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Movies & TV News & Features

Milking The Rhino

MILKING THE RHINO (David E. Simpson). 83 minutes. Saturday (August 22), 2 pm.

The two-weekend-long Planet IndigenUs Festival, a cross-disciplinary event celebrating the world’s various indigenous people, wraps up this weekend at venues throughout the city. The film component is pretty strong. All screenings take place at Harbourfront’s Studio Theatre (235 Queens Quay West). See listings. Rating: NN


Milking The Rhino is writer/director David E. Simpson’s look at the progressive cultural shift underway in Africa, where conservationist groups are working with indigenous peoples to move them from subsistence to self-actualization.

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In Kenya, Maasai tribespeople experiment with tourism, opening the Il Ngwesi Lodge and squiring European visitors around to see the local fauna. And in Namibia, the Himba and Herrero people have given up poaching in favour of protection, negotiating quotas with the government that allow them to hunt a limited number of animals for food while guarding the rest from other threats.

These tactics appear to be working, which is terrific news for endangered species like the black rhino. And Simpson’s footage of a rhinoceros conservation program, when it finally appears, is remarkable.

But the film itself is sluggish and disorganized and takes a very long time to knit its various elements together into a thesis more complex than “Hey, progress is awesome!

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