Search - NOVA: Master of the Killer Ants on DVD

Nova: Master of the Killer Ants

Penetralia | 08/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A wonderful film about Mofu life with insects; particularly, termites, ants, and a unique bird. Viewers will see a real sense of community life amongst villagers and their relationship with mother earth.

Perhaps, negative reviewers of this film should one day be responsible for going into a non-English village and shooting/writing/filming/marketing/networking/airing a beautiful story like, "Master of the Killer Ants." It is always easy to criticize than it is to create a masterpiece; especially an entertaining-educational program with a perfect beginning, middle, and end. In fact, more of the world should celebrate rain or water, and have more harmonious relationships with their environments, as this film cleverly pictured.
"

I loved this film!

Jay Citizen | Mid America | 03/20/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I am not here to judge religion,people, film producers, or politics. I am here to review what is one of the best, most wonderfull PBS productions I've seen in quite a while. They should have been selling this film during the membership drive this spring break!

I won't have the money for it for a few weeks but I plan on purchasing it, for sure!!

NOVA stuck to their guns and showed the life style as it probably really is, which is scraping survival out of the bleak existence of Western African Cameroon. They did the best they could, I imagine it is hard to film in conflict countries without maintaining some political correctness with the authorities, or you will not be allowed to film again.

I'm sure folks are intelligent enough to filter this out. It was very heart warming to see the kids enjoying nature on their food hunt and recon for the infamous red army ants mentioned in the introduction. Everything leading up to this was very interesting to me. As only the third generation to escape the mud huts on the prairie, I can identify with these folks. The only real difference was we lived in modern homes and used machinery,motorized irrigation, and pesticides. But this only during the last 50 years. Much of our spare time was spent harvesting the orchards and gardens, which still involved heavy manual labor just like these folks. I'd say 60% of our time a day was spent on food recovery and preparation. Way more than anyone would tolerate now days in the USA anyway.

We also had our war with pests, and not all of them could be dealt with by pesticides. Bull snakes were encourage to move into our farmyards to keep the rattlesnakes away, and red/black prairie ants to keep the fire ants at bay, just to name a few instances.

But straight to the jist of why I recommend this movie is the remarkable achievment in preserving a history of what is hopefully a hard life dissappearing like it did for us, at the turn of the last century. The story line was beautifly executed and filmed, and you just had to fall in love with the cute grandfather who had the wise woodcraft(or witchcraft if you insist) to use bio-specie warfare against the terrible termites plaguing the village.

I can't understand the vitriol from some reviewers for the sciences used in this assesment. After all Anthropology is as important as the entomology shown in this film, at a time when human and natural cooperation was closer and more finely tuned than we have now. Woodcraft is a 6th sense that we have lost in this modern society. It is sad too, as it helped my beloved uncle survive Iwo Jima.

The music was straight from African traditions and used sparingly and with only original African cultural instrumentation. The filming was fantastic, and the macro-filmography of the insects spellbinding!

I highly recommend this film, although I hope it is remastered as a blu-ray; as this belongs in any thinking person's library. And any compassionate person's heart as well!! Truely a piece of art!"