Deep Down participates in REEL Engagement Workshop
[Source: Deep Down, by Lora Smith, June 22, 2010]
The Deep Down team was proud to be among a group of environmental filmmakers recently gathered in Bolinas and Berkley, California to collaborate on the powerful art of storytelling as a tool to create change at the grassroots and national levels for a clean energy future.
The five day retreat, “Reel Engagement for the Energy and Natural Resource Revolution,” was sponsored by the Fledgling Fund, Chicken and Egg Pictures and Working Films to bring together films from around that world that collectively tell the story of extractive industries, dirty fuels and the catastrophic impacts of global climate change, while offering narratives of hope for a people-powered clean energy revolution.
The retreat offered a time to craft strategies to bring stories of America’s pending energy crisis and the potential for a real energy revolution to the mainstream via the work of grassroots groups, national broadcasts, social media networks and community screenings and festivals.
Jen Gilomen, Deep Down’s co-director, was moved by Deep Down’s place among the collection of powerful films. “It feels like our film and the story of Maytown has now entered into this much larger world of stories about global climate change and our energy future.”
Jennifer Redfearn, the director of Sun Come Up, a film that tells the story of climate change refugees, felt this collection of films was an important step in the larger climate movement. “Each film is addressing a particular piece of the issue. As a whole they do so much more.”
The filmmakers agreed that any one film is not enough to support a movement, but together they make a compelling argument that traces the narrative arc from the true cost of coal to the global impact of climate change on some of the world’s most vulnerable populations, to clean energy solutions that already exist and are in reach. And more importantly, they show the interconnectedness of the problems, impacted communities and possible solutions.
For instance, Redfearn’s film follows the relocation of some of the world’s first climate change refugees, the Carteret Islanders—a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. Forced to leave their homeland due to rising sea levels, the Carteret Islanders’ story resonates with stories told by Appalachian people fighting to save their own homeplaces from mountaintop removal mining.
After seeing Deep Down, Redfearn was struck by the relationship of the stories. “There are so many similarities between the loss of land, culture and history.”
Other films included Split Estate and Gasland about gas drilling in the Western and Eastern United States, Dirty Business about the future of coal, When Two Worlds Collide about an indigenous leader fighting oil and gas exploitation in the Peruvian Amazon, and Cape Wind about the controversial wind project recently approved in the Nantucket Sound.
The filmmakers were joined during their retreat by organizers and representatives from 1SKY, 350.org, The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and MIT Center for Future Civic Media, who sat in on collaborative meetings. The week culminated in a screening and strategy session between the filmmakers, organizations including many Big Greens like the NRDC and Sierra Club along with with smaller grassroots groups, and funders, to figure out the ways and means to use these powerful films for movement building, leveraging media attention to the issues, affecting legislation and educating the general public.
The retreat marked the first of many more steps for these filmmakers now working collaboratively together with the help of Working Films, Fledgling and Chicken and Egg Pictures. Stay tuned....
View their trailers and learn more:
Deep Down
Through a complex human story that cuts across environment, economics, public policy and culture, the story of Beverly May and Terry Ratliff reveals the devastating impact of our energy consumption against an explosive backdrop: Appalachia’s centuries-old struggle over the black rock that fuels our planet.
Dirty Business
Dirty Business reveals the true social and environmental costs of coal power and tells the stories of innovators who are pointing the way to an alternative energy future. Can coal really be made clean? Can renewables and efficiency be produced on a scale large enough to replace coal?
Gasland
When filmmaker Josh Fox discovers that natural gas drilling is coming to his area—the Catskillls/Poconos region of Upstate New York and Pennsylvania—he sets off on a 24-state journey to uncover the deep consequences of the United States’ natural gas drilling boom. Film had its broadcast premier on HBO on June 21.
Split Estate
Imagine discovering that you don't own the mineral rights under your land, and that an energy company plans to drill for natural gas 150 feet from your front door. Imagine another shocking truth: you have little or no recourse to protect your home or land from such development. Split Estate maps a tragedy in the making, as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the US struggle against the erosion of their civil liberties, their communities and their health.
Sun Come Up
Sun Come Up follows the relocation of some of the world’s first climate change refugees, the Carteret Islanders—a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.
When Two Worlds Collide
Still in production, When Two Worlds Collide follows indigenous leader Alberto Pizango’s journey to save the Peruvian Amazon, 70% of which has already been sold to multinational corporations, from the destruction of oil and gas exploration. An important film to remind those working on fighting extractive industries in Appalachia that the same struggle is happening in other countries even more vulnerable to industry.
Cape Wind
A compelling film that follows the politics and spin surrounding the controversial Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound. Features members of the Alliance for Appalachia as they helped wind proponents organize to construct the turbines. Offers a story of hope and potential solutions to our nation’s dependence on dirty energy.
