Q&A WITH FILMMAKER JOSH TICKELL OF FUEL

Q: What inspired you to make FUEL?

A: I made FUEL to show that there is a way for us to have all the energy we need without compromising peace and freedom.

Q: What were some of the challenges and obstacles in making this film, and how did you overcome them?

A: Ten years ago, when I set out to make this film, the biggest challenge I had was getting people to buy into the idea that a movie could make a significant contribution to the world. But my green community saw the validity of these ideas, and with their encouragement I have overcome many obstacles along the way. Until recently, documentaries weren’t seen as vehicles for social change. That rapidly changed with Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, Born into Brothels and especially with An Inconvenient Truth. Suddenly, the little energy documentary I’d been working on for a decade became hot. By the end of this year when the film will be presented in theaters all over the country, the ideas and concepts in FUEL will become mainstream. That’s a powerful shift.

Q: How did your vision for the film change over the course of the pre-production, production and post-production processes?

A: I wanted to make a film about the serious challenges we face and ultimately about the power of every individual to make a difference. The biggest challenge came after we won the audience award at Sundance. It was at that time that two camps emerged - those that loved biofuels and those that thought biofuels were awful. I made the difficult choice to re-cut the movie to incorporate not just the controversy around biofuels, but also the other energy solutions that exist. Like any renovation, we started re-cutting with an eye toward repairing a few flaws and ended up knee deep in a complete re-edit. The film that emerged kept the heart of the original movie, but was different enough in content and scope that it merited a new name and a new launch. Hence FUEL was born. Everyone who has seen both films agrees that it was worth the risk, the time and the energy to make the new movie.

Q: What is next for you?

A: My team and I are taking the film on a 25-city tour across the United States this year. We will travel in a convoy of biodiesel vehicles that will go to universities, schools, town halls and political events. Our goal is to “green the vote” of America by getting everyday people, along with politicians and energy companies, to sign onto a 10-year plan that will transition America to renewable energy.

Director Kevin Tomlinson talks about his film "Back to the Garden"

Back in 1988 I took a road trip that led me on a strange journey. By chance, I saw a funky poster advertising a Healing Gathering in rural Washington State. Curious to meet this community of backcountry hippies twenty years after Woodstock, I decided to go.

Upon arrival, I felt transported, finding myself among magic buses and tepees in a meadow filled with beaded flower children communing with nature. I shot hours of dancing, drumming, singing and celebration. I recorded extensive interviews with some of the most genuine, sincere beings I’d ever met.

With no plans for the material at the time and skeptical how it would be received during the Reagan/Bush years, the project was shelved. But it didn’t sit quietly. The images wouldn’t let go. 18 years later I asked myself, where have all the “flowers” gone?

So I began a new journey, a journey to find what had happened to all the dreams of getting back to the land, setting one’s soul free and environmental utopia. How had they survived living off-grid and below the poverty level for years? Had anyone changed course and gone mainstream? What had become of their dreams of self-reliance, simplicity, and freedom? And how did their children (now in their twenties) feel about their own “Hippie Kid” upbringings?

Not so long ago, those “Hippie” communities and their values were considered way too radical and fringe by the mainstream. Today, the Green Movement, looking to protect the earth for future generations, is wholeheartedly embracing them.

Back to the Garden presents a time-lapse view—twenty years in the lives of a group of idealist baby boomers who rejected and dropped out of the mainstream, who went back to the land, overcoming many personal sacrifices In pursuit of their dreams. It’s also a story about the personal consequences of those radical dreams and choices. Not only is this their story, but ours too, because the counterculture of the sixties affected all of us and forever changed our ideas about how we define love, wealth, spirituality and freedom.

Kevin Tomlinson
Healing Gathering (1988)

Filmmaker David M. Edwards talks about his film Sprawling from Grace

Sprawling From Grace; Driven To Madness is a documentary feature film about the unintended consequences of suburban sprawl. It illustrates the importance of altering the course of how we develop our nation’s cities. It communicates the dangers of continuing to invest in the inefficient horizontal growth patterns of suburban communities, and details how they threaten to bankrupt the remaining wealth of our nation. It explores how the depletion of fossil fuels will impact this living arrangement, and investigates the viability of alternative energies that are currently available. This film sounds the alarm that the cheap fossil-fuel-dependant suburban American way of life is not just at risk. It is in peril!.

After interviewing close to thirty experts on the subject, one reoccurring theme has revealed itself. We can no longer continue building our cities in the same way we have over the last half-century. The suburbs, while being an integral part of our nation’s maturation, contribute substantially to our problems of air and water pollution, increasing our health risks, and decreasing our quality of life. Suburbia has trapped Americans behind the wheels of their automobiles, as they commute further and further distances to find good paying jobs. Given the inevitable depletion of non-renewable fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas, it’s clear that this 50 year suburban experiment has created a host of unintended, unlivable consequences. Consequences we will have to find solutions for if we want a sustainable future in a post-fossil-fuel world.

This nation and its citizens have been lulled into a false sense of security. We are blissfully unaware of the impending ramifications of continuing the patterns of growth that have locked us behind the wheels of our cars. Like Nero, we are fiddling away, confident that tomorrow will be as promising as today. We don’t realize that with each new suburban subdivision, with each new strip-mall, each new corporate office park, that promise slips further and further away.

Wrestling with these emerging realities, state and city governments are finding that they can no longer encourage these patterns of growth by further investing in highway and utility infrastructures. They are now forced to find viable alternatives by investing in public transit in the form of BRT (Bus Rapid Transit), commuter rail, and light rail to serve their community’s transportation needs. Through this process they are gaining an historical understanding of the relationship between land use and transportation. They are rediscovering how well designed, walkable, mixed-use communities, that are served by transit can build and support local economies, aid in defining and creating communities, provide for diversity, improve accessibility, provide transit choices, reduce pollution, and improve health. These many benefits ensure a successful and sustainable solution to the problems associated with their growing populations. In our interview with former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, he quoted Albert Einstein saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and each time expecting a different result." He clarified this quote by adding, "Continuing to develop our cities in these ever increasing suburban sprawl patterns will increasingly diminish our quality of life, both physically and mentally. We simply have to stop building more highways!"

How we build our cities will determine the future of how we live our lives, how we form our values, and will determine what we leave for our next generation. It’s time we answer the wake up call.