Environmental Films
Note: You can view most of these films downstairs in the McHenry Library.
NEW
The Unforseen: An ambitious west Texas farm boy with grandiose plans tires of living at the mercy of nature and sets out to find a life with more control. He heads to Austin where he becomes a real estate developer and skillfully capitalizes on the growth of this 1970s boomtown. At the peak of his powers, he transforms 4,000 acres of pristine Hill Country into one of the state’s largest and fastest selling subdivisions. When the development threatens a local treasure, a fragile limestone aquifer and a naturally spring-fed swimming hole, the community fights back. In the conflict that ensues, we see in miniature a struggle that today plays out in communities across the country. Link
ART
Ansel Adams Link
Chinatown DVD222 (LA water)
Silkwood VT6062
Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry (poets) Readings & Conversations [videorecording] : readings by Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder ; conversation with Jack Shoemaker / produced by the Lannan Foundation in association with Thunder Road Productions Published [Santa Fe, NM] : Lannan Foundation, 2001, c2000 McHenry Media Center VT8428
BIODIVERSITY/WILDLIFE
Cane Toads VT6193 traditional College 8 cult favorite (not for vegans)
Grizzly Man (2005) Werner Herzog’s documentary on Timothy Treadwell, a man who spent 13 summers with grizzlies in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. He felt a close affinity to the bears, and would approach and even touch them. Treadwell used film he took of the bears to raise awareness of their situation. Herzog uses Treadwell footage from the last 5 years of his life and interviews with people who knew him well to create a snapshot of a man most people can’t understand. Herzog portrays Treadwell as a disturbed individual who may have had a death wish towards the end. As you likely know, Treadwell ends up being killed and eaten by a grizzly, along with his girlfriend. Herzog’s film is moving and beautiful, and deals well with a subject most filmmakers couldn’t begin to touch.
Winged Migration. Codirected by Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats (Paris: Galatée Films, 2001.) DVD1702
COMSUMERISM/ECONOMICS/GLOBALIZATION/SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR
Advertising and the End of the World VT6747 Highly recommended
The Cost of Cool: Youth, Consumption, and the Environment. see also Merchants of Cool VT7793
The Corporation DVD2301 145 min. Based on the book, The Corporation: the Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan, this documentary examines the nature, evolution, impact and possible futures of the modern business corporation.
Mardi Gras : Made in China by David Redmon c2005 Media Center DVD2654
Surplus - Terrorized Into Being Consumers online Overview
The Persuaders DVD2764 90 min. Examines the "persuasion industries" of advertising and public relations. Shows how marketers have developed new ways of integrating their message into the fabric of our lives. Explores how the culture of marketing has come to shape the way Americans understand the world and themselves and how the techniques of the persuasion industries have migrated to politics
Who Killed the Electric Car? DVD4064
Globalization
Behind the Labels: Garment Workers on U.S. Saipan / a produced and directed for Witness and Oxygen by Tia Lessin {works w/ Moore, visited here 2003?] c2001 (45 min.) Film & Music VT9076 Film & Music VT9076 Guide Film & Music VT9076 c.2
Reveals the labor and human rights abuses to which Chinese and Filipino women are subjected in garment factories on the Pacific island of Saipan, a U.S. territory. Includes personal accounts of the conditions and interviews with U.S. Labor Department and garment industry spokesmen.
Darwin's Nightmare c2005 McHenry Film & Music Reserves DVD3662 (107 min.) "Darwin's Nightmare is an essential documentary on the perverse aspects of globalization. Enter the Nile Perch, a voracious predator implanted into Lake Victoria in Africa in the '60's which extinguished native fish species and multiplied so fast that its fillets are today exported worldwide - predominantly in exchange for the countless weapons used to wage war in the dark centre of the continent"
The Doctor's Story c2002 DVD2334 (23 min.) Part of a series examining the issue of globalization and its effect on ordinary people around the world. Nepal has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. This episode explores the plight of Nepal's local health services, and links the situation to the prohibition by the U.S. government against funding any non-governmental organization that supports abortion.
