by Donald Carr
The Sundance Film Festival has
long been a celebrated venue for environmental documentaries, due in part to
Sundance founder Robert Redford‘s
green sensibilities. An Inconvenient
Truth, The Cove, and Who Killed the Electric Car? all attracted critical buzz at Sundance
before they made their way into theaters around the country. The festival’s 2010 lineup continues this
trend with a handful of well-crafted, compelling films that address crucial
environmental themes not yet in the public consciousness.
Gasland
Avant garde filmmaker Josh Fox grew up in Pennsylvania on
a pastoral stretch of the Delaware River,
which happens to sit on the natural gas-rich Marcellus shale formation. When he
got a $100,000 offer to lease his property for natural-gas exploration, Fox
felt compelled to chronicle the impact that the natural gas-extraction process
known as hydraulic fracturing has had on the American landscape.
Gasland begins by deftly
explaining the complicated practice of hydrofracking, which involves injecting
toxic chemicals into the ground—often not far from drinking-water sources—to force natural gas to the surface. This allows the film’s central theme to
emerge: that average Americans are under siege from toxic water and air
contamination while cavalier energy executives brush aside their concerns.
With his untraditional
filmmaking background, Fox elevates the often-dry conventions of environmental
documentaries into a persuasive, mood-driven piece. But this is no art film.
Fox travels across 25 states, including the drill-punctured lands of Colorado and Texas,
to document the debilitating health effects endured by people who have had the
misfortune of living near natural-gas wells.
Gasland‘s subjects aren’t
crunchy types ensconced in eco-conscious enclaves like Boulder. Most are rural families and ranchers
who could easily have cast a McCain vote in the last election. Yet they seethe at an unsympathetic natural-gas
industry that clings to the eroding notion that its product is safe and
environmentally friendly, and that fights tooth and nail to protect its Bush-era
exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act.
And then there’s the flammable
tap water. In one home after another, Fox and his subjects put lighters to
faucets to show how sloppy drilling has let gas leak directly into drinking
water. The pyrotechnic parlor trick is good cinema; combined with images of
endless parades of heavy trucks to and from drill sites, it makes the visually
quantifiable point that the natural-gas industry has engaged in a rabid,
decade-long expansion without much thought to the consequences.
Fox is hopeful that a
distribution deal is imminent for Gasland.
Robert Koehler’s swooning review in Variety—which
says Gasland is so “potent” that it
could be the rare film that forces social change—could help make studio
distribution a reality. At Monday night’s screening at Sundance, Fox was
greeted by a roaring crowd and choked-up audience members during the Q&A
session. If that’s any indication, the future of Gasland is as bright as flaming tap water.
See the flammable tap water:
——-
Climate Refugees
Director Michael Nash’s
alarming documentary, which details the impact that a billion humans displaced
by climate change will have on global security, should goose even the most
fervent climate deniers into reconsidering their positions. Nash uses lush
cinematography and first-person accounts to chronicle hellish experiences of
displacement caused by increasingly severe weather-related events like the ones
expected to be triggered by global warming.
Climate Refugees begins with the tiny
sliver of Polynesian islands that make up the country of Tuvalu.
Tuvalu
is expected to be the first sovereign nation to become a casualty of rising sea
levels. This raises a central question of the film: What happens to the
political identity of people when their country no longer exists? In a world of
tightly controlled national borders, climate refugees have many more barriers
to relocation than political refugees.
And what will happen when
larger groups, in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, are displaced and
have no country in which to relocate? Will they pour over borders and
destabilize already shaky governments in Asia
and the South Pacific?
When the film pivots from the
recent Bangladesh cyclone to
the U.S. disasters of
Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, it makes the point that America is also in deep danger from
displaced refugees. Crime rates have spiked in towns and cities where Katrina
survivors relocated. Viewed in the context of tens of millions of refugees
potentially rushing our border from the South, our current immigration problems
seem trivial.
The film alternates between
heart-wrenching accounts of survivors of climate disasters all over the globe and
interviews with leading environmental experts such as Lester Brown.
Political leaders like Sen. John Kerry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
also provide insight and commentary, with Gingrich saying he became concerned
about climate change in part because the U.S. military has warned that the
phenomenon threatens to become a serious destabilizing force around the world.
Climate Refugees doesn’t address the causes of climate change, opting not to get bogged down in
that distracting debate. But Nash makes a frightening point near the end of the
film. If climate change is human-made, we have a chance to head off the global
threat of climate refugees. If it’s naturally occurring, we’re screwed.
Watch the trailer:
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Born Sweet
Oscar winner Cynthia Wade’s
short film Born Sweet follows Vinh Voeurn, a 15-year-old Cambodian boy suffering from
arsenic poisoning. Arsenic occurs naturally in Cambodia’s volcanic soil and has
been poisoning Vinh’s village water supply for years, recently causing the
death of a young neighbor girl. The arsenic is permanently in Vinh’s system,
leaving him anemic and with ugly dark spots on his body. Yet in this moving but
hopeful short, Vinh comes to terms with his illness and potential mortality,
all while nursing the normal teenage hope of meeting a girl.
In Vinh’s village, the main
source of entertainment is singing along with Cambodian karaoke music videos,
and Vinh dreams of escaping his desperate future with a career as a karaoke
performer. When aid workers connect Vinh with karaoke video producers in order
to make an arsenic PSA, his life changes in a way he and his family could never
have imagined.
——-
And two more worth a mention: Mark
Lewis introduced a 3-D update of his 1988 comedy/documentary about the misguided introduction of amphibians into Australia, called Cane Toads: The Conquest. And Wasteland,
a film by Lucy Walker, shows how Brazilian artists use found objects, in this
case from vast garbage landfills, to make inspired creations.
Related Links:
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