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Environmental Film Series
Sunday, October 19 - Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - Free and Open to the Public
All films 7:00pm (unless otherwise noted)
The Artery [Website]
5401 Jackson at Prospect, Houston, Texas 77004
Sunday, October 19
The Water Front
The story of Highland Park, Michigan, and the larger issues of water privatization and human rights.
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Tuesday, October 21
Everything's Cool
Examines the media strategies, on both sides, that have resulted in the US government's failure to take decisive action on global warming.
LEARN MORE
Sunday, October 26
Black Diamonds
Mountaintop Removal & The Fight For Coalfield Justice
Examines the escalating drama in Appalachia over mountaintop removal mining.
LEARN MORE
With Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, 8:20pm
Tuesday, October 28
King Corn
By growing an acre of corn in Iowa two friends uncover the devastating impact that corn is having on the environment, public health and family farms.
LEARN MORE
Sunday, October 19
The Water Front
The story of Highland Park, Michigan, and the larger issues of water privatization and human rights.
53 minutes
US Release Date: 2008
Directed by Liz Miller
What if you lived by the largest body of fresh water in the world but could no longer afford to use it?
With a shrinking population, the post-industrial city of Highland Park, Michigan is on the verge of financial collapse. The state of Michigan has appointed an Emergency Financial Manager who sees the water plant as key to economic recovery. She has raised water rates and has implemented severe measures to collect on bills. As a result, Highland Park residents have received water bills as high as $10,000, they have had their water turned off, their homes foreclosed, and are struggling to keep water, a basic human right, from becoming privatized.
The Water Front is the story of an American city in crisis but it is not just about water. The story touches on the very essence of our democratic system and is an unnerving indication of what is in store for residents around the world facing their own water struggles. The film raises questions such as: Who determines the future of shared public resources? What are alternatives to water privatization? How will we maintain our public water systems and who can we hold accountable?
Awards:
Best of the Festival, Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival
Katherine Knight Award, EarthVision Environmental Film Festival
Best Water & Wetlands Film (Ramsar/Medwet Award), Ecofilms Rodos International Film and Visual Arts Festival
Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival
Human Rights Film Festival, Paris
Environmental Film Festival of Catalonia, Barcelona
more
Reviews:
"Water is not only an issue affecting poor countries. Everywhere in the world, people are facing a diversity of difficulties in accessing water. And the characters Liz Miller chose to portray in her film are particularly strong, in their interesting way of facing up the situation, reacting, gathering, getting involved and fighting together. Covering all water issues, from pricing to privatization and--above all--the human right to water, this film sends a strong message on the way public participation and action can overcome problems." Melanie Giard, Communication Officer, World Water Council and Kostas Vassilakis, Official Secretary, Special Permanent Environment Protection Committee, Greek Parliament
"Undoubtedly water will be one of the key issues to be fought over in the 21st century -whether you live in Highland Park, Michigan or Soweto, South Africa. To date people in Highland Park struggle to pay their highly inflated water bills in order to stay in their homes and keep their families together. The Water Front is an amazing movie that chronicles the institutional abuses of citizens in a city where fresh water resources are abundant. The threat of privatization and the commoditization of water strike a devastating blow to the working class and those least able to eke out a living. This movie should be viewed by everyone concerned about the survival of our communities and the just and equitable distribution of water resources." Bunyan Bryant, Ph.D., Director of the Environmental Justice Initiative, University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment
"The Water Front depicts the result when cities with single industries lose both jobs and tax base. With insufficient capital, but an intact infrastructure, Highland Park, Michigan attempts to revitalize its coffers by using city water as a marketable commodity. The film examines the controversy between city officials and residents, who perceive city services from opposite points of view, respectively, as a source of funds, and as a right. This film will generate much discussion on the nature of political participation, the interlinking roles of local and state government, and the function of publicly owned utilities." Kate Foss-Mollan, PhD, Dept of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Author, Hard Water: Politics and Water Supply in Milwaukee
"Arguments are rarely black and white, and Liz Miller skillfully interviews everyone involved. We are able to walk through Highland Park, go into people's homes, and visit government offices. Miller weaves images of water, hooking you with its beauty and vital necessity. She makes you weep for these people. With the world in crisis, particularly the current economic and environmental mess, this is a must see film. At fifty-three minutes, educators should use this film in the classroom to show how a real democracy can and should function. We can fight the system, we just need to learn how to do it!" Feminist Review
Tuesday, October 21
Everything's Cool
Examines the media strategies, on both sides, that have resulted in the US government's failure to take decisive action on global warming.
