films - The Environment Report

A Look Into Coal Country

The filmmakers want more Americans to understand that when we flick on a light switch – it is not a meaningless act. It takes electricity. And that takes coal. (Photo courtesy of Coal Country)

When the Senate picks up debate
on the climate change bill, it
will be – in part – deciding the
future of coal as an energy source
in the U.S. About half the nation’s
electricity currently comes from
coal. And a lot of it comes from
the Appalachian region. A new
documentary film sets out to show
how mining for coal affects the people
who live in Coal Country. Julie Grant
spoke with the film’s producers:

Transcript

Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller set out to make the movie Coal Country
because they wanted to show how different people are affected by coal
mining.

They found lots of activists, and regular citizens, who would talk with
them. Plenty of people were willing to show the thick black water in their
toilet tanks. They wanted to show the black soot covering their cars.
They wanted to talk about the health problems they live with. And they all
blamed the coal industry.

Evans also wrote to coal supporters – to get their side of the story on
camera. The answer?

“No. That was their response. I sent out requests to the coal industry,
to coal companies and to suppliers of the coal industry.”

Evans brother is a coal miner. He supports mountain top removal.

(sound of explosions)

As we see in the movie, that’s when coal companies blow off the entire
top of a mountain to get to the coal. Many people consider it the most
polluting and environmentally devastating type of mining.

But Evans says not even her own brother would do an interview about it.

“And when I said, ‘why won’t you talk on camera? You feel so
passionately that coal is wonderful and mountaintop removal is actually for
the environment as well as the economy.’ And his response to me always
was, ‘oh I would never speak on camera without getting permission from
the company I work for.’”

The filmmakers heard that a lot. And no coal miners ever did get
permission to talk on camera.

In the movie, we do hear from Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy. He
spoke at a public hearing about the need to ease environmental restrictions
on coal mining.

“We had nearly 800 employees up ‘til Friday. We had to lay 8 off. I
think that might be just the tip of the iceberg if we don’t our rules
changed how we mine in the state.”

Anti-coal activists at the public hearing explain how the coal companies
use that kind of intimidation to control miners.

“I think people are scared that they will lose their jobs and be flipping
burgers. You look out and that’s all you see. You see mining and
flipping burgers. And, I argue, that the coal companies want it that way.
They want that to be the only option. That’s the only way they could get
support for how they treat their workers and how they treat this land.
This would never happen in a place that wasn’t poor. Never.”

In the movie, some coal miners stand up at the public meeting to defend the
companies they work for. One explains the coal industry has provided him a
good salary.

Miner One: “For the last 14 years, the coal industry has supported myself
and my wife and my 3 children.”

Miner Two: “When the last one of you so-called environmentalists leave
the state, when the rest of us leave for North Carolina, turn out the
lights. Oh, wait a minute, there won’t be no lights. No coal, no
lights.”

(music)

The filmmakers want more Americans to understand that when we flick on a
light switch – it is not a meaningless act. It takes electricity. And
that takes coal.

And, as anti-coal activist Judy Bonds says in the movie, coal is tearing
apart West Virginia.

“It is a civil war; it’s families against families. It’s brother
against brother.”

Or – in the case of filmmaker Mari Lynn-Evans – brother against
sister.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Food, Inc. Exposes Industry’s Secrets

With Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner aims to educate Americans about the realities of the food industry (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

A new film documentary that’s hitting theaters now looks at the underbelly of the food industry. We’ve all heard about food recalls because of E.coli bacteria contamination. There was peanut butter, hamburger, spinach – and the list goes on. Lester Graham reports the documentary, Food Inc., looks at why food gets contaminated and reveals a lot more about our industrial approach to producing food:

Transcript

This documentary is disturbing. It shows some of the things that happen to our food behind the scenes.

“There is this deliberate veil, this curtain, that’s dropped between us and where are food is coming from. The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you’re eating, because if you knew, you might not want to eat it.”

The film, Food Inc., looks at how raising animals and growing crops have been industrialized from the farm to the grocery store.

Food processors have relied more and more on technological and chemical fixes to food contamination problems and storage issues instead of questioning whether the assembly line factory, mass production approach is the best way of handling food.

It looks at how companies such as Monsanto are treating farmers who want to save their seeds to replant next year – hint — involves lawyers and lawsuits.

It looks at how companies fight against labeling that would give consumers more information on packages. They say more information might unnecessarily scare their customers.

And it uses video from hidden cameras to show how animals are treated at big factory slaughterhouses.

Robert Kenner is the film’s producer/director. He thinks most people won’t like what they see.

But, he also says things can change. If people think about it, they actually vote with their forks three times a day.

“On some level, I think it’s going to be lead by moms who don’t want their children to be eating this food that’s making them sick.”

Kenner says these massive food recalls we’ve seen over the last several years are bad enough, but there’s a greater threat to our health.

“Obviously E.coli and things like that are very frightening, but ultimately it’s the everyday stuff that we don’t see – such as the sugar, salt and fat – that are making us fat. And that’s what I think needs to be changed most. That we get food that’s healthy and that we don’t subsidize food that’s making us sick.”

