August
2000
A
Masterful Animal Rights Documentary Delivers Beauty with Truth
Film Review by Jeff Lydon
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The Witness
Directed by Jenny Stein
Volume 1 of the Animal People Anthology
A Tribe of Heart Documentary
43 min. Not rated.
“A miracle is a change in perception,” says Eddie Lama, the
down-to-earth hero of the newly released animal rights documentary,
The Witness. If that is so, then this film may work many miracles.
Crossing old ground by way of a remarkably fresh path, The Witness manages
to make harmony of the interplay between two diametric poles, the rational
and the emotional. Director Jenny Stein and Producer James LaVeck, co-founders
of Tribe of Heart, the non-profit organization behind The Witness, discovered
the perfect instrument through which to create such harmony: Eddie Lama.
Eddie, now a successful architectural metals contractor in New York
City, grew up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. His New York accent,
heavy enough to make the Sopranos wince, gives Eddie’s simple,
direct words an extra edge of authenticity, perhaps because we don’t
expect a guy like Eddie to express intense compassion with such sublime
eloquence.
Interweaving laughter and sobriety, he traces his evolution from
a meat-eating, Camel smoker (two packs a day, unfiltered) with a
mild disdain for animals,
to a vegan and animal advocate—who quit smoking in order to save
animals from his second-hand smoke. Before Eddie’s change in perception,
he agreed to cat-sit for a woman in the hope of scoring a date with
her. Instead, Eddie fell in love with the kitten. Then he started rescuing
strays. One day, he made a connection between his cat’s leg and
a chicken’s “drumstick,” and that was the end of meat
for Eddie.
While Eddie is fluent in the language of every kind of animal cruelty,
it was the fur industry—an issue close to home in the glamorous
streets of New York—that made him decide to make people “see
what I see.” Having been the victim of a vicious attack himself—a
savage mugging that left him nearly dead—he has suffered feelings
of helplessness and terror, and of bewilderment at the by-standers who
ignored his cries. So Eddie resolved not to be a by-stander to the fur
industry’s brutality: “My sense of despair and helplessness
transformed into action.” He created Faunavision, a mobile audio-visual
system that turns the side of a van into a movie screen with digital
captions and interactive sound. Knowing that harsh underground footage
of the fur industry wasn’t coming to prime time or to a theater
near you, Eddie brought the big screen to the streets. The response
of his street audience, brilliantly depicted in The Witness, illuminates
the force and mystery of empathy.
Although Eddie still contracts, countless animals are fortunate that
he moonlights. Along with his Faunavision excursions, Eddie founded
a sanctuary for abandoned animals called Oasis and founded a grass
roots
advocacy group called COATS (Citizens Outraged at Animal Torture
and Suffering). It’s hard to believe that Eddie—the recent recipient
of PETA’s You Did It! award for his work with companion animals—once
viewed a cat as nothing but an “ambulatory organism,” making
his awakening all the more miraculous.
Relating a few points in the progression of The Witness hardly
does justice to its majestic grace. The 43 minute documentary packs
all the dramatic punch of an epic Hollywood feature, not only because
of the aesthetic genius which Stein and LaVeck bring to the film, but
because of its crescendo to a heart wrenching climax. The Witness ultimately
sparks a volcanic release akin to the catharsis one might expect from
a great performance of Don Giovanni.
In spite of its intensity—or because of it—The Witness charms
AR veterans as easily as it does people not familiar with the issues,
in part because it does not compel examination by didactic righteousness.
Rather, it evokes a universal sense of interrelationship, baring
truth
at once with beauty, making each undeniable. Deceptively simple,
the film works on many levels, providing such easy and deep access
to “animal
consciousness” that it ranks among the most effective cinematic
tools for social change to date. Its debut at this year’s Canyonlands
Film Festival earned The Witness the award for best documentary,
one of many accolades that are sure to follow.
As the first installment of a four part series called the “Animal
People Anthology,” Stein and LaVeck have created a masterpiece
that will be a tough act to follow. Anyone who sees this film will certainly
await Tribe of Heart’s second volume not only with anticipation,
but with awe, for The Witness is a powerful gift.
