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.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Beth Murphy talks about making "Beyond Belief"
In July 2000 I was teaching a journalism class at American University Paris and brought my students to Amnesty International for a conversation about genocide. As we were wrapping up, the Amnesty representative ushered us into a room and over to a large cardboard box with a bright blue fabric peeking out. Have you ever worn a burqa before? she asked. As I pulled the tent-like garment over my head and imagined being forced to wear it, I thought about what it would be like to be invisible to the world. That’s when I knew I wanted to produce a film about Afghanistan and help Afghan women to become visible again. The challenge was finding a way for the film to resonate with an American audience.
A year later, after the attacks of September 11th, the ability to draw the connection between Afghanistan and us seemed obvious. Three months later, I traveled to Afghanistan to film the growing humanitarian crisis and the aid workers who were struggling to respond to it. I was looking forward to seeing women shedding their burqas, liberated from the medieval laws of the Taliban. But when I arrived, all the women I encountered were still covered head-to-toe, allowed only a small mesh patch for their window to the world. When the documentary I was working on failed to sell, I vowed to return to this place that captured a piece of me with its beauty, isolation and sorrow.
What I could never have imagined then is that as I was filming in Afghanistan, there were two women living in my own backyard who were opening their eyes to the world in new and profound ways after losing their husbands on September 11th. Four years later I would return to Afghanistan with Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, whose loss gave them permission to shut out the world, but whose compassion forced them to have a leadership role in it.
It was important to me to tell their story because as the world has become increasingly divided by politics, ethnicity and religion, Susan and Patti affirm a common humanity that we all share. From the beginning, they recognize their Afghan counterparts as individuals—women they identify with and feel a connection to—rather than a monolithic, nameless, faceless group, as often happens during the world’s tragedies.
I was struck by Susan and Patti’s ability to recognize Afghanistan for all of its complexities. True, it is the country in which the terrorists trained to kill their husbands, but it is also a place that had been used as a pawn during the Cold War, only to then be abandoned by the international community – sparking a civil war that would last another decade. The effects were especially cruel for women. Banished from public life by the Taliban, they’ve suffered staggering declines in health. (Afghanistan is still one of the only countries in the world where women have a shorter life expectancy than men.) And when we arrived in Kabul in May 2006, the burqa still defined public life for most
women.
Susan and Patti’s mission is simple: to make life better for these women. And so is their message: hatred is the root of terrorism. They aren’t naïve enough—nor do they have enough hubris—to think they can stop terrorism in its tracks. But they do have enough optimism—and enough faith in humanity—to believe that the War on Terror cannot be fought with bombs and bullets alone.
A year later, after the attacks of September 11th, the ability to draw the connection between Afghanistan and us seemed obvious. Three months later, I traveled to Afghanistan to film the growing humanitarian crisis and the aid workers who were struggling to respond to it. I was looking forward to seeing women shedding their burqas, liberated from the medieval laws of the Taliban. But when I arrived, all the women I encountered were still covered head-to-toe, allowed only a small mesh patch for their window to the world. When the documentary I was working on failed to sell, I vowed to return to this place that captured a piece of me with its beauty, isolation and sorrow.
What I could never have imagined then is that as I was filming in Afghanistan, there were two women living in my own backyard who were opening their eyes to the world in new and profound ways after losing their husbands on September 11th. Four years later I would return to Afghanistan with Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, whose loss gave them permission to shut out the world, but whose compassion forced them to have a leadership role in it.
It was important to me to tell their story because as the world has become increasingly divided by politics, ethnicity and religion, Susan and Patti affirm a common humanity that we all share. From the beginning, they recognize their Afghan counterparts as individuals—women they identify with and feel a connection to—rather than a monolithic, nameless, faceless group, as often happens during the world’s tragedies.
