The Fruit Hunters - Defenders of Diversity (Episode 2)
2013 · 43m · Canada
Directed by Yung Chang
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, sensual
David Suzuki narrates a journey through exotic fruits as obsession, commerce, and nature intertwine. Defenders of Diversity, the second part of The Fruit Hunters, asks how fruit changes our view of eating and of the natural world.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A David Suzuki narration over fruit fetishism should be exactly as tedious as it sounds, but there's something genuinely perverse about how this essay film eroticizes commodity agriculture—it's the rare doc that makes you uncomfortable about your own consumption without turning preachy.
Chang's sensual montage work and the deliberate pacing situate this squarely in the essay-film tradition of Marker and the NFB's own lineage of formal rigor; the second episode's willingness to deepen rather than resolve its argument about nature and commerce shows real curatorial restraint.
The decision to let the tactile, almost ASMR quality of fruit imagery carry the philosophical weight instead of explaining it—that's the move that transforms what could've been a dry agriculture doc into something that actually makes you *feel* the tension between desire and stewardship.