The Unthinkable: 2021, Docu review
BY JELLY FIELDS DOCUMENTARY Director:
Comfort Ndzinisa – Eswatini Solidarity fund
Real footage compiled to make this documentary. An eye-opening tear-jerking piece of art. Opening your eyes to what is happening. The extent and the death of a nation
“Every day, our leaders and politicians call for calm— but the chaos seen in this documentary shows something completely different. The people call for revolution but few of them understand the cold, destructive, and ultimately hollow thrill of revolution like the people of Eswatini.”
Synopsis:
Comfort Ndzinisa brings yet another adrenaline-filled, true-life documentar to the big screen. We see all sorts of familiar faces this time around, but the audience is introduced to the real-life critical drama of a very real situation on the ground. When a crisis threatens Eswatini, The people of Eswatini are brutalised we learn of many people who were tortured and traumatised by the police and military. Something that we knew but would not have seen the extent of. This documentary served as great information with its real-life clips and real people sharing their stories on what happened to them during these days of unrest.
So basically this documentary was to inform the world of what has been happening in Eswatini the effects of the past protests. What the people are fighting for and what they have been subjected to. Survivors speaking out and showing the real-life scars and damage they have been left with. It has exposed our fears but also shed light on a very worrying situation in what was once our
EMy knowledge of the situation is from the day Thabani Nkomonye’s body was found in Nhlambeni sparking protests by students all over the country as they wanted justice for Thabani, who was allegedly killed by police. The situation was further fuelled when protests and petitions were banned making emaSwati even angrier. Over those few weeks, we saw our country go up in flames and were left with smoke all around us reminding us that it was a dark dark day in our once peaceful country. Things escalated when we got word that soldiers were allegedly killing civilians. Certain businesses were targeted and tear gas and gunshots filled the air for days to come. We are still in extremely uncertain times.
The documentary is putting us in the picture as it seems many of these incidents we did not know about. The documentary has triggered emotions all over again. Watching
Bezos, founder and executive chair of Amazon, has not had the best time lately. Earlier this week he was named as the world’s second wealthiest person, having dropped from first place to make way for Elon Musk, who joked that he would be sending Bezos a giant shiny numeral “2”.
Then on Wednesday the Amazon-owned Twitch, a video game live streaming service with millions of daily users, was hacked and the contents leaked in a 128gb torrent download link posted to 4chan. Attached to the drop was a message: ‘Jeff Bezos paid US$970 million for this, we’re giving it away for free’.
But these are not the worst of Bezos’ woes. His forays into the space industry seem to bring him the most headaches.
FF REVIEW: INFORM ACCUSATION
peaceful kingdom.
The purpose of this documentary as I have stated was to shed light on the current situation, possibly to get the international community involved. The purpose was to not let these crimes of humanity go unnoticed. The reason was probably that people are tired, people also need help as many have been hurt. Many have died and left families in pain. How would we have known the extent of the damage had we not seen this documentary. The number of people who were shot, that lost their legs, and those that have died. The purpose is a cry for help. A cry to be seen, a cry to be protected. A way to honour those who have died in the struggle.
Late last month in an open letter a group of 21 current and former Blue Origin employees accused the company, which is owned by Bezos, of running a toxic and sexist workplace. Further accusation said that Blue Origin engages in a lot of PR
KNOWLEDGE
about environmental issues, but in reality cares little about sustainability.
The letter spoke about a culture of suppression, overwork, and silencing.
“Former and current employees... are terrified of the potential consequences for speaking out against the wealthiest man on the planet”. Workers are forced to sign non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements, effectively silencing all current and former employees from speaking out. While journalists have independently verified the identities of several of the letter’s signatories, the main front author, a former employee Alexandra Abrams, says she is braced to lose everything and be sued by the world’s richest man, as per the NDA she signed.
SAFETY
The letter further claimed that the suppression of dissent was leading to safety issues.
“Blue Origin has been lucky that nothing has happened so far. Many of this essay’s authors say they would not fly on a Blue Origin vehicle” due to safety concerns. Star Trek actor William Shatner, however, doesn’t seem to share the concerns about safety, and in a win for Bezos this week Shatner confirmed he would ride aboard the next Blue Origin sub-orbital flight, due to take place this coming Tuesday. If successful, Shatner will be the oldest person to go to space at 90, if you think those three minutes up there count.
Bezos’ biggest worries though are tied up in his exclusion from a major NASA it was like reliving the whole ordeal again or putting yourself in the shoes of those who were severely hurt and it is extremely painful. It’s painful to watch. Basic human rights are being violated. The sad part is the rest of the world has done nothing even though they are very aware of what is going on in the country.
I for one am not impressed with the quality of this documentary. The footage is very bad quality. Production is extremely low budget. It was a good attempt, but we still have a long way to go as far as good movies worth watching are concerned. We also see the use of bad cellphone clips that we can’t be sure if they have been verified as we know some are old clips which is not to take away from the fact that people are being brutalised by the security forces but why use fake news to create your documentary when you have more than enough content? I think a team with more technical skills should come together to produce something more pleasing to the eye. A very well-done documentary will attract more attention as opposed to one that looks like it was done in a rush.
QUALITY
This is not to say I can do better. I cannot I do not have the skill but as one viewing I would like to see something that will keep me glued to the screen because it is good quality. We have to move past it’s good for Eswatini because this is how we stay behind. It is bad by any standard.
I would recommend that you watch this documentary if you can get through the bad picture quality, you will learn of things you did not know and see things that will shock you. You will have questions as to whether it’s true or not because these days everyone cannot tell who is truthful and who is lying.
I was surprised I did not see much commentary on it after it aired on cutting edge I can only imagine it was because of the quality not being watch-worthy or the fact that we had seen all those clips before. We need fresh new reverting content. The whole situation is quiet now and this is a very good medium to help the people never to forget that our lives matter, but we will be unable to take you seriously if you feel it is ok to air something so poorly done. You want to attract the attention of the people that could potentially help then please work on the technical side. With that being said, thank you for bringing the unseen and unheard stories to light if these are true there has been more damage than anyone could ever imagine. You wake up one day with both your legs and you go to sleep with one. This can’t be right!!!
contract to build a Human Landing System (HLS) on the moon.
Blue Origin put in a proposal with a massive 5.9 billion dollar budget to build an HLS prototype, assuming that NASA would secure enough funding from Congress to accept their proposal. This did not happen, and NASA took what budget they had and accepted SpaceX’s almost half-priced offer. Blue Origin is now upset that NASA “did not afford Blue Origin any opportunity to submit a revised business position”.
ASSUMPTION
In response, attorneys for NASA wrote that Blue Origin “made an assumption about the Agency’s HLS budget, built its proposal with this figure in mind, and also separately made a calculated bet that if NASA could not afford Blue Origin’s initially-proposed price, the Agency would select Blue Origin for award and engage in post-selection negotiations to allow Blue Origin to lower its price. All of these assumptions were incorrect.”
Blue Origin has now filed a lawsuit to force a reconsideration of the procurement process. But “realizing now that it gambled and lost, Blue Origin seeks to use (government) procurement oversight function to improperly compel NASA to suffer the consequences of Blue Origin’s ill-conceived choices” the attorney for NASA wrote.
Blue Origin’s lawsuit is causing costly delays in the race for America to get back to the moon.
The lawsuits don’t end there. Elon Musk recently tweeted that “filing lawsuits against SpaceX is actually (Bezos’) full-time job, revealing that Blue Origin has filed a lawsuit against SpaceX effectively once every 16 days this year.
Hashtag #BillionaireProblems.