Today’s Enlightening Entertainment will be presented in French, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Distinguished French filmmaker Ms. Coline Serreau, writer and director of the César Award winning 1985 comedy film, “Three Men and a Cradle,” the 1996 film “La Belle Verte” (The Green Beautiful), and others, is well known for her many thought- provoking works.

Today, all over France and other countries, we can watch her newest production, “Local Solutions for a Global Disorder”: a large study on how we live with regards to our food. What is really going on with the food we produce, with the vital soil, and agriculture itself? How unsafe and how unsustainable has our food become? What are the solutions?

The pesticides came out of the war. The fertilizers came out of the war.

The invention of the sulfur mustard will become all insecticides.

A FILM BY COLINE SERREAU IS MAN THE PROBLEM?

You see crazy stuff; guys who create square tomatoes to better store them in crates.

IS MAN THE SOLUTION?

So, what to do?

LOCAL SOLUTIONS FOR A GLOBAL DISORDER

Some solutions are indicated in this movie.

LOCAL SOLUTIONS FOR A GLOBAL DISORDER A film by Coline Serreau

Soon, well… when we sit at the dinner table, we’ll have to… instead of wishing each other “bon appétit” we’ll have to say “good luck.”

“Local Solutions for a Global Disorder” was premiered in Belgium at the European Parliament. Parliament Member Her Excellency Michèle Rivasi from France commented, “I wanted to broadcast the film in the presence of Coline Serreau in the European Parliament because it just brings concrete solutions replicable throughout the world.”

According to the director Coline Serreau, the time had come for a film that not only spelled the frightening warnings, but also offered alternatives through the voices of the best experts – small crop farmers, philosophers, and economists.

And we know now that there are about – in France alone – there are more than 8 million people who have different practices, who do things differently, who reflect, who experiment and all that. So in fact, this new society is not a majority, but she is bristling with life to soon become the only society which can continue to give us an existence.

There. So that was what I wanted to show, that this new society, this society we are awaiting, we are hoping for, is in the making. It is being made by people who don’t have a voice. Or the small people – because the farmers rarely have a voice.

To make the film, Ms. Coline Serreau traveled around the world for three years, speaking with some of the most knowledgeable about sustainable community initiatives across various countries.

And deep down, I see the reactions of the public – of course they learn many things with great specialists. But what really touches them, is to see the small lady in Ukraine who shows us how beautiful the seeds are which she selected herself, and the hybrid seeds are less good.

Or how Narayan Reidi, the small Indian farmer, can, on 1.8 hectares, feed 15 people, totally self-sufficient, and sell tons of fruit, tons of spices, tons of cereals. He is incredibly rich. India is an extremely rich country. Even those who are urban, they have grandparents who were inevitably farmers. So everyone knows somehow unconsciously that it’s there where we are fed, by the earth.

The example of India’s past as a future possibility for sustainable way of life is an appealing idea to the filmmaker.

Because in India, nearly 70% of the population is rural. They had an extraordinary system of peasantry. They had very small plots. Whatever happened, the people were not hungry. Why was it that they were not hungry? What makes agriculture work?

It is when there is something called a perennial system, in other words, a system which does not exhaust the resources, but which revitalizes them. They had a system of conserving monsoon water which is extraordinary.

Precisely as your movie says: the solution exists. And as you say, it happens in different countries, in different places in the world.

Yes. people who do not even know each other do the same thing.

Today, industrialized conventional methods are silently wreaking havoc in the ecosphere.

And on the earth, what is there? Millions and billions of animals, and germs, and fungus that are crawling in there; the earth is them. The earth is a fauna. While a part is in charge of nourishing the plants and airing the soil, another part is in charge of, in greater depth, bringing up the minerals in the rocks; that is the role they play. And all that is destroyed by bringing an industrial system of monoculture.

You are destroying this, because at that moment, what you produce is no longer considered as something which has to circulate and feed the people. It is considered as a merchandise. From the moment that it is considered as a merchandise, it always needs to be sold more expensive.

And then you start to exhaust the earth, because you put extra chemical fertilizers. You’re adding things which kill life in the earth. You will get a very big production which will little by little be exhausted as it is happening at the moment.