I was struck by Susan and Patti’s ability to recognize Afghanistan for all of its complexities. True, it is the country in which the terrorists trained to kill their husbands, but it is also a place that had been used as a pawn during the Cold War, only to then be abandoned by the international community – sparking a civil war that would last another decade. The effects were especially cruel for women. Banished from public life by the Taliban, they’ve suffered staggering declines in health. (Afghanistan is still one of the only countries in the world where women have a shorter life expectancy than men.) And when we arrived in Kabul in May 2006, the burqa still defined public life for most
women.
Susan and Patti’s mission is simple: to make life better for these women. And so is their message: hatred is the root of terrorism. They aren’t naïve enough—nor do they have enough hubris—to think they can stop terrorism in its tracks. But they do have enough optimism—and enough faith in humanity—to believe that the War on Terror cannot be fought with bombs and bullets alone.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Geralyn Pezanoski talks about the experience of making "Mine"
Like millions across the country I was profoundly affected by the startling images I witnessed during coverage of Hurricane Katrina: people stranded on rooftops, suffering crowds at the Super Dome, and the decimation of one of America’s most culturally vibrant and diverse cities. And like millions of others I was devastated as well by images of the thousands of animals in distress – their helplessness bringing into even greater relief the chaos and overwhelming scope of the tragedy. So when I read about a nascent but quickly growing rescue effort being carried out by animal lovers from across the country and the world, I decided to go to New Orleans to document this incredible undertaking.
During the ensuing six weeks I filmed dozens of intrepid rescue workers, devoted animal rights advocates, and thousands of animals in need of saving - even after they were ‘rescued’. While a few residents trickled back into New Orleans and managed to reclaim their pets, most were displaced and barred from entering the city, so I watched day after day as these unclaimed animals were loaded onto trucks and planes and sent to shelters across the country, their fates uncertain. While the hope was that many of these animals would either be fostered until their owners claimed them, or adopted into new homes, the reality was that many of them would meet the same fate as millions of other animals around the country: being euthanized before the year’s end. It was this horrific thought that lead to my decision to foster (and eventually adopt) a Katrina dog, a pointer mix I called Nola. She was skin and bones when I met her, and she refused to leave my side for more than a couple of seconds. It didn’t take either of us long to bond.
As the months went on, my crew and I began to see an increasing number of residents returning to New Orleans to try to rebuild their lives. It became apparent that legions of them - people who had lost everything – were desperate to find their pets. We heard about hundreds of other cases across the county: people who were still displaced but on the hunt for their animals. But as broad and deep as the story went, there seemed to be strangely little information about it in mainstream media. I had many questions: Why hadn’t people been allowed to evacuate with their animals? Now that these animals were adopted into new homes, who had the authority to decide whether they should be left where they were or returned to their previous owners? Why were original owners running into such resistance in trying to find and reclaim their pets? What would I do if someone came looking for Nola, to whom I had become so attached?
I explored these questions and many more during the three years I spent making MINE. My primary focus was on a handful of extraordinary Katrina victims committed to finding their animals even years after the disaster, but the story extends to rescue workers and new adoptive guardians, who, like me, decided to take in pets left behind and care for them as their own. We met and interviewed hundreds of people over the years, and what emerged was a profound story of the bond between humans and animals, and the power of that bond to ameliorate human suffering. Equally striking, however, were stories both of the continuing prevalence of racism and classism in America, and the incredible power of compassion in the wake of tragedy. All of these stories become one in MINE.
I hope that MINE puts a human face on issues that may seem far removed from the lives of most Americans, but in fact affect us all - and that the film will promote much needed dialogue not just about how we treat our animals, but how we treat each other.
During the ensuing six weeks I filmed dozens of intrepid rescue workers, devoted animal rights advocates, and thousands of animals in need of saving - even after they were ‘rescued’. While a few residents trickled back into New Orleans and managed to reclaim their pets, most were displaced and barred from entering the city, so I watched day after day as these unclaimed animals were loaded onto trucks and planes and sent to shelters across the country, their fates uncertain. While the hope was that many of these animals would either be fostered until their owners claimed them, or adopted into new homes, the reality was that many of them would meet the same fate as millions of other animals around the country: being euthanized before the year’s end. It was this horrific thought that lead to my decision to foster (and eventually adopt) a Katrina dog, a pointer mix I called Nola. She was skin and bones when I met her, and she refused to leave my side for more than a couple of seconds. It didn’t take either of us long to bond.
