This is not a fiction film.
There is a place called Island of Flowers.
There is no God.
ISLAND OF FLOWERS
We are in Belem Novo, city of Porto Alegre.
State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
More precisely at 30 degrees, 12' 30" latitude South,
and 51 degrees, 11' 23" longitude West.
We are now walking in a tomato plantation.
And we can see in front of us a human being.
A Japanese one.
The Japanese differ from other humans...
by the shape of their eyes, their black hair...
and characteristic names.
This particular Japanese is called SUZUKI.
Humans are biped animals, mammals.
They differ from other mammals, like whales,
and from other bipeds, like chickens, in two main respects:
The highly developed telencephalon and the opposable thumb.
The highly developed telencephalon allows humans...
to store, process,
relate and understand information.
The opposable thumb allows...
the pincer movement.
Of the fingers, which allows precise manipulation.
The highly developed telencephalon,
combined with the ability to make the pincer movement,
allowed humans...
to make improvements on their planet,
One of them is growing tomatoes.
The TOMATO, contrary to whales,
. chickens and Japanese, is a plant.
The tomato has been cultivated since 1800...
due to its nutritional value.
The Earth produces 61 MILLION TONS of tomatoes per year.
Although he works 12 hours a day, Mr. Suzuki...
. is responsible for a tiny fraction of this production.
The main use of the tomato is as food for humans.
Mr. Suzuki is a Japanese, and therefore a human.
However, he does not grow tomatoes to eat them.
All the tomatoes Mr. Suzuki produces...
. are sent to a supermarket and exchanged for MONEY.
Money was created, probably, by Giges, king of Lydia,
a large kingdom in Asia Minor, in the 7th Century before Christ.
Christ was a Jew.
The Jews have a highly developed telencephalon and opposable thumb.
Therefore, they are humans.
Before money was created, trade was based on direct exchange.
The difficulty to evaluate...
the amount of tomatoes equivalent to a chicken,
. and the problem of exchanging chickens for whales...
. are the main reasons that led to the creation of money.
Since the 3rd Century B.C.,
. any action or object produced by humans,
combining the efforts of...
the developed telencephalon and the opposable thumb,
as well as everything alive or not, above or below ground,
tomatoes, chickens and whales can be exchanged for money.
To facilitate the exchange of tomatoes for money,
humans created the SUPERMARKET.
Anete is a Roman Catholic, biped mammal.
She has a developed telencephalon and opposable thumb.
She is, therefore, a human.
She is in the supermarket to, among other things,
. exchange her money for tomatoes.
Anete earned her money with the work she does.
She uses her developed telencephalon and opposable thumb
to exchange perfume for money.
Perfumes are liquids, extracted from flowers,
that makes humans smell more pleasantly than they naturally do.
Anete doesn't extract her perfumes from flowers.
She exchanges, with a factory, an amount of money for perfume.
Then, Anete goes from door to door, and...
exchanges the perfume for a slightly larger amount of money.
The difference between those two amounts is called PROFIT.
Profit was once forbidden to Catholics.
But today all humans are FREE to make it.
Anete's profit is small, compared to the factory's.
But enough to exchange for 1 kg of tomatoes,
and 2 kg of meat, in this case, pork, pig's meat.
Pigs are mammals, like humans and whales,
but they are quadrupeds.
They are eaten by Japanese, Catholics and other humans,
but not by Jews.
The food Anete exchanged for the money,
that was exchanged for perfumes,
will be consumed by her family in the course of one day.
One day is the time the Earth takes...
to rotate once around its own axis.
Midday is time for lunch.
A family is a community formed by two humans,
joined by matrimony, and the children born of his marriage.
Some of the tomatoes exchanged by Mr. Suzuki for money,
. and exchanged once again with the profit Anete made...
from the exchange of perfumes...
were made into a sauce for the pork.
One of the tomatoes, in Anete's judgment,
wasn't suitable to become sauce and was thrown in the GARBAGE.
