Isabella agreed and I panicked. Dimitri saw me turn pale and worried, he knew about my fear for the ocean. However, he pushed me to get on the boat and conduct the interview.
Thank god he did.
We had taken a two-hour car ride to Ancon, a beach outside of Lima with the idea of getting B-roll of the port and boats for our documentary, but an unexpected twist occurred and we ended up interviewing the ex-president of the traditional fishermen union in Ancon.
As we got to the port and started filming fishermen shouted and joked around just to get our attention and get filmed. We moved through the port determined to get the best shots possible even if fish flew over our heads and ice rolled on the floor. After five minutes of B-rolling, we got on the little boat traditionally called a peke peke and went to the fishing grounds.
He was such an interesting man that I had to ask him the question. “What do you think of industrial fisheries”. His response brought no surprise “I hate them, because of them we will run out of fish and have no jobs”. The passion that he spoke with was amazing and made us feel that we could trust him. His response was exactly the sort of answer we needed for our documentary to prosper.
Yes, we may know several economic terms and want to focus on them as the documentary progresses, like communal resources, supply, demand, free rider problems and more. However, we still hadn’t had that key moment that unlocked everything and showed the correlation between the fishing quota, the industrial fisherman, the traditional fisherman and consumers. This was it and we weren’t going to waste it.
Dimitri’s usually reserved attitude towards interview changed completely and I could sense his emotion, as Miyushi spoke and explained everything we needed. Dimitri has been the creative mind of the documentary while Isabella is the one in charge of filming. Nevertheless, this time it was different. We all asked questions and got engaged with the interview. We knew it was a crucial point in the documentary and had to make the most out of it.
Although we had gained valuable knowledge about the fishing industry from reading articles online on newspapers, economy web sites and conducting interviews with industrial fisherman and restaurant owners. We still hadn’t had that interview that connected everything and we finally did.
My emotion for this project has skyrocketed over 1000% and I just want to showcase my work to the world. I took this theme for the documentary because I am very interested in the fishing industry and how it shapes Peru’s economy, but after the interview on Thursday I am sure I want to work there.
I want to be in the industrial fishery industry, but not being hated. I want to be able to help traditional fisherman prosper and live better lives and not being the villain of the movie. If done properly industrial and traditional fisherman should have no problems between them and live in harmony, however, Peru is far from that.