89 minutes
US Release Date: 2007
Directed by Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand
EVERYTHING'S COOL is a "toxic comedy" about the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action - Global Warming. The good news: America finally gets global warming; the chasm is closing and the debate is over. The bad news: the United States, the country that will determine the fate of the globe, must transform its fossil fuel based economy fast, (like in a minute).
While the industry funded naysayers sing what just might be their swan song of scientific doubt and deception, a group of self-appointed global warming messengers are on a life or death quest to find the iconic image, proper language, and points of leverage that will help the public go from understanding the urgency of the problem to creating the political will necessary to push for a new energy economy. Hold on -- this is bigger than changing your light bulbs.
EVERYTHING'S COOL features a renowned cast of scientists, journalists and actiivists including Step It Up's Bill McKibben, Pulitzer Prize winner Ross Gelbspan, The Weather Channel's Dr. Heidi Cullen, the "bad boys of environmentalism" Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, and White House whistleblower Rick Piltz.
From the producers of the environmental cult classic Blue Vinyl.
Awards:
Sundance Film Festival
South by Southwest Film Festival
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Hot Docs, Canadian International Documentary Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival
Best of the Fest List, Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival
Audience Award for Best Documentary, Eckerd College Environmental Film Festival
more
Reviews:
"Everything's Cool can be downright euphoric in its sense of ordinary people doing their part for the planet." Robert Fuentes, Variety
"Everything's Cool tells the story of why the American people don't take the problem of climate change as seriously as they might. It lays out the deliberate obfuscation by those who profit from the status quo and the accidental obfuscation by scientists and the environmental movement who failed to speak the language of regular people. It is a story that should serve as a lesson to those of us who want to communicate the urgency of climate change in such a way that we ignite people's passions to make the dramatic changes necessary. It is a story Americans should see." Cindy L. Parker MD, MPH, Co-Director, Program on Global Sustainability and Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
"With wit and passion, Gold and Helfand marshal a plethora of data and developments yet never lose their narrative thread... Everything's Cool is chock full of pithy observations." Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
"The doc is notable for continuing where An Inconvenient Truth left off, delving into the political censorship that has kept global warming a non-issue in the United States for so long, and doing so through a uniquely character-driven method that shows how foot soldiers like Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ross Gelbspan and Weather Channel climate expert Heidi Cullen continue to fight the good fight against ghouls whose hands are in the pockets of the country's gas and oil companies." Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
"There are no CO2 graphs in Everything's Cool. Instead, the film tells the fascinating story of the message itself... All of this alone makes for compelling documentary. But what really makes this film significant is its unique perspective on the surprising shift in public perception that has transformed global warming from a fringe issue to a mainstream concern in just the last two years... The result is a remarkable time capsule." The Austin Chronicle
"A breezy polemic about the politics of global warming." Stephen Holden, The New York Times
"If An Inconvenient Truth can be considered one bookend, then Everything's Cool can definitely stand as the other. This is an important documentary, and, in many ways, a profile in courage." Ashland Daily Tidings
Sunday, October 26
Black Diamonds
Mountaintop Removal & The Fight For Coalfield Justice
Examines the escalating drama in Appalachia over mountaintop removal mining.
[With Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, 8:20pm]
72 minutes
US Release Date: 2006
Directed by Catherine Pancake
BLACK DIAMONDS charts the escalating drama in Appalachia over the alarming increase in large mountaintop coal mines. These mammoth operations have covered 1200 miles of headwater streams with mining waste; demolished thousands of acres of hardwood forest; and flattened hundreds of Appalachian mountain peaks.
Citizen testimony and visual documentation interwoven with the perspectives of government officials, activists, and scientists create a riveting portrait of an American region fighting for its life--caught between the grinding wheels of the national appetite for cheap energy and an enduring sense of Appalachian culture, pride, and natural beauty.
The film includes testimony from Julia Bonds, WV citizen-turned-activist, who received the 2003 Goldman Award (the nation's largest environmental activist award); Ken Hechler, former WV Secretary of State; William Maxey, former Director of WV Division of Forestry; and the many citizens of West Virginia.
