Red Forest Hotel / Punaisen metsän hotelli
Mika Koskinen:
Red Forest Hotel / Punaisen metsän hotelli (Finland, 2012)
87 min. - English, Chinese, Finnish - Finnish subtitles
Having worked in China for a long time, Mika Koskinen began to film a positive documentary. A great tree planting campaign was ongoing, and mass polluter China seemed to take steps in fighting the climate change by having school children and the elderly planting trees north of Beijing. But as the filming progressed, a new truth surfaced: rainforest cuttings and enormous eucalyptus plantations were revealed.
It became apparent that the largest tree planters were forest industry corporations, and their actions could not withstand a closer inspection. These corporations, including Stora Enso, planted eucalyptus forests to support their paper industries, and while doing so, harmed the environment and its inhabitants. The corporations greenwashed themselves in a dirty way, claiming to work for the good of the environment. The diversity of the nature disappeared, medical plants could no longer be collected and even the birds vanished.
When Koskinen started to ask questions, things escalated. Corporations had already been criticized for their mafia-like actions, and this documentary project, too, became a Kafkaesque thriller. The film group was followed, their informants were captured and the truth was covered. Koskinen had hit too close the target.
Red Forest Hotel is an important depiction of the corruption of the global industry and the control by violence, where Finnish corporations are also involved.
» www.redforesthotelthemovie.com
Thu 15th Nov at 5:00pm Tapio 4