Garbage is everything that humans produce,
combining the efforts of...
the developed telencephalon and the opposable thumb,
and which, according to one human,
. is unsuitable for a sauce.
A city like Porto Alegre, with over 1 million humans,
produces around 5 HUNDRED TONS of garbage per day.
Garbage attracts all kinds of germs and bacteria,
which, in turn, cause diseases.
Diseases seriously impair the functioning of humans.
Even when it doesn't cause disease,
garbage looks and smells extremely unpleasant.
So, garbage is sent to certain places, quite distant,
where it can be dirty, smelly and attract diseases freely.
In Porto Alegre, one of the places chosen...
for garbage to smell bad and attract diseases...
. is called ISLAND OF FLOWERS.
An island is a portion of land surrounded by water on all sides.
Water is an odorless, tasteless, colorless liquid,
formed by two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen.
Flowers are the reproductive organs of plants.
They're sweet-smelling and brightly colored.
From sweet-smelling flowers, perfumes are extracted,
like those Anete exchanged for money and then for tomatoes.
There are few flowers on the Island of Flowers.
But there is a lot of garbage.
In its midst is the tomato that Anete...
found unsuitable for the pork sauce.
There are also many pigs on the island.
The tomato that Anete found unsuitable...
for her family to eat...
. can be excellent food for the pig and its family,
according to the pig.
Remember that Anete has a developed telencephalon,
while the pig doesn't even have a thumb, let alone an opposable one.
The pig has, however, an owner.
The pig's owner is a human,
with a developed telencephalon, opposable thumb...
and money.
The pig's owner exchanged some of his money...
for a site on the Island of Flowers,
thus becoming its owner.
A site is a portion of earth with an owner and a fence.
This site, where the garbage is dumped,
. is fenced to prevent pigs from going out...
and other humans from going in.
Employees of the pigs' owner pick, from the garbage,
organic material suitable for pig food.
Organic material is everything that was once alive,
. in animal or plant form.
Tomatoes, chicken, pigs, flowers and paper are organic material.
This paper, for example, was used for a History test...
at the Our Lady School.
It was taken by Ana Luiza Nunes, a human.
A History test is a test of a human's capacity...
to REMEMBER data referring to the study of History. Such as:
Who was Genghis Khan? What were the two rivers of Mesopotamia?
LIVING IS REMEMBERING.
Some organic material, like tomatoes and History tests,
is given to pigs as food.
The things that were found unsuitable for pigs...
will be used as food by children and women.
Children and women are humans,
with highly developed telencephalon, opposable thumb...
and no money.
They have no owner and, what's worse, they are many.
So, the pig's owners' employees sort them...
into groups of 10, and allow them to go through the fence.
Inside the fence, they can take all the food...
the pig's owner's employees found unsuitable for the pig.
The employees decided that each group of ten humans...
should be allowed 5 minutes inside the fence,
collecting organic material like tomatoes and History tests.
5 minutes are 300 seconds.
In 1958, one second was defined as the equivalent to...
9 billion, 192 million, 631 thousand,
770 radiation cycles of a CESIUM atom.
Cesium is a non-organic material,
found in garbage in Goiânia.
The tomato grown by Mr. Suzuki,
. exchanged for money with the supermarket,
. exchanged for the money that Anete exchanged...
for perfumes extracted from flowers,
rejected for the sauce,
thrown in the garbage and rejected by the pigs,
is now available to the humans Of the ISLAND OF FLOWERS.
What puts humans after pigs...
in the priority order for choosing food...
is the fact that they have no money nor owner.
Humans differ from other animals for having...
a highly developed telencephalon, opposable thumbs...
and for being free.
Being free is the state of one who has freedom.
Freedom is a word that the human dream feeds on,
that no one can explain or fail to understand.
ENGLISH VERSION: Luis Fernando Verissimo
SUBTITLES: Lisa Gertum Becker
THE REST IS TRUE.