The burning of black gold
Fires of Kuwait (36 minutes, directed by Michael McKinon) and Tides of War (52 minutes, directed by David Douglas, produced by the National Geographic Society), 2 documentaries screened in New Delhi are about "one of the largest ecological disasters of the world". They are haunting films -- not because of the presentation, but because of their surrealistic shots of 607 oil wells set afire by the retreating Iraqi army at the end of the 1990 invasion.
As one watches a swan coated with the sickly grey oil slick struggle to keep her head above water, or surveys the corpses of some 40,000 fledgling cormorants whose parents never returned to feed them, one is instead likely to brood darkly on the extent of human-made destruction.
Tides of War offers a unique view of war from the point of view of the animal kingdom. There is a brilliant sequence in which animals are shown emerging one by one from their hibernation.
Equally moving is the juxtaposition of birds and fish in their normal routine with those later covered by slicks, weighed down by tar and soot. And the high tech solutions used to douse the fires contrast poignantly with the efforts of volunteers to pick up one bird at a time, one turtle at a time, wipe off the pollutants and nurture them back to life.
The Gulf War disturbed the centuries-old springtime migration of birds from the African continent, setting off a chain of disasters that the animal kingdom may never recover from. Tidal flats, with their rich biodiversity, became wastelands. The war may be over, but it will take years for the region's ecosystem to recover.