Mardi Gras : Made in China by David Redmon c2005 Media Center DVD2654
Signs Don't Speak 2006 DVD4133 Shows the initiatives of the Waíãpi Indians of Amapá, Brazil, under FUNAI supervision, to expel the gold prospectors whose invasion has harmed their environment. They work to establish new villages and seek outside assistance to establish the borders of their reservation.
Manufactured Landscapes DVD5820 (90 min.) Follows photographer Edward Burtynsky as he travels through China photographing the effects of that country's massive industrial revolution.
Social Entrepreueurs
The New Heroes [videorecording] : their bottom line is lives / c2005 Film & Music DVD2816
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Majora Carter, **** TEDTalk Presentation 20 min Online video
Van Jones UCSC talk
FOOD
The Future of Food c2004 Film & Music DVD2936 (88 min.) In-depth investigation into unlabeled genetically-modified foods which have become increasingly prevalent in grocery stores. Unravels the complex web of market and political forces that are changing the nature of what we eat.
King Corn Link UCSC McHenry DVD6291
"Ian and Curt, 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 perverse and perplexing food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat, how we farm, and the stuff we're really made of"
Supersize Me DVD2447
Includes interview with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food
Nation, and other interviews
GLOBAL WARMING
11th Hour excerpt
The Great Warming Link
Inconvenient Truth DVD4065
Who Killed the Electric Car? DVD4064
GREENWASH/PUBLIC RELATIONS/ADVERTISING
Toxic Sludge is Good for You Link
HISTORY
Cadillac Desert VT4840
Cane Toads VT6193 The College 8 cult classic
Guns, Germs and Steel DVD3487 165 Min. An epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer this question. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? Diamond dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns.
A Fortune in Two Trunks (Santa Clara Valley history) Louis Pellier, a wandering Frenchmen, traversing the globe in search of adventure in the mid-nineteenth century. Lured to the American West with news of gold, Pellier arrived in the foothills of California, quickly tanked in his mining endeavors, and scrambled for another option. He had heard of some fellow countrymen who had settled in San Jose, where, the narrator explains, he "found what he had been seeking—the climate was gentle and the land was good. So like his fathers before, he turned once more to the soil." For the crops themselves, Pellier had his brother send cuttings from France—in two old trunks—and in what is described as "the supreme moment," Pellier carefully grafts his prune scion onto American root stock—a process used, "since the ancient days of Rome." The narration ensures that the bigger picture is not lost: "On the skill of this man's hands rested the future of a great industry—food for a growing nation." [Linda Ivey] online
The Plow that Broke the Plains Overview online at Prelinger
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring VT2457
Silkwood VT6062 on nuclear energy
Wild By Law: Bob Marshall, Aldo Leopold, and Howard Zahniser VT7614
The Wilderness Act of 1964 is the legacy of three men: Wilderness Society Founder Bob Marshall, forester-philosopher Aldo Leopold, and activist Howard Zahniser. Looks at how these three men struggled against the current of American thought during industrialization of the 1920s, the war years of the 1940s, and the boom years of the 1950s. Eventually their actions caused a profound shift in American attitudes toward preservation of wild lands.
Issues: Dust Bowl, New Deal conservation, tourism, wilderness issues, Wilderness Act of 1964; Leopold and Zahniser's sons and daughters; historians and environmentalists William Cronon, Roderick Nash, Wallace Stegner, Max Oelschlager, Baird Callicott, Floyd Dominy, and David Brower. 1991, 60 min. Review PBS video, Am Exper. Florentine Films
Wilderness Idea VT2197 John Muir's fight to save Yosemite (also Gifford Pinchot).
