Milking the Rhino David E. Simpson

At first glance, this documentary makes you remember those late hours of boredom you spent in front of the Discovery Channel: half of your brain asleep, the other one wondering why at 2 A.M. it is watching chimpanzees playing in a puddle of mud.

As it develops however, the image gets rougher and uncensored. A Maasai speaks to the camera: “The only benefit an animal had was if I would kill it and feed on the meat”.

Shocked, are you? Wait for more and have a look at the bovine casualties that cattle raisers have to carry on their backs, because animal protection structures protect wildlife as safari tourism wants it, robbing them of their grass.

How does one milk a rhino? How can the African populations that coexist with such wildlife make profit out of it, and still bend to post-colonial European’s will? David E. Simpson focuses on two community-based projects, situated in Kenya and in Namibia, where the locals have undergone deep cultural changes in order to offer the “myth of wild Africa” - a complex reality in which natives hide old truck traces to offer their visitors an enhanced feeling of adventure. Who knows if the Discovery Channel didn’t put those monkeys in the mud for your TV wildlife satisfaction?

Maximilien Van Aertryck