Food Inc. interviews farmers and food processors and some food industry critics, including author Michael Pollan.

He says those foods subsidized by the government are the kinds of ingredients that are causing some of the leading health problems, such as early onset of diabetes and heart disease.

“All those snackfood calories are the ones that come from the commodity crops – from the wheat, from the corn, and from the soybeans. By making those calories really cheap, that’s one of the reasons the biggest predictor of obesity is income level.”

Pollan says it’s wrong when it’s cheaper to buy a cheeseburger than it is to buy broccoli.

The director and producer of Food Inc., Robert Kenner says he knows the film spends a lot of time looking at the dark side.

But he also gives some of the progressive food processors and even Wal Mart credit. He says they’re doing something about meeting the consumer demand for better, safer and more healthy foods.

“There are lots of great options out there and they are growing options.”

Such as farmers markets, grocery stores letting you know if food is grown locally, and a growing selection of organic foods.

Kenner says he hopes his film, Food Inc., not only outlines the problems with how our food is handled, but gets people to start asking questions about the choices they make when it’s time to eat.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Eco-Films Debut on Festival Circuit

Environmentally-themed movies are hitting the festival circuit hard (Source: Sailko at Wikimedia Commons)

If you think Al Gore’s movie, ‘An
Inconvenient Truth,’ is one of the only
environmental films out there, think again.
There are so many movies about the environment
that entire festivals have been created to
showcase them. Jennifer Guerra has more:

Transcript

Science films have come a long way from this.

(sound of old science film)

Now, they’ve got flashy trailers, famous narrators and edgy music. There are hundreds of
these environmentally-themed movies and they’re hitting the festival circuit hard. Korea,
Italy, Israel, DC, Colorado, Michigan.

Susan Woods got to choose which movies to include in Michigan’s first ever Green on
the Big Screen film festival.

“It was quite daunting in the beginning, to tell you the truth, when I started looking
up all these films. I thought oh my goodness, how can I select them. There’s too
many to select.”

She eventually settled on about 30 films, including King Corn. Curt Ellis produced the
documentary, which is all about – yup, you guess it – corn and our dependence on it for
almost everything we eat.

(sound from movie)

“When you’re telling a story about the natural world, you really have to be able to
transport people to the place you’re talking about.”

And Ellis thinks the best way to do that – short of lecturing people in a cornfield in the
middle of Iowa – is to show them a film.

“The reason we make documentaries – Lord knows it’s not for the profit – the
reason we make film is because we believe film can make a difference.”

“My opinion of media effects in terms of film actually producing social action is
pretty limited.”

That’s Daniel Herbert. He teaches film at the University of Michigan. You could say he’s
got a healthy amount of skepticism when it comes to films’ impact on environmental
change.

“Unless you have policies in your city government without recycling, what does it
matter if you’ve watched An Inconvenient Truth? If Al Gore’s telling you to buy
$30 light bulbs and you make 9 bucks at Starbucks, what’s it matter?”

Plus he says you run the risk of having audiences think that just because they watched the
film they’ve somehow participated in solving the problem.

That said, if he had to choose between showing an environmental film at a festival, a
commercial movie theater or on TV? Herbert says he’d pick the festival. Sure, there’s
probably a greater audience to be had with television, and it’s a little more convenient to
just Netflix the film and watch it from home, but you lose something that way.

Susan Woods – she’s from the Michigan film festival – she says a festival can provide a
whole different experience.

“The difference is that these people are sitting home in a dark room as opposed to
being with a group of people who have the same mind set. And I think that’s the big
difference.”

And, she says, at a festival, if you feel inspired by one of the films, you can go up to a
director afterward and ask questions, or talk with a climate change expert about solutions
or sign up with a local environmental group.

Something you definitely wouldn’t be able to do sitting at home alone in the dark with
your TV.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Imax Movie Highlights Great Lakes

"Mysteries of the Great Lakes" is an IMAX film highlighting the threats to Great Lakes wildlife (Photo by Lester Graham)

There’s a new IMAX film about the threats to wildlife around the Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach has more:

Transcript

There’s a new IMAX film about the threats to wildlife around the Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach has more:

The film “Mysteries of the Great Lakes” highlights some less commonly known stories, like that of the massive fish known as the lake sturgeon. Biologists are trying to bring the threatened fish back to healthy numbers.

Ron Bruch is a key figure in the new movie. Here, he discusses a 120 year old female sturgeon he’s seen numerous times on spawning runs.

“I’ve gone through this ritual eight times with this fish, and each time I wonder if it’ll be the last. But she’s a survivor and maybe 50 years from now, she’ll come up this river looking for me, and I’ll be gone.”

The film also looks at possible health risks to bald eagles, and what invasive species are doing to native wildlife.

“Mysteries of the Great Lakes” has started its run in several U.S. and Canadian cities.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Moviemaker Lampoons Sprawl

Characters in the upcoming film Barn Red. Ernest Borgnine plays a farmer, who's struggling to keep his 240-acre fruit farm in the face of development pressures.

