As always, the 2017 edition of the Pêcheurs du Monde film festival in Lorient, France, showcased examples of the courage, resistance and resilience of fishing communities

Sann, Alain Le

Aquatic Commons

september 2017
57
Life Afloat
As always, the 2017 edition of the Pêcheurs du Monde film festival in Lorient, France, 
showcased examples of the courage, resistance and resilience of fishing communities
The films, highlights the role of women in fisheries while 
focusing on the fragile situation of traditional fishing 
communities around the world.
At the 2017 Pêcheurs du Monde film festival several prizes were awarded to various films from 
around the world. Among them was 
one titled Floating Life, by the Indian 
director Haobam Paban Kumar, which 
won the Chandrika Sharma Award, 
instituted in honour of Chandrika 
Sharma, Executive Secretary of the 
International Collective in Support of 
Fishworkers (ICSF), who went missing 
in the disappearance of the ill-fated 
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on 8 
March 2014. 
The film, made in the same year, 
highlights the role of women in 
fisheries while focusing on the 
fragile situation of traditional fishing 
communities around the world, and 
how, despite their disadvantages, they 
display a determined willingness to 
resist. The film also draws attention to 
the situation of fishermen in fresh 
waters. There are thousands of 
fishermen on the Loktak, the biggest 
Indian lake, a wonder of nature, in 
the state of Manipur, close to the 
Burmese border. 
Here, fishermen are confronted 
with all the challenges faced by most 
traditional communities around the 
world. Lake Loktak is experiencing 
a profound degradation whose 
origins are multiple. There is a real 
population growth, which leads to an 
increase in the phumdis, the floating 
platforms on which the fishermen’s 
families live. This has implications 
on the quality of the ecosystem 
and promotes the loss of oxygen in 
the lake.
Non-governmental organizations 
(NGOs) like the World Wide Fund for 
Nature (WWF) and the International 
Union for Conservation of Nature 
(IUCN), as well as the authorities, 
accuse the fishermen of being the only 
ones responsible for the degradation 
of the lake, thus justifying their 
expulsion from the phumdis.
In reality, though, the fishermen 
are far from being the only ones 
responsible for the degradation of 
the lake. Pollution also comes from 
the explosion of urbanization along 
the shores of the lake, which is done 
without any treatment of effluents and 
waste, as depicted in the spectacular 
images in the film. The role of 
deforestation on the surrounding 
slopes is also important as it causes 
erosion and then siltation of the lake. 
So, there is an urgent need for action; 
unfortunately, the directions chosen 
are far from resolving the problems 
and, rather, often aggravate them. 
These protection measures are part 
of a plan for the development of the 
lake and its region, but they result in 
a violent expulsion of fishing families. 
The objectives of this plan are 
both economic and environmental. 
NGOs like WWF played an important 
role in its completion, by focusing 
the project on the creation of large 
natural reserves, and banning fishing 
and settlements so as to protect a 
species of deer threatened with 
extinction. From this viewpoint, it 
has been a success, as the number of 
deers has increased. 
Direct dependence
The economic objectives are also 
important and concern 1-2 mn 
This article is by Alain Le Sann  
(ad.lesann@orange.fr), President of the 
Pêcheurs du Monde film festival in Lorient, 
France
FiLMs
Report 
58
sAmUDrA report No. 77
inhabitants depending directly 
or indirectly on the lake and its 
waters. It was decided to build a 
dam, which increased the surface 
of the lake, but also profoundly 
transformed its operation. The aim 
was to facilitate irrigation and 
probably the production of electricity. 
But there is another stated purpose—
making this lake unique as a tourist 
destination for visitors from all 
over India and abroad. Hotels have 
been built around the lake, and the 
fishermen are now taking tourists 
for trips aboard their boats, while 
others sell them souvenirs and cater 
to their other needs. The majority of 
fishermen had to accept ridiculously 
low compensation. Promises of access 
to land are rarely kept, and sometimes 
fishermen resettled on the shores are 
