No animals were harmed in the making of this film?

Last year I witnessed two very disturbing programmes: My Monkey Baby from Channel 4 and Mr and Mrs Wolf from Five (UK). Both documented confused human-animal bonds where an empty-nester applied lipstick to a monkey she kept as her 'child' and 'Mr Wolf' shared meat and saliva with a wolf pack he lived with, hoping to become 'one of them'. Still, however deranged these relationships might be, what I find most distasteful about this kind of programme is the hunger for them. Why does shocking, depraved footage make the most headlines these days? What's the point? Money? Yes. Money is the point. You watch it, these people make more of these programmes; they make more money. These might be a couple of the more extreme examples and the animals are captive, but veteran wildlife filmmaker, Chris Palmer, exposes the truth about wildlife documentaries at their worst in his recent book, Shooting in the Wild. These TV programmes are not exceptions they are simply a consequence of amplified viewer trends, which in turn drives production. Palmer confirms that "many honorable filmmakers today spend countless uncomfortable hours, days, months and even years out in the elements to bring us rare and amazing footage" and this applies for wildlife photographers too - absolutely. There may be a case for leaving other species alone altogether, but documentary is presently a vital aid to conservation and if interactive science were also not a part of animal conservation, Brady Parr from National Geographic says "as scientists we would be doing nothing more than documenting their extinction". It's not easy to get the right footage in the wild and sometimes behaviour is staged for the camera - Palmer's quote from David Attenborough explains: "If you say, 'I wish to explain how scorpions copulate, because it's very interesting,' then you have to do that as clearly as you can. It may involve getting them to do it on glass so you can see underneath. It will certainly involve getting an adult male scorpion and an adult female scorpion together. What it does not involve is sitting around in the Mojave Desert for nine months, waiting for some scorpions to copulate by your feet" - of course, nature does not answer to our beckon call and nor should it. What "Nature Porn and Fang TV" (as Palmer calls it) does not have is this conservation purpose - it simply takes staging and "Sins of Omission" (Palmer's Chapter 9) to the next level, way beyond an informed and respectful desire to share knowledge and increase protection. Simply, it sells out and it shouldn't be encouraged.

How does The Great 'food' Dance translate?

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

When was the last time you ran for four hours non-stop to get food? My guess is never. That's true for me. The most I've had to do is walk or drive four minutes to the local shop. Meet the San people in the spellbinding documentary, The Great Dance. This is not a film about killing, survival or meat per se, it's about a relationship with the land, the elements, animals and God. I'm not for a second suggesting we abolish supermarkets and all carve a bow and arrow, but there is something important to be learned from these bushmen: something vital. "/XAÂ is the word for DANCE in the !Xo language of the Kalahari, and also means to REVERE, or to show ONENESS" - the affinity  between man and animal in this film is captured beautifully by directors, Craig and Damon Foster. It's a story we can all relate to - a family needs to be fed - and I'm sure had the hunters been provided with more rain and then more animals they too would have taken all the meat they could to see their wives and children happy at the provision of food, just as we do in the UK. The difference is, we in the western world have taken this Dance to a new level and it's no longer Great; it's Greedy. We don't know the faces of the animals we eat; we don't know where they lived or died and sometimes we don't even know that it's 100% meat we're eating. I'd go as far as to say that some children can't even connect the dots between the food they eat and the animals they pet. Humans have supposedly conquered the land, beaten the elements and controlled the animals, but are we winners if we no longer know or respect our ancestral Dance? I'm not so sure.