People worried about land-use issues usually don’t laugh about them. But a Michigan filmmaker has made a romantic comedy about development pressures on America’s farmland. Director Rich Brauer hopes the humor of his movie “Barn Red” will make the issue more accessible for the general public. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

People worried about land-use issues usually don’t laugh about them. But a
Michigan filmmaker has made a romantic comedy about development pressures
on America’s farmland. Director Rich Brauer hopes the humor of his movie
“Barn Red” will make the issue more accessible for the general public. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:

You might call Micheal Bollini puzzled at the beginning of the movie, “Barn
Red.”

The old fruit farmer played by actor Ernest Borgnine is a picture of rugged self-
reliance. But he’s bewildered by the pressure he’s under to get out of farming.

“Did you ever get that feeling that you’re going too fast and you pass a police car
and he’s got his radar at you. That’s how I feel when they talk about selling the
farm and everything. It gives me butterflies in my stomach. Terrible.”

Bollini can’t comprehend developer Paul Haight, played by actor Wayne David
Parker. In their first meeting, Haight tells Bollini he figures Bollini has to sell his
farm. Haight wants to build a subdivision there called Oak Wind. In a
conversation with his assistant, Haight calls Bollini’s 240- acre family farm a
bonanza.

HAIGHT: “So you go in here, drive up this way, turn here and your home.”

ASSISTANT: “Oak Winds is a good name. Bollini has a ton of oaks up there.”

HAIGHT: “Actually we’ll cut those down and plant this… it’s a
juniperous…something. They grow faster and there’s no leaves, no messy yards,
no leaves to clean up. So they’re perfect, no lousy squirrels.”

He goes onto say they’ll plant purple loosestrife for ground cover in Oak Wind.
Purple loosestrife is an invasive species that chokes out other the naturally
occurring plants.

Haight can’t figure out why loosestrife is so cheap.

A lot of the humor in “Barn Red” lampoons characters with their own lack of
understanding.

Bollini, the farmer, doesn’t open letters from the IRS that say he owes hundreds
of thousand of dollars in estate taxes.

Haight, The developer, gets poison ivy while trespassing on Bollini’s property.

In this scene a woman notices him scratching himself.

WOMAN: “Look’s like a pretty nasty rash you got there.”

HAIGHT: “I don’t know what the heck it is. I’m doing all I can not to scratch it,
but it seems to be spreading.”

WOMAN: “Looks like poison ivy to me. Good thing you put that pink stuff on
it.”

HAIGHT: “Oh, yeah, I sure hope it clears it up. I don’t know where I could have
gotten it at.”

The Filmmaker, Rich Brauer, says he made his movie entertaining so people will
pay attention to an issue he cares about.

Brauer lives in a rural part of northern Michigan. The region is under as much
development pressure as just about any place in the Midwest.

And Brauer’s been involved with land-use issues for years. He says he didn’t
have to invent the antics of the developer from scratch. He just had to tell about
some of the things he’s seen.

“I’ve seen these guys and I thought they were kidding. But they weren’t. Therein
lies comedy. So all I did…I just sort of created a character that echoed what I
had experienced in real life…This isn’t just completely off of a blank sheet of
paper…I was inspired by reality.”

The developer isn’t the butt of every joke.

In one scene the township clerk gets out their master plan to show to a friend of
Bollinis. She tells how it cost the township 150 thousand dollars and then the
plan just sat on the shelf for last five years.

People unfamiliar with planning and zoning might miss the sarcasm here.

But Larry Mawby didn’t. Mawby owns a vineyard in the township where “Barn
Red” was filmed. He’s been involved in local government there for twenty years.
Mawby says the county put together a state-of-the-art master plan in the mid-90s.
Mawby says people came from other parts of the state to see what they had done.

“That master plan has been totally and completely ignored. The Board of
Commissioners doesn’t pay attention to that master plan at all. Where they’re
citing the jail is contrary to their master plan. None of their facilities questions
have they ever looked at that master plan or paid attention to it. It’s like, what’s
the point here?”

The point of laughing about it in a movie may be to get everybody to lighten up.

Glenn Chown is the executive director of the Grand Traverse Regional Land
Conservancy.

Brauer consulted with Chown while writing the script for his movie.

Chown thinks the levity of “Barn Red” will help the image of environmentalists.

“Sometimes we can be accused of being all gloom and doom. And the sky is
falling and it’s all falling apart and we’re all doomed. And I think we need to
lighten up a little bit. If we do lighten up a little bit, we’ll reach people more
effectively.

But… the film ends with a little gloom and doom.

Between the end of the movie and the credits a figure from the American
Farmland Trust appears on the screen. It says America loses more than 1.2
million acres of farmland to sprawl each year.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.

Tag: films

A Look Into Coal Country

Transcript

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Food, Inc. Exposes Industry’s Secrets

Transcript

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Eco-Films Debut on Festival Circuit

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Imax Movie Highlights Great Lakes

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Moviemaker Lampoons Sprawl

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