once more evicted to make room for 
tourist facilities.
Added to all this is the state 
of emergency that gives excessive 
powers to the army and the police. 
It is easy then to understand the 
extreme violence the fisherpeople 
have to endure. Their huts are 
burnt and destroyed by bulldozers 
supervised by the police and the 
military. The women cling desperately 
to the vehicles destroying their homes. 
The state of emergency is justified by 
the proximity of the Burmese border 
and the illegal entry of refugees. 
The fishermen are offered the 
development of aquaculture as an 
alternative to fishing. So, on this 
lake, we find all the problems faced 
by traditional fishermen around 
the world. The film is also interesting 
since it illustrates the part that 
cinema can play in defending the 
rights of these fishermen. The 
film’s director had originally come 
to investigate the area in order to 
prepare for the shooting of a fiction 
film with the participation of the 
local fishermen. That film, The Lady 
of the Lake, shows the resilience of a 
fisherwoman, and was presented at 
various important festivals in 2016. 
Testimonial
The film director, however, did not 
want to merely go on along the same 
track. On witnessing the violence of 
the evictions, he decided to testify 
about them in a documentary. Floating 
philippe hoUssiN
each year, the festival offers an opportunity to discover amazing movies through their creativity, originality and emotion in the diverse and 
complex realities of the lives of fishermen and their communities 
r e p o r t
september 2017
59
Life has been awarded at many 
festivals before making it to the 
Pêcheurs du Monde festival.
The two juries at the festival also 
crowned two films that bear witness 
to the resistance and resilience of the 
fishermen. The jury of professionals 
devoted its prize to the film of Loïc 
Jourdain, A Turning Tide in the Life of 
Man, which traces the long struggle 
of a fisherman from a forgotten island 
in Ireland to regain the right to fish. 
The Irish government has reserved 
salmon fishing for rich amateurs from 
all over the world. The fisherman, 
John O’Brien, for his part, refused 
the proposed compensation and 
fought for eight years to defend the 
rights of coastal fishermen against 
the government and in the debate on 
the reform of the Common Fisheries 
Policy. With the support of NGOs, he 
secured recognition of the rights of 
fishermen on his island and hopes to 
soon regain the right to fish salmon—
an extraordinary lesson of courage 
and resistance of a man confronted 
with the logic of powers that 
marginalize the inshore fishermen. 
There is, however, a paradox that 
the film director is not aware of: some 
of the NGOs supporting John O’Brien’s 
struggle have contributed to the 
collapse of fishing in several islands 
(Yeu Island in France, for example) 
and coastal communities by fighting 
for a total ban on drift-nets. 
These were the very nets used by 
John O’Brien to fish for salmon, and 
at the very moment when the rights 
of these fishers were recognized, 
the European Union decided to ban 
drift-nets from inshore fishermen. 
In addition, new measures to 
protect the marine environment, 
promoted by environmental NGOs, 
can again threaten inshore fishermen 
like John O’Brien in Ireland.The 
relationship between artisanal 
fishermen and environmental NGOs is, 
therefore, not always as idyllic as in 
this film.
The youth jury, for its part, 
awarded an Uruguayan film, 
NuevaVenecia, shot in a village on 
stilts in Colombia, where the villagers 
were traumatized by a massacre by 
the paramilitary. Fishermen and 
their families live in very precarious 
conditions in a mangrove forest and 
young people dream of football as a 
professional future. The community 
is consolidating its resilience by 
rehabilitating a flooded football 
ground to organize a tournament.
All these films show that the 
survival of fishermen goes far beyond 
that of resources, and that it is 
also necessary to raise hope of a 
common future.
Several very moving films depict 
the harsh reality of the living and 
working conditions of fishermen, in 
the past and today. At a screening 
in one school, the children were 
overwhelmed by the film Les Oubliés 
de Saint Paul, which tells of the 
tragic adventure of the Breton and 
Malagasy fishermen abandoned for 
months by the shipowner on an island 
in the south Indian Ocean, where 