As the months went on, my crew and I began to see an increasing number of residents returning to New Orleans to try to rebuild their lives. It became apparent that legions of them - people who had lost everything – were desperate to find their pets. We heard about hundreds of other cases across the county: people who were still displaced but on the hunt for their animals. But as broad and deep as the story went, there seemed to be strangely little information about it in mainstream media. I had many questions: Why hadn’t people been allowed to evacuate with their animals? Now that these animals were adopted into new homes, who had the authority to decide whether they should be left where they were or returned to their previous owners? Why were original owners running into such resistance in trying to find and reclaim their pets? What would I do if someone came looking for Nola, to whom I had become so attached?
I explored these questions and many more during the three years I spent making MINE. My primary focus was on a handful of extraordinary Katrina victims committed to finding their animals even years after the disaster, but the story extends to rescue workers and new adoptive guardians, who, like me, decided to take in pets left behind and care for them as their own. We met and interviewed hundreds of people over the years, and what emerged was a profound story of the bond between humans and animals, and the power of that bond to ameliorate human suffering. Equally striking, however, were stories both of the continuing prevalence of racism and classism in America, and the incredible power of compassion in the wake of tragedy. All of these stories become one in MINE.
I hope that MINE puts a human face on issues that may seem far removed from the lives of most Americans, but in fact affect us all - and that the film will promote much needed dialogue not just about how we treat our animals, but how we treat each other.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Johan Norberg, Author of "Financial Fiasco", on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The Mysterious Ways Of Fannie And Freddie
Johan Norberg, 01.15.10, 05:10 PM EST (re-printed from Forbes.com)
Why aren't any of the companies' agents at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission?
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has started its work with a highly publicized two-day hearing in Washington, D.C. The Commission is supposed to find out what caused the financial crisis, but it seems like they are trying to enact Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Among all the bankers and regulators on stage during the hearings, there was not a single representative of the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were major causes of the housing bubble.
The reason for the omission is disturbingly obvious. When Congress created the Commission they wanted a crisis narrative of greedy bankers and passive regulators. In other words, they wanted to put the blame somewhere else. Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ) are creatures of Congress and it was Congress that pushed them to undermine underwriting standards and increase lending to low-income households while stalling reform.
Fannie and Freddie regularly let members of Congress announce large housing developments for low-income earners in exchange for political and financial support; over the past decade the two GSEs spent almost $200 million on lobbying and contributions to both parties, but most of all to Democrats, the present majority. Politicians wanted scapegoats on stage--Fannie and Freddie representatives would have functioned as a mirror.
Fannie and Freddie had an implicit government guarantee that made it possible for them to borrow cheaper than other financial institutions, and with those thousands of billions of dollars they bought mortgages from primary lenders, so that these got their money back and could lend even more to other prospective homebuyers.
In 2004, almost at the peak of the bubble, the Bush administration increased the ambitious targets for GSE lending of the Clinton Administration. It said that within four years, 56% of Fannie's and Freddie's mortgages should go to low-income households and 28% of the mortgages to those with a "very-low income." In plain English this means households that could not afford that mortgage the moment the interest rate returned to a more realistic level. The only thing we ever heard from Congress were demands to increase lending even more aggressively.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pioneered securitization of mortgages, whereby they re-packaged loans and sold them to investors. Increased political pressure to serve low-income households meant that they soon began to buy mortgage-backed securities on an enormous scale themselves. After 2004 the market could make almost any kind of loans, knowing that the government-sponsored enterprises would buy them. About 40% of the loans were junk. "We didn't really know what we were buying," admits a former director at Fannie Mae.
Investment bankers have been publicly scolded by the Commission for taking on so much risk, with leverage ratios around 30 to 1. Shouldn't they ask how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up with a leverage ratio closer to 60 to 1?
