When you meet someone who is good, you get a feeling, don't you? Today I met Kirsten, a vet in a rural patch just outside Frankfurt, Germany.
She fed me breakfast at her woodland cottage, introduced me to her four rescue dogs, I met her toothless thirty year old stallion, her husband and a dead puppy that she keeps in the freezer.
The last patient to see Kirsten during her Saturday afternoon clinic is a Maltese puppy, his owner wants to know if he's been trafficked and if he'll survive to see his 18th week, such is the fate of many farmed puppies.
Puppy farming is big lucrative business, poorly regulated and is an attractive proposition for people willing to risk imprisonment in order to mass produce popular and often inbred designer breeds that fetch a high but competitive price compared to what you might pay for a sought after breed.
The market place is online – of course – and eBay Inc. has come under fire from animal welfare groups for enabling untraceable transactions between dealers and pet owners.
What's needed, according to Four Paws, is a mandatory seller identity verification system implemented across all classifieds sites, and they want eBay Inc. to lead the way and I can see why, because eBay Inc. own Gumtree, Craigslist and similar classified listing sites across the globe – I did not know that.
This is the investigaion film we made that can tell you rest of the story.
We partnered with the Wildlife Trusts to produce a call to arms asking for political engagement to re-network nature across the UK.
David Attenborough gave his support to the campaign to reconnect the UK's wild places.
We used CG artists to create an 'energy butterfly' that represents a force of nature that can connect wild places together across the UK.
The Wildlife Trust published this statement following the release of the film.
“We’re delighted to see our vision for a Wilder Future come to life on screen and love how our creative partner, Campaign Film, has captured Sir David Attenborough’s sense of hope in nature’s story. Last week, the State of Nature report showed the harsh reality facing our natural world, but we know it’s not too late if we act now for nature’s recovery. We’re writing the next chapter for wildlife with our supporters, who are joining in the call for a Nature Recovery Network, alongside Sir David, believing as he does that “nature can recover – given the chance”
This is the team that worked on it...
Director // Andrew Davies
Writer // Alice Trueman DOP // Lewis Davies Animation // Emily Clarkson 3D animation // Ethan Shilling Make up // Rachel Mcdonald Client // Wildlife Trusts
My new short film featuring voices from the illicit drugs trade in Brazil urges the development sector to address drug policy reform in order to protect marginalised communities that are being criminalised under punitive drug policies that create cycles of violence and oppression.
The film created co-produced with Health Poverty Action states that governments need to legalise and regulate drugs to mitigate the brutal harm the so called ‘war on drugs’ causes people around the world.
The film, shot in São Paulo’s favela, echoes the findings of Health Poverty Action recent report ‘Punishing Poverty’ and the progress made at The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, endorsing a strategic move away from prohibition that repeatedly targets and harms the most marginalised communities, encouraging corruption at all levels of society and criminalises generations of people.
It’s the story of a favela community leader, Marcio, who has witnessed first hand the discrimination and brutality generated by drug policy enforced by a corrupt law enforcement regime. Marcio states ‘the privileged and the disadvantaged have a different experience of the police forces’ highlighting the social divide that drug policy upholds, claiming that ‘drug policy is racist’ and ‘creates violence’.
© Andrew Davies — Campaign Film LTD ‘Parasopolis Sao Paulo, the favela next to towering apartments replete with privtate swimming pools’
I’ve tried to visualise the economic pressures that drives individuals to work in the lowest levels of the drugs trade, and the deadly consequences that follow as marginalised communities clash with law enforcement officials — with current drug policy being the ‘excuse for many arrests and killings’ according to Marcio.
Shot in the first person with exclusive access into the favela, the testimony lays bare the harms of drug policy and that the so called ‘War on Drugs’ is undeniably a war on people.
A lack of public services, state support and economic opportunities is an obvious entry point into the drugs trade for a short term viable livelihood for many who have next to no work opportunities.
If you want to know more of the reformative work on drug policy then head over to https://www.healthpovertyaction.org/