they were fishing for lobster. Several 
dozens of them died of hunger and 
disease in the early 1930s.
At the same time, hundreds 
of fishermen were working in 
appalling conditions to catch cod 
off Newfoundland on sailing ships. 
A great French scriptwriter from 
Saint Malo who had participated in 
some cod fishing campaigns, wanted 
to pay tribute to them by interviewing 
the last survivors in the 1970s. 
This allowed us to discover their 
testimony in Mémoires de Brumes, 
which reminds us that the history of 
the cod fishery, as with many other 
fisheries, has been marked by a 
contempt for men and their rights.
Trying conditions
We find such trying conditions in 
the Russian film The Pickers of 
Seagrasses, which plunges us into the 
precarious life of seasonal Solovski 
Islands fishers on the White Sea, the 
place where the first Soviet gulag 
was created. A century later, living 
conditions are reminiscent of those in 
the early 20th century. In many films 
we see the importance of migration 
in the life of fishermen. In Northern 
countries, European or Southern 
immigrants come to occupy the jobs 
abandoned by young people. This is 
the case in Iceland, as shown by the 
F i l m s
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sAmUDrA report No. 77
Blending Spot
hardly had i entered the classroom that was to serve as headquarters for the jury of the festival pêcheurs du monde in lorient in march 2017, that it dawned upon me 
that i had emerged into something different, exterior, distant.
three continents were represented: south America,  Africa and europe. the French 
came from marseille, bordeaux, paris and brittany—four women and three men. their 
ages ranged from 30 to 60. there were followers of documentary or experimental 
cinema. instinct and rationalism were equally shared. Four people came from the world 
of images, three from the fishing world. We were to leave our daily lives.  Watching the 
films, we were to travel around the world, and, at the same time, we would encounter  
the others in our jury. i enjoyed this kaleidoscope that would forge in a unit of time, of 
place, and history, a slice of our life.
Natural traditions, local cosmologies, mental landscapes, regional epistemologies, 
discourses, temporality, boundaries, and imagination innervated by life, varied 
from one member of the jury to another. however, after each film, each one was 
transformed, in our enclave, to better reinvent this immobile dream. our remarks had 
undergone, in their navigation towards others, an alteration such as they were no 
longer ours, and more theirs.
the crucible produced unpleasant concepts to each of our common sense and 
metamorphosed us. in this progressive melting each had left his symbols of power, 
knowledge, wealth and seduction at the door. We had abandoned our inhibitions, 
our aggressiveness. We accepted the other individuals as they were, they became our 
equals, and, finally, we were able to speak. i understood what it is like to feel good
Far from everyone’s attention, the secret of our alchemy was not to be found in the 
depths of a cellar, but here, in a classroom. We were gathered in a room named after 
the greatest naval engineer in the French navy, who had advised Jules Verne for the 
Nautilus, and twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Unknown to us, these deep 
roots concentrated in this place were distilled in our conclave open to the world. in 
order to be up to it, we immediately ritualized our functioning: discussions after each 
film, to lose nothing, fair roundtable, free expression and note-taking, not to forget the 
speech distributed by our captain, the final decision to the president of the jury, the 
only master on board. We were aware that he should be accountable to the crowd and 
the rights holders. life became common for four days. the links were gradually cut with 
the outside world. to my surprise, an eternity passed in a flash. A final acceleration of 
the time and of our energies made it possible for the prize list to be established. We 
delivered it by freeing ourselves.
our jury, which had become part of the show and of the sea, gathered out of time, 
but united side by side, in front of the tensed crowd, experienced there a moment of 
collective exaltation. referring to the link between the jury and the fishers around the 
world, the winners, the losers, those who made the films and those who will follow, 