As a result of their losses, Fannie and Freddie blew up in September 2008 and were in effect nationalized. The Treasury Department implemented $200 billion caps on government aid to each company, which have just been removed. The worst consequence of removing caps is not potential cost of hundreds of billions to taxpayer, but the effect on the rest of the market. The GSEs showed Wall Street that subprime lending was encouraged by the government; they made it profitable for lenders to make bad loans to sell them; and they pushed up house prices by opening up the market for owning homes to people who had previously rented.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission couldn't care less. Granted, government-sponsored enterprises are mentioned in the 21st of 22 areas of inquiry for the Commission, but even there it is an afterthought: "financial institutions" in general is the object of study in No 21. And, as previously mentioned, no representative from Fannie or Freddie was invited to the hearing.
Today, former executives at the two GSEs say that the firms made so many bad loans because Congress constantly leaned on them to buy more mortgages from low-income borrowers. It is no surprise that Congress does not want anyone to hear that message. But it makes a mockery of their pretention to examine all possible causes of the crisis in an even-handed and objective way.
A former GSE employee recently said, self-critically: "It didn't take a lot of sophistication to notice what was happening to the quality of the loans. Anybody could have seen it. But nobody on the outside was even questioning us about it."
Apparently the outside world still isn't.
Johan Norberg is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis.
Johan Norberg, 01.15.10, 05:10 PM EST (re-printed from Forbes.com)
Why aren't any of the companies' agents at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission?
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has started its work with a highly publicized two-day hearing in Washington, D.C. The Commission is supposed to find out what caused the financial crisis, but it seems like they are trying to enact Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. Among all the bankers and regulators on stage during the hearings, there was not a single representative of the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were major causes of the housing bubble.
The reason for the omission is disturbingly obvious. When Congress created the Commission they wanted a crisis narrative of greedy bankers and passive regulators. In other words, they wanted to put the blame somewhere else. Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ) are creatures of Congress and it was Congress that pushed them to undermine underwriting standards and increase lending to low-income households while stalling reform.
Fannie and Freddie regularly let members of Congress announce large housing developments for low-income earners in exchange for political and financial support; over the past decade the two GSEs spent almost $200 million on lobbying and contributions to both parties, but most of all to Democrats, the present majority. Politicians wanted scapegoats on stage--Fannie and Freddie representatives would have functioned as a mirror.
Fannie and Freddie had an implicit government guarantee that made it possible for them to borrow cheaper than other financial institutions, and with those thousands of billions of dollars they bought mortgages from primary lenders, so that these got their money back and could lend even more to other prospective homebuyers.
In 2004, almost at the peak of the bubble, the Bush administration increased the ambitious targets for GSE lending of the Clinton Administration. It said that within four years, 56% of Fannie's and Freddie's mortgages should go to low-income households and 28% of the mortgages to those with a "very-low income." In plain English this means households that could not afford that mortgage the moment the interest rate returned to a more realistic level. The only thing we ever heard from Congress were demands to increase lending even more aggressively.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pioneered securitization of mortgages, whereby they re-packaged loans and sold them to investors. Increased political pressure to serve low-income households meant that they soon began to buy mortgage-backed securities on an enormous scale themselves. After 2004 the market could make almost any kind of loans, knowing that the government-sponsored enterprises would buy them. About 40% of the loans were junk. "We didn't really know what we were buying," admits a former director at Fannie Mae.
Investment bankers have been publicly scolded by the Commission for taking on so much risk, with leverage ratios around 30 to 1. Shouldn't they ask how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up with a leverage ratio closer to 60 to 1?
