The Rhino is Milked on Wednesday

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is pleased to announce that MILKING THE RHINO (D: David E. Simpson, USA) will receive its Canadian premiere at February’s Doc Soup.

An official selection of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), MILKING THE RHINO is touted as “fascinating… beautiful” in a four-star review by the Chicago Tribune and “refreshingly optimistic” by Variety. MILKING THE RHINO screens on Wednesday, February 11, at 6:30 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. at the Bloor Cinema, 506 Bloor Street West. Director David E. Simpson will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A.

The familiar scenes of wildlife documentaries – a ferocious kill on the Serengeti, warnings about endangered species – all ignore a key feature of the African landscape: villagers, just off-camera, who endure the daily trials of living amongst wild animals. When seen at all, rural Africans are often depicted as the problem: they poach wildlife and encroach on habitat, spoiling romantic, Western ideas of wild Africa. Not so in MILKING THE RHINO, which takes the unique approach of turning the cameras around to tell a more nuanced tale of conservation in post-colonial Africa. The Maasai tribe of Kenya and Namibia’s Himba—two of the oldest cattle herding cultures on earth—are emerging from a century of “white man’s conservation,” which turned their lands into game reserves and elevated wildlife for its exoticism at the expense of local peoples. Having borne the costs of wildlife conservation while reaping few of the benefits, the Maasai and Himba are now vying for a piece of the economic pie and a path towards self-sufficiency. MILKING THE RHINO depicts people at the cutting edge of Community-based Conservation (CBC), a new paradigm that tries to balance the needs of both wildlife and people. It is a movement led by NGO field workers and social entrepreneurs at the village level. CBC has been touted by environmentalists as “win-win,” but the devil is in the details.

Charting the collision of ancient lifestyles with Western expectations, MILKING THE RHINO tells intimate, harrowing and hopeful stories of rural Africans in the midst of deep cultural change.

The Doc Soup monthly screening series brings the latest Canadian and international documentaries to the big screen in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver. Single tickets for MILKING THE RHINO are $12 and can be purchased in advance at http://www.hotdocs.ca or at the door on the night of the screening (subject to availability). A limited number of free tickets for the 9:15 p.m. screening will be available to students with proper ID (subject to availability) at the door, on a first-come first-served basis beginning at 5:30 p.m.