to those who watched them, the prize was announced by the president and explained 
by some in the name of all. this moment of exceptional communion went right to the 
heart of all the members of the jury. in spite of our initial differences, we were no more 
than an egregore, including the jury of the young—a fine idea—who had made other 
choices. it was rare enough to recommend to the festival the magic of a little humanity, 
to start again with another jury.
—by René-Pierre Chever, 
member of the jury, 
pêcheurs du monde film festival, 2017
r e p o r t
september 2017
61
Polish dockers in the film Keep Frozen. 
In the Netherlands, the Poles become, 
more often, sailors on beam trawlers, 
while their owners take boats under 
the British, German or Belgian flags 
(Episode of the Sea). Malagasy and 
Senegalese provide a share of the 
crews on the boats of the deep-sea 
tuna fishing or lobster.
The film Miss Philippines described 
how the fishermen of the Faroe 
Islands had to marry Filipino women 
because the local girls flee the 
islands for the continent, for lack of 
attractive jobs at home. At the 
borders of Europe, Italian or Spanish 
fishermen settle in Morocco or 
Tunisia to escape the constraints of 
European policies, often not adapted 
to the reality of the peripheries (Once 
the Sea was Covered with Water), 
while In the Other Direction, illegal 
immigration continues. The world of 
fishermen is far from being fixed; it 
is in perpetual renewal of practices 
and men, and the integration of 
migrants is often the pre-condition for 
the survival of communities. Several 
films reveal the destruction of the 
seas by industrial pollution: Black 
Kiss; the drama of fishermen facing 
chlordecone in the aftermath of the 
catastrophe of Deepwater Horizon in 
Corexit: The Cursed Remedy; Red Zone 
on the destruction of all marine life 
in parts of the French Mediterranean 
coast. The fishery itself is experiencing 
drifting from a dehumanizing 
industrialization, as shown by David 
Redmon’s Nocturnum Delirium, a 
regular at the festival, and once again 
noticed by the youth jury. 
However, there are other, more 
optimistic, messages that confirm 
both the capacity of the seas to 
recover their wealth and that of 
men to improve their practices and 
their relationship with nature. Aral, 
the Renaissance, a film by Isabelle 
Moeglin, who has followed for 
20 years the evolution of the Aral 
Sea, shows the spectacular but 
fragile rebirth of a part of this inland 
sea where hundreds of fishermen 
have regained activity. From 
America comes good news with a 
remarkable beginning of the return 
of cod off Newfoundland. Sacred Cod 
philippe hoUssiN
participants at the festival: A unique opportunity to travel the seas and coasts of the world 
and to understand the world as it goes, with its drifts as well as its beauties and successes
http://www.mundusmaris.org/index.
php/en/review/films/623-lorient 
Fishermen’s Film Festival in 
Lorient, France
http://www.pecheursdumonde.org/
edition-festival/films/ 
Le Festival International de Films 
“Pêcheurs du monde” est un 
événement Culturel Unique
For more
shows, however, the desperation of 
fishermen of New England 
condemned to disappear because 
this return is still to come and it 
is undoubtedly impossible due to 
global warming.
Other testimonies of hope appear 
with improvements in management 
practices by the fishermen themselves. 
Sustaining Sea Scallops describes 
the upheaval of scallop fishermen’s 
practices with dredging in the United 
States: they thus regain the same 
approaches as the scallop fishermen 
in France. Prud’homie de pêcheurs 
shows the fragile and chaotic renewal 
of a multi-year fisheries management 
institution on the Mediterranean 
coast in France.
Each year, the festival offers an 
opportunity to discover amazing 
movies through their creativity, 
originality and emotion in the diverse 
and complex realities of the lives of 
fishermen and their communities. 
This festival is a unique opportunity 
to travel the seas and coasts of the 
world and to understand the world 
as it goes, with its drifts as well as its 
beauties and successes. The films 
show how fishing communities react 
to the changes in the world.                   
F i l m s


Films: life afloat

http://aquaticcommons.org/21626/1/SAM_77_16_Life%20Afloat.pdf

Films: life afloat

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