Awards:
Editor's Choice, Video Librarian
Silver Chris Award, Columbus International Film & Video Festival
Best Documentary, Southern Appalachian International Film Festival
Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media Award
Jack Spadaro Award, Appalachian Studies Conference
more
Reviews:
"A searing...documentary...mixes history, sociology, advocacy journalism, and personal portraits vividly depicting the catastrophic ecological and cultural effects wrought by mountaintop removal." Michael Yockel, Baltimore Magazine
"A riveting and ultimately energizing documentary...plays like a modern-day "Civil Action," only this time the corporate baddies are the leaders and mouthpieces of the coal industry, and the grass-roots crusaders are poor Appalachian residents who are rich in courage and culture. In a scant hour-plus, "Black Diamonds" provides a thumbnail economic and political history of coal mining in the state, a textured portrait of Appalachian life and a convincing case for ending the environmental scourge of decapitating mountains to get to the coal buried inside them." Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
"BLACK DIAMONDS A MASTERPIECE... The Pancake sisters of West Virginia have created the best film to date on the subject of mountaintop removal mining... Presents the first complete overview of the subject... Black Diamonds is an epic film about the monumental collision between the demand for cheap energy and the century-long victims of this demand, the people, the land, the living Appalachian forests, the innocent animals and the very water and air they breathe." Steve Fesenmaier, Graffiti
"The film offers a broad view of the history of mountaintop removal mining, detailing the protests, pleas, lawsuits and lobbying being done by local community groups determined to end this horrible mining practice...Pancake interviews activists, politicians, and coal company officials, painting a complete picture of the fight for coal and the demands for justice. As mountains, streams, and an entire culture in Appalachia are sacrificed to extract more coal, Black Diamonds takes an unadulterated view of the real cost of our energy demands." In Brief, Earthjustice
"Mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia is uprooting not only nature, but people too. Black Diamonds documents the struggles of West Virginia mining towns whose intimate relationship with coal is scraping away their communities. Filmmaker Catherine Pancake interviews residents seeking permanence as eerily close blasts send clouds of particulates over their homes. Impassioned local activists, she reveals, are no match for the coal industry and its allies in the current administration... [Black Diamonds] brings visibility to a group of people whose lives have been marred by the insatiable lust for fuel." Utne Reader
Tuesday, October 28
King Corn
By growing an acre of corn in Iowa two friends uncover the devastating impact that corn is having on the environment, public health and family farms.
90 minutes
US Release Date: 2007
Directed by Aaron Woolf
KING CORN is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.
In KING CORN, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat - and how we farm.
Features Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Earl Butz, former US Secretary of Agriculture.
Awards:
National PBS Broadcast on "Independent Lens"
First Place, North American Assn for Environmental Education/Albert I Pierce Foundation Film & Video Festival
Best Documentary, BendFilm Festival
Hot Docs, Canadian International Documentary Film Festival
South by Southwest Film Festival
True/False Documentary Film Festival
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
more
Reviews:
"If we are what we eat, we are corn--the modern staff of life. In a gentle but extraordinarily subversive narrative, King Corn skillfully takes us through the industrial food chain, from field to plate. All actors in this story receive compassionate treatment--from Iowa farmers and Colorado cattlemen to diabetic New Yorkers and an engaging Earl Butz, the former USDA Secretary who advocated maximum production, damn the consequences. There are no 'bad guys' here. And yet, the net result is a devastating sketch of a food production system that is economically, ecologically, and medically unsustainable. How did we ever get into such a fix?" -Warren Belasco, Professor of American Studies, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Author, Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food
"King Corn not only describes the debilitating industrialized agriculture system in which farmers are caught, it also reveals a food system that is not serving us citizen-eaters well. The 'cheap food' provided by our industrialized food system may turn out to be very expensive when all of the costs are considered. This film will encourage many citizens and organizations to become engaged in the food debate that has already begun in many sectors of our society and to join with others who are already part of that debate, to change the policies which, as the film points out, helped to create this food system in the first place. Everyone should see this film."
-Frederick Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and President of Kirschenmann Family Farms
"The molecules in most Americans' bodies come more from corn than from any other source; at the same time that it has made us fat, corn monoculture has impoverished the American landscape more than any other organism. And yet, until the filming of King Corn, few Americans had a means to understand why their addiction to high-fructose corn sweeteners is the greatest threat to their health and to the health of rural communities and their landscapes. This film should be seen by every farmer, consumer and student who still believes that America has been made beautiful by our 'amber waves of grain.'"
-Gary Nabhan, Author, Coming Home to Eat, Founder, Renewing America's Food Traditions initiative
"No doubt inspired to some degree by Super Size Me this equally engaging, slightly better-crafted docu deftly balances humor and insight... arresting factoids are delivered by helmer Aaron Woolf and collaborators in a package that's as agreeable as it is informative. Subjects' low-key antics, their affectionate regard for the small-town milieu, some delightful stop-motion animation and an excellent rootsy soundtrack by the WoWz all make King Corn go down easy, even if you might regard your burger, fries and Coke with suspicion afterward. Handsome lensing and Jeffrey K. Miller's sharp editing are also worthy of note."
