. It made you hypersensitive. Suddenly you couldn’t help but think about all the animal related items you’d seen that, prior to this experience, you wouldn’t have giv

en a second thought about. As the film played, my stomach felt cold and empty, and I wanted to look away. What convinced me to keep watching was that all of this is real. By looking away we are denying what we, as Americans, demand. The only way to change these horrific animal practices is to face the music. It was obvious what the film was asking us to do: become vegan.

While the first film closed off amidst smatterings of chitchat, the second film left the audience dead silent. The last film tried to comfort and then engage the audience. Vegucated sought to

bring back humor and warmth to the theatre. Filmed in 2005 New York City and at various spots in New England, this 80-minute film is about three omnivores who volunteer (for no compensation, other than several delicious meals, field trips, and life-changing learning experiences) to undergo a complete vegan transformation over the course of 6 weeks. The writer and executive producer, Marisa Miller Wolfson, starred in the film as the provider of this “vegucation” and as intermittent narrator. Similar in tactic to Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, Wolfson educated Brian, Ellen, and Tesla and the viewing audience on how to start from the ground up to become vegan.

Marisa definitely made the education fun by taking them to places like Moo Shoes in downtown NYC and Ooh Mah Nee farm animal sanctuary. At one point, the crew spontaneously decided to stop off at a factory farm property and walk right up to one of the buildings. Surprisingly, not one person came out of that building or surrounding area to ask questions. Just outside the building, they discovered an open truck wagon containing the carcasses of two pigs. On the rest of the drive home, the dialogue between Tesla and Brian was heated and passionate. They were truly embracing the facts and sad reality about farm animals in America.

I liked that the film showed each volunteer’s drop in blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight after the mere 6 week period without overemphasizing these metrics. The main focus, really, was to de-alienate veganism. In choosing volunteers who fit the majority of meat and dairy eating Americans and mentioning popular American foods that were already vegan (chocolate frosting??), the film allowed the audience to reconsider their mainstream perception of the vegan next door. Marisa interviewed people on the streets of New York in the beginning of the film, asking them if they could go vegan, and getting pretty much the same response from each one: "No.", "Nah." or "I don't think so." This film took a clever, creative approach and truly broke down that resistance, as exemplified by the three different people who took on the vegan challenge.

After watching From Farm to Fridge, I wanted to be vegan. Watching Vegucated brought encouragement. By seeing the small steps that the volunteers were taking, I realized that I was already taking those steps. The film left me feeling good. Happy for the newly converted vegan and vegetarian volunteers in the film, it gave me a sense that I could do it too. That’s why I’m starting on my road to veganism!

The Animal Rights Orgs' Undercover Investigations...and becoming an educated, informed consumer

People for the Ethical Treatment of animals conducted an undercover investigation at an Iowa Hormel pig factory farm.

From PETA.org: “For more than three months, PETA went undercover at an Iowa pig factory farm, which supplies piglets who are raised and killed for Hormel products. PETA found rampant cruelty to animals committed by workers and supervisors. The farm changed ownership and management during PETA's investigation, but that made no difference to the animals who were born and confined there: Abuse and neglect were widespread during PETA's entire investigation.”

PETA is one of the few organizations that actually monitors this closely the practices at factory farms. Lawmakers and legislators do not go in with their cameras to film what they are supposed to be regulating. This is raw video, this is not edited, so please be aware that much of this is very difficult to watch – yet this is reality. These are people in OUR country committing such brutal, cruel acts on animals. These people can be walking next to you outside, driving down the highway on the same mile as you, sitting next table over at a restaurant eating the very animals they bloodied, tortured, and in the case of dozens of piglets, beat to death just earlier that day.

I commend those at PETA who undertook this painful assignment. Very few are capable of carrying out filming something so horrific and disturbing. While you and I watch the video and hear the pig screaming for mercy as a farmer beats a pig on his back and stomach with a metal gate rod, a person with a camera is there witnessing it him or herself. Most, including myself, would be incapable of standing there and not trying to stop any of those men from abusing the animals. But in order for us to become educated, informed consumers, we need groups like PETA and the Humane Society of the United States, whose footage from puppy mills to animal testing labs has been aired on network TV, out there taking on these tasks of exposing animal abuse and then taking action on stopping it, as well as educating and informing we consumers about how we too can take action to stop it.

Although these videos are very difficult to watch, I would encourage everyone to watch for at least a couple seconds – because this is not a TV show or movie, this is real and these are people in our country committing such atrocities. I hope that fewer and fewer people turn a blind eye to this, because it reflects a part of our population that lacks sensitivity, that lacks compassion toward life in general, and that exemplify the cowardice in attacking a living being who is rendered helpless and defenseless.

The factory farm employees in this individual video represent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others just like them who perhaps wouldn’t allow cameras in their factory farms.

Please understand that without large animal advocacy organizations with resources and finances to carry out these documentaries of abuse, we would not have the opportunities to learn the reality of an industry we have daily interaction with.

This article conveys the other side. A writer for the Farm & Ranch Guide wrote about a Minnesota factory farm who was exposed for abuses, just as the one in Iowa was. Their employees committing atrocities against the animals on their farms was caught in real life, on camera.

You will read that through most of the article, the MowMar farm representatives are defensive: “We're here to demonstrate this can happen to you. All of us in the industry, and all sizes and types of operations, need to be prepared and try to prevent this type of action from happening...The amount of extra time and strain it has put on us, we really don't want anyone else to have to go through."

On the experience: “It was a coordinated effort of many industry partners…makes things go smoother and quicker, and easier to defend…I think we did pretty good, but we could have been more prepared.”

The reporter finally said that it is very important that applications are completed and that the farming employer conducts a background check.That this needs to be reiterated in the context of an article like this is appalling. Furniture companies do background checks, my dad’s dealership conducts background checks. Shouldn’t that go without saying for a company who relies on individuals’ proper handling of live animals in order to profit?

You will also read toward the end an admission that proper regulations, employee screening processes and training, as well as management consistently monitoring their businesses on the ground is lacking. The only victims are the animals, as each of these farms continues to employee people and make money. If their only motivation to treat animals humanely is so they don’t have a PR crisis on their hands, then I’ll take that. It’s not the reason I’d prefer, but if animals’ lives are in better care, then I would call PETA’s actions successful. Their aim is to expose the abuse not change things overnight or solve the problem in one day or with one sole investigation.

Lastly, the only way to help stop these atrocities is to not support the business. Go veg. Click here to read about all the reasons why it’s better for you, for the environment, for all living beings with whom we share Earth.

If you do not add to the demand, Hormel and other meat-producing corporations will not have means to keep producing the supply. And as demand for vegetarian products rise, farmers will shift toward cultivating these products, away from the slaughtering of animals.