It’s a reel good time in Park City, Utah: The 10-day Sundance Film Festival kicked off there on Jan. 14, and five of the 32 documentaries have environmental themes. An additional 50 eco-related films were submitted but didn’t make the cut—more greenish submissions than in the past two years combined, said a Sundance programmer. It’s no wonder that budding eco-filmmakers clamor to get in, as An Inconvenient Truth and Who Killed the Electric Car? got their starts at Sundance.
Here’s a rundown of this year’s greenish offerings:
The Cove: This eco-thriller exposes the slimy underbelly of the cultural infatuation with dolphins. Activists—led by Flipper’s trainer—sneak cameras into the cove of a major Japanese dolphin supplier and document the sketchy treatment of the animals. Which probably includes making them pose for neon Lisa Frank merch.
No Impact Man: You may’ve heard of Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, the New Yorker who attempted to go carless, eat organic and local, and not create any waste (including toilet paper) for a year—and who made his wife and kidlet go along with him. If his wife is really as “espresso-guzzling [and] Prada-worshipping” as she’s made out to be, this could be a tasty greenish slice of Simple Life-esque schadenfreude.
Earth Days: Selected as the closing film at the festival, this 100-minute feature documents the green movement since Earth Day of 1970. Nine speakers recount the pivotal green events of the past 40 years, including eco-champ and former secretary of the interior Stewart Udall. But if it hopes to be the next Inconvenient Truth, it better close with a sappy eco-ballad from a ‘90s rocker.
The End of the Line: From Piven to PETA, fish is the hot dish, and this British doc considers a world without them. Based on the book by Charles Clover, the film looks at the consequences of cultural seafood obsession, like the impending disappearance of bluefin tuna. No word on whether they actually use the term “sea kittens.”
Crude: It’s Chevron versus 30,000 Ecuadorans seeking justice for 18 billion gallons of oil waste dumped in the Amazon. Documenting the 13-year battle between the people and the Big Bad took filmmakers three years.
Dirt!: The Movie: Not to be confused with the Courtney Cox vehicle, this homage to the much-abused source of our food consults a variety of soil’s muddy buddies, from wine critics to scientists, to give dirt a closer look.
Check out a guide to all of the Sundance films here.
Climate Citizen: Mary Stuart Masterson
Happy birthday, EMA Awards ... and you other groups, too
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AnnaKay Posted 2:59 am
17 Jan 2009
Also, check out this blog to learn more about the contamination: http://www.thechevronpit.blogspot.com
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biodiversivist Posted 3:36 am
17 Jan 2009
I did the no impact thing when I first arrived in Seattle many years ago. I lived a few miles from my job, rode my bike everywhere, and saved everything that I could not recycle for a year, eventually stuffing it all in a dumpster.
My conclusion? This was the wrong way to attract the attention of the ladies.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Tasermons Partner Posted 1:31 pm
17 Jan 2009
One should note that it is also rather cliche to participate in eco-ventures with the primary purpose of attracting a mate.
It also seems to reek of desperation.
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Pompey Road Posted 6:21 am
19 Jan 2009
The toxic ash pond that made headlines in Southern Appalachia "Tennessee" is just a small puddle compared to the toxic coal waste water impoundments in Kentucky and West Virginia that are opened up on purpose on night shifts just to gain some more volume and keep from building another pond. A Toxic cocktail of coal cleaning chemicals and heavy metals that dot the landscape of the Eastern Coal Fields, hundreds of impoundments that leak, run over and fail on a regular basis. The large coal slurry pond that failed in Martin County Kentucky a few years ago was 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill and polluted 150 miles of creek and river tributaries running all the way down to the Ohio river.
Don't get me started on Mountain Top Removal that not only destroys the forest or vegetation as Amazon deforestation does but destroys the mountains, valleys and clear water streams forever. Thousands of acres of deciduous Appalachian forest already destroyed and the practice of MTR has now been accelerated by George Bush's midnight rule and regulation changes to the E.P.A.. I see films made here sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation that point out extreme situations particular to the area, painting the whole area and the people in a bad light with the hopes of winning a prize at Sundance with no regard to the damage they do to the region, the people or our cause for stopping Mountain Top Removal. It is no wonder the nation has just wrote this region off and considers us and the southern Appalachian Forest as expendable. Sometimes I wonder about how much coal corporate money is behind some of the films about Southern Appalachia.
There is an environmental disaster on the scale of the destruction of the Amazon basin going on right in your back yard. Especially when you consider the regular strip mining, MTR, coal chemical waste impoundments and the thousands of tons of nitrate explosives used for blasting in this area. You don't have to go all the way to South America to find deforestation, chemical pollution of the water ways or heavy metal toxic pollution of the waterways on a massive scale. It will be difficult also to be seen as credible environmentalist when you condemn the deforestation and corporate pollution in one country while it is legal and ongoing on a massive scale in your own home country.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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