The Witness

Tribe of Heart (2000)
Reviewed by Nancy Callan
Reprinted with Permission from Earthsave Canada

The Witness, an award winning documentary, tells the story of a personal miracle, a change in perception. Eddie Lama is an architectural metals contractor in New York, with a mission to raise awareness about animal suffering.

Growing up in a violent neighbourhood in the Bronx, Eddie frequently witnessed friends harm zoo animals at night or chase cats down alleys with intent to harm. The only reason he didn’t participate himself, he says, was fear. Eddie never had a pet growing up. Having been raised in a family with an aversion to pets, Eddie was afraid of animals.

But everything changed one day when a pretty woman asked him to babysit a kitten. The thought of that furry, unhygenic creature running rampant in Eddie’s house, possibly soiling the rug that you could eat off of, was unpleasant, but, hoping to get a date out of it, Eddie acquiesed. That’s when his education and love affair with animals began.

It was the second cat that Eddie babysat whom he credits with causing him to quit smoking. It was the sense that he was directly doing harm to someone who would not choose to be harmed. As Eddie says, “I coulda sworn he coughed.”

Soon, his awareness turned to food animals. Eddie was struck by the contradiction involved in loving some animals as companions and killing others for food. After watching videos of pigs in slaughterhouses, he turned to his religious upbringing for answers. Were these pigs reincarnated sinners? Why did they have to suffer so much? It wasn’t long before Eddie was a vegetarian.

Seeing undercover footage from the fur industry, Eddie’s mission came into focus. He realized that these films wouldn’t be coming to a theatre near you and weren’t about to be shown on tv. He was convinced that if people saw what he’d seen, they would understand. The sides of all his company’s trucks were plastered with messages about the fur industry. The reality is ugly, he says, but if reality weren’t ugly, people wouldn’t be aroused to change it. A van was converted into an audio visual mobile system. The film shows Eddie driving the streets of New York asking people to take a moment from their busy lives to bear witness to the fact that all fur comes from tortured and tormented animals. The stunned and pained expressions of passers by, as they watch the images from Eddie’s mobile tv, bring a tear to the eyes of the documentary audience.

Eddie says that the power of example is the most powerful message you can convey to anyone. His life is an example to us all. This film will inspire you, through the example of one man’s transformation from despair and frustration to positive action.