18 h 25 nov 2021 ans - MINAMATA W Eugene Smith award-winning photographer Cristopher Rogel Blanquet discusses Minamata and why it must be released

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Eugene Smith award-winning photographer Cristopher Rogel Blanquet discusses Minamata and why it must be released

by Richard Phillips & Mauricio Saavedra

The following discussion is with Cristopher Rogel Blanquet, one of this year’s W. Eugene Smith Fund Grant winners. The grant will allow Blanquet, a young Mexican photographer, to continue his Beautiful Poison project about unrestricted use of agrochemicals on workers in Mexico’s massive flower-growing industry. His project documents the life of four families in the Villa Guerrero region who have suffered the death of children, genetic disabilities and chronic diseases related to these chemicals.

This is the seventh article in a series about the controversy surrounding Minamata, the new movie by Andrew Levitas and starring Johnny Depp, in addition to our original review.

Minamata focuses on the decades-long industrial poisoning of Japanese fishing communities in Minamata by the Chisso Corporation and the efforts by acclaimed photo-essayist Eugene Smith (Depp) and his wife Aileen Mioko Smith to expose this crime before a global audience during the early 1970s.

The WSWS reviewed the movie in late July and followed this with several interviews. The first of these was with photographer Stephen Dupont, a winner of the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography in 2007; the second with Australian documentary photographer Jack Picone; and the third with Kevin Eugene Smith, a lawyer, former television producer and journalist, and the manager of the photographic estate of his father, Eugene Smith. The fourth article featured comments from photographers David Dare Parker and John Hulme, the fifth, a statement by Jane Evelyn Atwood, the first winner of the prestigious Smith Memorial Grant, when it was established in 1980, and the sixth, an interview with Tim Page, veteran Vietnam war photographer.

While Minamata has been released in many countries around the world, MGM, which purchased the rights to distribute the film in North America, has not screened it in the US. The company, which is being taken over by Amazon, has refused to give any indication when it will be released.

In July, director Levitas issued an open letter revealing that he had been told by MGM’s acquisitions head Sam Wollman that the company was “burying” Minamata over concerns that “the personal issues of Johnny Depp,” could reflect negatively on MGM. The company’s arrogant and censorious actions constitute an outrageous attack on all those involved in the film’s production, including Aileen Mioko Smith, who was co-author of the book on which it was based, as well as the victims and families of those poisoned by Chisso.

Cristopher Rogel Blanquet is one of a growing number of acclaimed photographers who have spoken out against MGM’s ongoing suppression of Minamata. Blanquet became a professional photojournalist seven years ago and has worked in Mexico, France, the US, Peru, Turkey, Ukraine, Morocco and Syria, after having initially been a journalist for the Mexican periodical El Universal.

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