As a result of their losses, Fannie and Freddie blew up in September 2008 and were in effect nationalized. The Treasury Department implemented $200 billion caps on government aid to each company, which have just been removed. The worst consequence of removing caps is not potential cost of hundreds of billions to taxpayer, but the effect on the rest of the market. The GSEs showed Wall Street that subprime lending was encouraged by the government; they made it profitable for lenders to make bad loans to sell them; and they pushed up house prices by opening up the market for owning homes to people who had previously rented.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission couldn't care less. Granted, government-sponsored enterprises are mentioned in the 21st of 22 areas of inquiry for the Commission, but even there it is an afterthought: "financial institutions" in general is the object of study in No 21. And, as previously mentioned, no representative from Fannie or Freddie was invited to the hearing.
Today, former executives at the two GSEs say that the firms made so many bad loans because Congress constantly leaned on them to buy more mortgages from low-income borrowers. It is no surprise that Congress does not want anyone to hear that message. But it makes a mockery of their pretention to examine all possible causes of the crisis in an even-handed and objective way.
A former GSE employee recently said, self-critically: "It didn't take a lot of sophistication to notice what was happening to the quality of the loans. Anybody could have seen it. But nobody on the outside was even questioning us about it."
Apparently the outside world still isn't.
Johan Norberg is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis.
Friday, September 17, 2010
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)
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
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.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Director Paul Lynch comments on the making of his film "Birth of a Movement"
On January 28th 1969, just off the coast of Santa Barbara, oil burst out of the ocean like a black artesian well. The fallout and mishap were disheartening to say the least as residents gathered on the beaches to witness the oil slick coming to shore; there was nothing to stop it.
The Birth of a Movement is a documentary film investigating the 1969 oil blow out in Santa Barbara, which is considered by many to be the birth of the “modern environmental movement.” The activism inspired by this disaster quickly spread across the country and spawned landmark legislation, the first Earth Day, and the Environmental Studies program at UCSB.
The film aims to educate viewers about this important piece of history and motivate present and future generations alike to become good environmental stewards. Yet, this goal is unachievable without drawing connections between oil-development and the global financial crisis, climate change, and social injustice. Here we look 40 years back so as to look 40 years forward.
One of the greatest challenges of the 21st Century is how to deal with the dual-threat of global climate change and the inequities created by a capitalist dominated economy. We believe the solution is in merging the movements. Increased consumption, peak oil, polar caps melting, wars, pollution, and inequality reveal only one side of the story. The other side is the rise of grassroots movements redefining environmentalism in the 21st Century; it is The Birth of a Movement.
Board of Advisors
Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club
Marc McGinnes, J.D., Senior Lecturer Emeritus Environmental Studies, UCSB
Prof. Richard Appelbaum, Director MA Global & International Studies, UCSB
Paul Relis, Founding Director CEC, Executive Vice President for CR&R, Inc.
Monique Sonoquie, Founder, Indigenous Youth Foundation
Charlie Eckberg, Environmental Consultant & SB Environmental Leader
The Birth of a Movement is a documentary film investigating the 1969 oil blow out in Santa Barbara, which is considered by many to be the birth of the “modern environmental movement.” The activism inspired by this disaster quickly spread across the country and spawned landmark legislation, the first Earth Day, and the Environmental Studies program at UCSB.
The film aims to educate viewers about this important piece of history and motivate present and future generations alike to become good environmental stewards. Yet, this goal is unachievable without drawing connections between oil-development and the global financial crisis, climate change, and social injustice. Here we look 40 years back so as to look 40 years forward.
One of the greatest challenges of the 21st Century is how to deal with the dual-threat of global climate change and the inequities created by a capitalist dominated economy. We believe the solution is in merging the movements. Increased consumption, peak oil, polar caps melting, wars, pollution, and inequality reveal only one side of the story. The other side is the rise of grassroots movements redefining environmentalism in the 21st Century; it is The Birth of a Movement.
Board of Advisors
Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club
Marc McGinnes, J.D., Senior Lecturer Emeritus Environmental Studies, UCSB
Prof. Richard Appelbaum, Director MA Global & International Studies, UCSB
Paul Relis, Founding Director CEC, Executive Vice President for CR&R, Inc.
Monique Sonoquie, Founder, Indigenous Youth Foundation
Charlie Eckberg, Environmental Consultant & SB Environmental Leader
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