The Real Thing

GNN is proud to present this special sneak preview of “The Real Thing”

Costing only $25,000 (USD) to make, The Real Thing is a guerrilla-styled documentary that explores the US directed “War on Drugs” and the impact it has had on the people of Bolivia, specifically on the indigenous coca farmers of el Chapare.

The coca leaf is indigenous to Bolivia and a sacred leaf revered and used by the majority of Bolivians. It is also the source ingredient for cocaine and the target of billions of dollars worth of militarized coca eradication, alternative development and narcotic interdiction efforts.

Fifteen years since George Bush Sr. declared a war on drugs in his inaugural presidential address, cocaine is still a thriving business and the impact of American drug policy on the people of Bolivia has brought the country to the brink of a total social upheaval.

The drug war might be old news but its legacy has produced one of the most significant social movements to emerge in the last five hundred years. The indigenous coca farmers of el Chapare, building on a 500 year tradition of resistance to imperial powers, have resisted the eradication of the coca leaf, and the attack on their way of life by organizing themselves into a political party, the Movement Towards Socialism, the MAS, which in the 2002 elections won 27 deputies and 8 senators. The leader of the MAS, Evo Morales, almost won the presidency.

The Real Thing is a film that peels away the layers of rhetoric used to justify the “War on Drugs” and now the “War on Terrorism” revealing a war between two world’s, one global and modern, the other local and indigenous.

It is a film that provides critical insight by shedding light on a tragic situation in which people, who want no more than to live their life as they always have, are targeted and criminalized as drug traffickers, and now as terrorists.

For more information: Dada World Data Productions

Credits

Director: Jim Sanders

Producer: Andre Clement

Production Company: Dada World Data Productions

Audio/Visual: Benwah, Jim Sanders

Contact Information: dadaworlddata@shaw.ca

Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc, BattleGround.

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