LAND USE
Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America http://www.loteriafilms.org/
The Unforseen: An ambitious west Texas farm boy with grandiose plans tires of living at the mercy of nature and sets out to find a life with more control. He heads to Austin where he becomes a real estate developer and skillfully capitalizes on the growth of this 1970s boomtown. At the peak of his powers, he transforms 4,000 acres of pristine Hill Country into one of the state’s largest and fastest selling subdivisions. When the development threatens a local treasure, a fragile limestone aquifer and a naturally spring-fed swimming hole, the community fights back. In the conflict that ensues, we see in miniature a struggle that today plays out in communities across the country. Link
RESOURCE EXTRACTION
Addicted to Oil: Thomas L. Friedman Reporting (USA, 2006, 57 min.)
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, author of the recent best-seller, "The World Is Flat," examines the dynamics of petro-politics, investigating the relationship between America's energy consumption, world oil prices and geopolitical power. In a straightforward reporting style, with a touch of humor despite the dire predictions involved, Friedman clarifies our understanding of these complex relationships. "There appears to be a specific correlation between the price of oil and the pace of freedom," Friedman observed in a column. As the price of oil rises, so does the megalomania of leaders from "petro-ist" states, as Friedman calls them, turning back the tide of democratization. The film also provides an in-depth exploration of our options to combat global warming, from hybrids to hydrogen, wind power to solar panels and beyond, to reduce consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. [http://www.calcars.org/audio-video/ATOclip-24june06.html 5 min clip Link
The End of Suburbia link
Fighting Goliath narrated by Robert Redford, the story of how 19 fast-tracked coal-fired power plants in Texas were stopped by a coalition.
Signs Don't Speak 2006 DVD4133 Shows the initiatives of the Waíãpi Indians of Amapá, Brazil, under FUNAI supervision, to expel the gold prospectors whose invasion has harmed their environment. They work to establish new villages and seek outside assistance to establish the borders of their reservation.
Treesit: the Art of Resistance; (E1st/ELF?) Humbolt timber wars/treesit JB Hill (activism)
TOXICS
Erin Brockovitch DVD211
Blue Vinyl Link
Texas Gold: Carolyn M. Scott 2005 21 min.
Fourth-generation fisherwoman Diane Wilson leads a one-woman crusade against Dow and other petrochemical plants, which create 17% of America’s pollution from her Texas town of 1,352. These factories have turned Seadrift from a traditional fishing port into a massive chemical cocktail that poisons the surrounding air, earth and waters—, sardonically dubbed Texas Gold.
Trade Secrets: This documentary exposes the 40 year history of the American chemical industry's supression of information regarding the threats to public health by synthetic chemicals being introduced into the environment at all levels. Addresses the danger to public health by the continued use of approximately 9000 of the 15,000 mass produced chemical substances that have never undergone toxicological study in the United States. Followed by a panel discussion moderated by Moyers including industry spokesmen, environmental, and medical experts. VT7877 120 min.
Toxic Bust 2005 40 mins. Blending fiction and documentary, Toxic Bust weaves the story of a fictitious woman who finds a lump in her breast, together with real-life stories of breast cancer survivors who trace the cause to the chemicals in their environment. The film focuses on three hot spots in America: San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point where the poor live in a toxic stew, and surprisingly Cape Cod and Silicon Valley. Though a warning to all, Toxic Bust reveals that middle-class Boomers who have grown up on lawn pesticides, household cleansers and dry cleaning are vulnerable to toxins and breast cancer. Megan Siler, the producer/director of Toxic Bust, lives in Berkeley, California.
Toxic Legacies VT9128 2001 46 min. Elizabeth Guillette has studied the differences in the children of the Yaqui Valley of Mexico since 1993. The children of the valley towns are far behind those in the foothills in physical coordination, energy, and learning capabilities. The difference she observed was that pesticides have been used in the valley since the 1950s whereas in the foothills, where there is little agricultural industry, there is practically no pesticide use. The program follows Guillette as she meets with scientists for corroboration and possible solutions.