-Dennis Harvey, Variety
"The press materials for King Corn trumpet it as a cross between Sicko and Super Size Me, but the film's protagonists, Mr. Ellis and his college friend, Ian Cheney, come off as genial searchers rather than driven interrogators...In the film, Mr. Butz is treated as respectfully as Iowa's plain-spoken farmers, and the golden fields of corn are shot to evoke their majesty. If the filmmakers are going to point any fingers, they say, they will start with themselves."
-Joe Drape, The New York Times
"King Corn is as relevant as Super Size Me and as important as An Inconvenient Truth in the recent rash of documentaries that challenge our perceptions of daily life in America."
-The Austin Chronicle
"An enormously entertaining moral, socio-economic odyssey (and statistical bonanza) through the American food industry. Ellis, Cheney, and Aaron Woolf's documentary is clear-minded and fair, but just damningly descriptive enough to leave you distrustful of everything on your plate."
-William Morris, The Boston Globe
"Gorgeously filmed in digital video and Super-8, using clever stop-motion corn kernel animation and a lyrical score by the "anti-folk" band the WoWz, King Corn takes what could be a tiresome agri-civics lesson and delivers a lively, funny, sad and even poetic treatise on the reality behind America's cherished self-image as the breadbasket of the world...It should be required viewing before going into a supermarket, McDonald's or your very own refrigerator."
-Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
"Where this documentary distinguishes itself, however, is in the unusual amount of warmth it lets into the mix. Cheney and Ellis are both funny and completely unthreatening, which does not mean toothless. Like his stars, Woolf treats both friend and foe (including farm-subsidies inventor Earl Butz) with respect, refraining from sarcasm, superiority, or ambush. King Corn insists that we recognize the Corn Belt's beauty and intelligence along with its somewhat self-induced plight."
-Janice Page, The Boston Globe
"A deceptively intelligent new entry in the regular-Joe documentary genre... a graceful and frequently humorous film that captures the idiosyncrasies of its characters and never hectors."
-Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com
"This is a twofold journey: the story of how two college buddies learned about their agricultural heritage, and the tale of how kernels of corn have insidiously worked their way into America's diet-through the cows who are literally overdosing on the stuff...and the soft drinks sweetened with a syrup that the men find impossible to manufacture in a kitchen without damned near blowing up the house. A worthy companion piece to Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation... King Corn will put you off corn for a long, long time, but this is as much a thoughtful meditation on the plight of the American farmer as it is a rant against our expanding waistlines."
-Robert Wilonsky, Village Voice
"A funny, charming and informative film that sees corn as the nexus of diet, politics, cultural tradition and what used to be called the American way of life...There are interviews, imaginative graphics and, everywhere, a sense of fun and learning...the film always teaches and entertains in equal, ample measure. It's a treat -- and it's good for you."
-Shawn Levy, The Oregonian
"King Corn makes its points without much finger-wagging...It will, however, get you thinking about all that corn, and why such a low-nutrition, high-subsidy crop has become so ubiquitous in the American diet."
-Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
"Simultaneously nostalgic and sinister, King Corn mixes full-blown Americana with fast-food follies in the Iowa heartland. By the time this documentary is over, you'll wonder if there's any real difference between "corn-fed" and "diabetic.""
-John Hartl, Seattle Times
Presented with support of KPFT, The Artery and the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.
The Environmental Film Series is available for future screenings. Please contact info@houstonculture.org.
PAST FILMS
Kamp Katrina and Intimidad, River Oaks Theatre (September 2008)
The World Matters Film Festival (April 1 - 10, 2008)
China Blue, Cullen Performance Hall (November 2007)
Argentina - Hope in Hard Times (June 2007)
The Community Solution: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, Havens Center
Independent Intervention, Havens Center
Radically Simple, Havens Center
Spring 2007 at Havens Center
Fall 2006 at Havens Center
World Cultures, University of St. Thomas
Baker Institute, Rice University
Bauer College of Business, University of Houston
Argentina - Hope in Hard Times (Feb. 2006)
Altar for Emma Tenayuca Film Series
Argentina - Hope in Hard Times (Feb. 2005)
More Past Films
Houston Institute for Culture promotes cultural knowledge and experience in communities, and innovative approaches to social change through education about cultural influences - history, media, religion, environment, and economics. The organization improves cultural literacy and cross-cultural participation through free and low-cost events featuring traditional arts, creative expression and modern media. It inspires social innovation through forums, community dialog and meaningful social interaction to increase community involvement and circulate the best, most effective ideas to achieve higher quality of life standards.
HOUSTON INSTITUTE FOR CULTURE DONATE SEARCH info@houstonculture.org