One of the things that POV on PBS, now in its 27th season, does best is showcasing the work of the world’s finest independent documentary filmmakers, and the upcoming “Big Men” is a prime example.
Airing Monday, August 25 on PBS, the documentary is a nail-biting exposé of the global dealmaking and the dark underside of what happens when the US oil industry goes into Africa to drill. It becomes a contest for money and power that reshapes the landscape of underdeveloped countries like Ghana and Nigeria.
“Big Men” is directed by Rachel Boynton and executive produced by Brad Pitt. Filmed over a period of five years, Boynton explores what happens when a small Dallas company, Kosmos Energy, develops Ghana’s first commercial oilfield.
“The world of international oil deals is not an easy one to enter with the camera,” said Boynton, who was most often accompanied only by her cameraman. “And I knew no one in the oil business, or in Africa when I began this film. I wanted it to take you into exclusive and dangerous worlds, to put you into the room right as events are unfolding. The film does this in scene after scene – introducing you to presidents and gun toting militants and letting you eavesdrop on businessmen making multibillion-dollar deals.”
As she quickly found out, money motivated everything involved in a place where so many people have so little and many of them resort to illegal activities– like stealing oil– to survive. She also discovered a world filled with endemic corruption.
“A huge portion of public funds were siphoned off by officials trying to make money on the side or were wasted by contracts awarded to people with great connections and no capacity to actually accomplish the work. It was like a heightened version of a world I knew – an example of capitalism taken to an extreme, where rampant individualism takes root and larger connections between people fall apart.”
In Dallas and in New York, Boynton got unprecedented access to meetings and behind the scenes dealings of the Kosmos team, which was focused on investor risk and return.
But in Ghana, the events following the discovery of oil turned into a white knuckle roller coaster ride for Kosmos, with the 2008 financial crisis, wild fluctuations in the price of oil, and a new government demanding a new deal for its portion of the profits.
“For me, the safe card against divisive self-interest lies not in denying that we’re all looking out for ourselves, but in recognizing and valuing what connects us,” the director said. “”What does this very basic motivation – the pursuit of profit – do to the way we all behave? And when maximum individual profit is the ultimate good, isn’t it inevitable that a very few will have more while a great many will have infinitely and tragically less?”
The 82-minute documentary explores all these issues in a riveting tale that chronicles the little-seen machinations that are a byproduct of discovering, drilling and distributing oil.
Yet ultimately, “Big Men”– the title comes from individuals wanting to make themselves bigger– is as much about shared human nature as it is about oil.
— Hillary Atkin