How do you see the place of the livestock animal? It is not in your movie, which you made a very long time ago, 15 years ago, “The Beautiful Green.” And you were the principal heroine. You came from another planet, and there on Earth. And you are also shocked to see ( “They eat cadavers!”) and carnivorous people. There.

That is also the same problem in fact. The plant proteins, you see, there are lots of them. First it’s very bad for our health to eat too much meat, it is the highway to cancer. And then also, we really are very numerous nowadays on this planet. We can feed all the people who are there perfectly well. But we cannot feed them if we keep giving them meat all the time. Because meat equals 20 vegetarian meals… A steak equals 20 meals of grain.

And this food, those 20 meals, which are soya meal, all those things which we feed to animals to be able to eat animals. They themselves consume a huge amount of water. So, there are millions of liters of water that disappear and dry up the planet for soya meal. We have convinced people that they need a lot of meat to earn more money with the meat.

But this doesn’t correspond to a human need. It corresponds to a kind of accumulation. So it destroys the cows – the cows become very ill, it has already been proven, the mad cow disease, all the diseases which come with it. It makes everybody ill.

And you are saying that one of the solutions is organic farming.

Yes. Organic and local. That is what we stand for. Because it can be organic and still come from Romania or even Morocco; meanwhile, people go hungry over there, while good organic food is made for rich people. This is not good either; it is not like that. We have to produce organic food locally and live on food that is growing in our country, on our land, as they grow. The intensive agriculture is so-called “feeding the entire world.” It has well proven that it cannot.

Organic agriculture on the contrary, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said in its last report that organic agriculture can feed the planet without any problem. So well, if they don’t take stock of this incredible injustice and this chaos, they will be swept away. Because it has always ended up like that in history. At a certain moment, people want to live and then that’s it. And they can become violent!

There is nobody who feels like taking up the weapons. People want to live happily in peace; to raise their kids, to live and to live good.

We could say that your movie entitled “Local Solution for a Global Disorder” in reality – if these solutions are applied – could engender a big revolution?

Yes, it is the big revolution. The word revolution is when it’s turning. So there are several meanings for this word. The revolution is surely necessary insofar as the system… that there is a rotation of values and that the system changes; because revolution means evolving. It will have to evolve at least.

If you would have a magic stick for instance, as a filmmaker, in theory you could have one; what would be the world in which you would like to live? How do you see this world? Do you think it can be realized?

But I like this world, if not I wouldn’t want to change it.

On the contrary, 99% of the people are superb. So I’m not looking for another world. It is this world that needs to be transformed. I am a very modest filmmaker; in other words, I am a reflection of the society in which I live. It’s others who give me food. And it’s the others who give me intellectual food as well; through my observation of the world. That’s my role.

I am not a politician, and I’m not at all somebody who tells people, “Do this, do that!” But it’s true that a world where we already could eat correctly and have peace in our head by telling ourselves, “My children eat well; they eat things which don’t poison them and which will not make them ill,” that would already be an enormous progress.

And also that we wouldn’t be in a system of oppression and dependence anymore. In other words, that we are in an autonomous system, where everyone decides what he would like to do. In mutual aid and collective systems…

People are never happy to be assisted. People, humans are made to work. They want to work, to make useful things for themselves and for others. At the end of the day, that’s the “why are we on Earth?” It is also to make good things.

So let's end this with a positive and constructive note. I would like to offer this book to you: “The Noble Wilds” by Supreme Master Ching Hai.

This is beautiful! The Noble Wilds. I did not know this book; this is beautiful! I will look at it. Thank you very much.

Thanks to you and congratulations for your wonderful work.

Thank you.

And we wish that you keep producing more and more beautiful movies.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

For more information about Coline Serreau and her film, please visit

Ms. Coline Serreau, we appreciate and applaud your brilliant films that inspire us to return to our original harmonious values with one another and the Earth. We join in optimistic anticipation of an awakened humanity that will protect its ecological home as it cares for all co-inhabitants.

Gracious viewers, thank you for your pleasant company on today’s Enlightening Entertainment. Now, Words of Wisdom is coming up next, after Noteworthy News. Blessed be you and your loved ones with vitality and happiness.