SPECIAL FORUM: films EVERY ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORIAN SHOULD SEE

The following thirty-seven essays appear in alphabetical order based on the author's last name. On pages 391–393 readers will find a bibliography, which also serves as an index, of the films discussed in the essays.

Photo by Jérôme Maison; © 2005 Bonne Pioche Productions / Alliance De Production Cinématographique. Behind the scenes of March of the Penguins, directed by Luc Jacquet.
the human side of deforestation RENATA MARSON TEIXEIRA DE ANDRADE-DOWNS
"WE FEEL REMORSE in cutting one-hundred-year-old trees in three minutes, but we must do it to survive," a charcoal worker sighs. The Charcoal People is a beautiful documentary based on a rich ethnography of charcoal production for pig-iron, and was filmed on the frontier of forests in the states of Mato Grosso, Goiás, Pará, and Amazon in Brazil. When I first saw The Charcoal People last summer, I immediately added this film to the syllabus for my graduate seminar on the environmental history, policy, and culture of Latin America. Whereas many academic studies of charcoal production have concentrated on economic, energy, and environmental issues, this film focuses on the human side of the human-nature interaction as related to forest destruction for pig-iron and steel production in Brazil. What makes this film so interesting is that it shows how consumption of steel-products, such as cars, in the United States, Europe, and Japan is deeply tied to the lives and struggles for survival of charcoal workers (carvoeiros) in the hinterlands of Brazil. The Charcoal People portrays carvoeiros' lives through nuanced biographies, focusing on the socially produced identity of the carvoeiro as an inherent part of the destruction of forests, and on their bodies as an anachronistic technology, rooted in mid-nineteenth century charcoal production.	1
With no voices other than those of the carvoeiros and their families, the film depicts the hardships in the lives of adults, teenagers, and children, while focusing on their social identity, morals, and bodily engagement in a series of specialized activities related to the production of charcoal in brick beehive kilns. The film starts with familiar scenes and noises of trees falling as large chains attached to them are pulled by the engine of a very old truck, driven by a young subcontractor who owns the truck and works for the landowner who leased the lands for the steel mill. The next scene extracts a short conversation, during the delivery of wood for burning inside the charcoal kilns, between the young truck owner and a seventy-six year-old African-Brazilian carvoeiro who helps him to unload the wood at the site: "Not much wood! Have you tried that lot there," points the carvoeiro. "The road access is closed and the forest is protected by law and now fenced," responds the truck owner. From that moment on, the film focuses on short biographies of carvoeiros, both adults and children, portraying how people of different races share a common past and a contemporary struggle to survive by producing charcoal. The images of the many different bodies exposed to the elements, heat and smoke are compelling, and clearly depict health hazards and unsafe work conditions to which these people are subjected.	2
The film adds a historical perspective on the anachronism of current charcoal production by connecting the bodies of carvoeiros with those of Brazil Indian and African slaves who produced charcoal during the peak of mid-nineteenth- century smelting and forging in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.	. . .