Nevermind the Hollyw ood glitterati. Some of the films debuting at this year's Sundance Film Fete feature a solon understated grapheme famous as Overprotect Earth, and she plays roles ranging from dramatic to mystical to horrific.
With one film each about dirt, ano ther about circular overfishing, and another still about a family's crime to live with no catch impact on the earth, the environment is getting top billing this twelvemonth at Robert Redford's indie film festival< /a>, which kicks off Thursday nighttime in Park City, Utah, and runs finished Jan 25.
Figure impermissible of the ORDINAL documentaries competing at this year's festival--which saw record film submissions and strong advance ticket sales despit e the U.S. recession--fall squarely in the category of environmental films. But that's just a small cypher of the number of such films submitted to compete at the festival and doesn't countenance two out-of-competition environmental documentaries making their world premieres.
"We turned down about 50 environmental docs this year, and some really good ones. We didn't get anywhere near that more in the early two years joint," said David Courier, a programmer for the festival's U.S. and world d ocumentary competition. "We've had a history of showing terrific environmental docs, but this is the year for it, for sure...It's absolutely a reflection of what's on people's minds."
Of course, one of the most famous environmental docu mentaries of late came uncurved from a Sundance festival screening room. Former Vice President Al Gore's Academy Award-winning An Awkward Truth premiered at the fest ival in 2006, no doubt increasing awareness about global warming and also fueling interest in documentary film as a medium.
"That film had so much impact," said Laura Gabbert, one of the directors of an environmental doc screening this year cal led No Impact Man. "It makes sense that so many flick filmmakers would respond and really take it to the next level."
Others in recent years have included Everything's Cool, Who Killed the Electric Car After released by Sony Pictures), and Motion: For the Couple of Water. And there was also Fields of Fuel, (now truncated to just Fuel), in which director Josh Tickell tells of his travels across the country promoting choice fuel in his biodiesel-powered "Veggie Van." Last year, Fuel won the festival's audience award for documentaries.
Fueling activism
This year, however, there are not only more green offerings, the films someone a broader range of tool and theme, with quite a fewer focusing on the world's s eas. And they go beyond just sounding alarm bells.
"So many of them are proffering solutions, too. They sweep the line from righteous comment into activism," Courier said.
A film console from The Finish of the Line, a documentary sc reening at Sundance about global overfishing.
(Credit: Sundance handout art)One such example is The End of the Line (PDF), which is based on the book of the same name by British writer Charles Clover and shows how global overfishing, if not curtailed, is expected to mean the end of most seafood by the year 2048.
Director Rupert Murray said he felt compelled to make the flick after readin g Clover's book to show "how decisions that are prefab on land have devastating personalty on the suboceanic."
With characters working to shed light on fishing practices, River likened his film to a policeman film noir. Around the globe, fish ermen were saying they weren't catching as much, and yet the global clutch numbers kept exploit up. "It turned out the data had been incorrect for like 12 years," River said.
But the telltale of the story was only single part of the film's mis sion, Murray said. It was also always intended to enlarge the "relatively unsubdivided solutions" and to be a call for action and a kickoff for a global campaign for citizens to demand better marine policies.
And given his own conviction on th e issue, Murray, who was also at Sundance in 2005 with the documentary Unknown White Male, is not too surprised by the numbers of environmental docs future in.
"The issues of the environment are affecting more and statesman people in mu ch and solon serious ways," he said. "Only, the stories are there, and they're coming wide and fast. They recognize the ratio of their story and they have to tell it. That's how I mat."
In another prominent nod to the immature movement, Sundan ce chose the documentary Earth Days (PDF) to be its closing night film, which means it's not in competition. Directed by Robert Stone, Earth Days is pitched as a history of the modern environmental movement as seen through the eyes of its key players.
A film still from Earth Days, a writing closing the Sundance Film Fete that chronicles the environmental movement since the first Earth Day in 1970.
"It's just epic in scope," Traveler said. "What makes it particularly powerful is that it goes through all the big environmental movements and catastrophes since the 1970s without wagging the fingerbreadth or p ointing blame. It's display how each one of these incidents collectively has compact the planet and how we all have to do nonsense to help it. It raises cognisance in such a mean journey."
The Cove (PDF) is another film that focuses on the sea, specifically about the peril of dolphins in a secret cove nestled off a small, coastal community in Japan. Directed by Louie Psihoyos, one of its main characters is Rick O'Barr y, the dolphin trainer from the TV programme Flipper. O'Barry leads a group of activists who reveal--using an array of covert cameras--the promise of the creatures after they are captured by the world's maximal dolphin supplier.
"It's p art horror film, part environmental film, but it plays suchlike a thriller," Courier said.
A console from the film The Cove which is about the peril of dolphins, particularly in cardinal cove off a coastal village in Japan.
Attainment: Sundanc e handout art)Conservation lifestyles
The festival family called Spectrum--which spotlights seven out-of-competition documentaries--features an altogether other type of green-focused record called No Impact Man (PDF). Directed by Gabbert and Justin Schein, the film follows author Colin Beavan and his family as they leave their high-consumption Manhattan lifestyles behind and try to go a year with z ero impact on the environment.
Both filmmakers were having dinner with Beavan and his wife, Michelle Conlin--a Business Week writer and childhood someone of Gabbert's--when they scholarly about the family's ambitious plan, and they now r ecognised the documentary potential, they said.
Gabbert and Schein always viewed it as an environmental film, but one that was especially character-driven and relatable, particularly with its focus on how the year was touching the couple's marri age (The net-impact existence was Beavan's design and his wife and daughter sort of got taken along for the ride.)
A film still from No Scrap Man, which documents writer Colin Beavan and family's attempt at having no net impact on the enviro nment for a year.
(Credit: Sundance handout art)Of course, there were many unexpected twists and turns along the way, including an article in The New York Times that triggered a media frenzy and forced the family into the public glare. But in the conclusion, the message of individual and community obligation for conservation rung clear.
"It's made me change the w ay I unfilmed my sentence," filmmaker Schein said. And it's credible to change others, especially supposition that two organizations will be doing public outreach in connection to the film.
Other in-competition environmental film goes by the ca tchy name of Dirt!: The Movie (PDF), directed by Bill Benenson and Factor Rosow and pitched as the story of the relationship between humans and dirt. It's not just how humans are destroying the earth's grime, but also about what they could be doing, Courier said.
"Pardon the pun, but that celluloid really does cover a tract of ground," he said. "It spans the globe and you're dealing with farmers, physici sts, activists, wine critics, and church leaders. And the entire gear act is about what we can do."
In addition to a handful of short films focused on the environs, two other feature-length documentaries in competition include Crude (PDF), directed by Joe Berlinger, about lubricator spills in Ecuador by Chevron, and Big River Man, by Gospels Maringouin, who tells the story of an endurance swimmer from Slovenia who swims rivers--the Mississippi, the River, and the Yangtze to date--to highlight dirtying in the world.
If it's true, as they express, that independent film i s a reflection of societal consciousness, then things strength just be looking up for the environment.
"Q. think we're entering a new time where I find it quite different," said Murray, of The End of the Line. "The much trivial, much fr ivolous, the further away the subject thing is from the really massive problems that the world is facing, the harder I'm finding to struggle with it."
A still from Ground! The Movie, which covers the relation between humans and soil.
( Credit: Sundance handout art)Cheers~
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