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Green Cinema

10 Incredible Films to Green Your Consciousness


They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so what is a moving picture worth? When it comes to these 10 eco-films, the answer might just be “Everything.”

Ranging in locale from the rainforests of Ecuador to the center of Manhattan, each film takes a look at the toll we as humans are taking on the environment and our planet, and each offers solutions we can incorporate into our lives to help mitigate—or even reverse—the effects of the last 100 years. They’ll make you think, and more importantly, inspire you to act. Act Green.

 

1. Garbage Dreams
Four years in the making, Garbage Dreams tells the powerful, true story of three teenaged boys in Cairo who make their living and help support their families in what is known as “the garbage trade.” Members of Egypt's minority Coptic Christian community the Zaballeen — an Arabic for "garbage people”—have survived for centuries by recycling Cairo's waste, and they do a phenomenal job: Under their care, upwards of 80 percent of the estimated 4000 tons of trash collected daily is recycled. But when city officials contract with a private refuse company, the boys and their community’s livelihoods are jeopardized.		      


2. No Impact Man
In 2007, Colin Beavan decided to write a book about trying living in Manhattan for one year without making any impact on the environment at all, and he took his (often reluctant) family with him for the ride. Ultimately, the experiment required eschewing electricity, any travel other than walking or biking, and even toilet paper and turned Beavan into a mini celebrity. By turns amusing, moving and informative, No Impact Man documents the challenges and rewards of the Beavan family’s attempts at living positively on the planet.      

3. The Story of Stuff
A short (20 mins) that you can view right from your desktop, The Story of Stuff ought to be required viewing for us all. Created and narrated by environmentalist and sustainability maven Annie Leonard, the film illuminates the lifecycle of pretty much everything we own from birth (extraction) to death (disposal) and offers some startling and alarming facts along the way. For example? According to Leonard, “In the last three decades, we’ve consumed 40 percent of the world’s resources.”      

4. Crude
What is the real cost of oil? That’s the question posed in acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger’s ((Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) Crude, an epic documentary chronicling the events in 2007 and 2008 of the “Amazon Chernobyl” class action lawsuit, a $27 billion legal case brought against the Chevron Corporation following the drilling of the Lago Agrio oil field. Less a morality tale around the consequences of an oil-dependent society and more an examination of the price paid by the 30,000 residents of the Ecuadoran rain forest who have to contend with the pollution left in the wake of the company’s oil extraction efforts, Crude looks at the issue of oil from a variety of perspectives and a broad range of locations—from the jungles of Ecuador to the million-dollar law offices of Los Angeles.      

5. A Sense of Wonder
Rachel Carson is inarguably the mother of the environmental movement. With the 1962 publication of “Silent Spring,” Carson—a marine biologist and zoologist—inadvertently became one of the most controversial figures in U.S. history as she nearly single-handedly took on the major chemical corporations of her day and inspired a worldwide movement that ultimately led to the 1972 ban of the pesticide DDT in the United States—a triumph Carson didn’t live to see. The documentary-style film A Sense of Wonder chronicles Carson’s last days, her struggles with the chemical industry, the press and the cancer that prematurely ended her life. Based on the play of the same name, Carson is played with great humor and sensitivity by the playwright and actor Kauilani Lee—a passionate environmentalist herself.      

6. King Corn
King Corn, the feature documentary by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, tells the story of “two friends, one acre of corn and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation,” according to the film’s creators. College buddies Cheney and Ellis leave their East coast university and head to the Midwest to learn about the growth and production of the U.S.’s most prolific and most subsidized crop. “With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers and powerful herbicides,” they successfully plant and raise one acre of corn and then follow their harvest into the food chain. Along the way, what they learn raises some troubling questions about our food system.      

7. The End of the Line
Here’s a scary thought: According to the scientists interviewed for The End of the Line, a documentary about the perils of overfishing, the oceans could be effectively void of fish by 2048 if current fishing practices (such as hi-tech fishing vessels that leave no escape routes for fish populations) prevail. In fact, according to investigative reporter Charles Clover, who wrote the book on which the film is based, it’s already happening: Demand for cod off the coast of Newfoundland in the early 1990s led to the decimation of the most abundant cod population in the world, and there’s no hope for a recovery. The film offers a number of solutions, however, such as eschewing seafood that is overfished and pressuring your local seafood restaurants and shops to do the same.      

8. The 11th Hour
Directed, produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, The 11th Hour features interviews with more than 50 politicians, scientists, and environmental activists, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, physicist Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, and journalist Paul Hawken, and documents the grave problems facing the planet's life systems, including global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction, and depletion of the oceans' habitats. In keeping with urgency implied by the title, the film also proposes potential solutions to these problems by calling for restorative action by the reshaping and rethinking of global human activity through technology, social responsibility and conservation.      

9. The Age of Stupid
It’s the year 2055, and the world is in chaos. Environmental disasters have wreaked havoc on the planet and its population. One man sits alone in room reviewing footage from 2008 and asking himself (and us, the audience), How could we have let this happen? Why didn’t we do anything to stop the damage to the environment while we still had a chance? Directed by Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out) and produced by environmental activist Lizzie Gillette, The Age of Stupid is a cautionary tale that’s meant to scare us into action.      

10. Home
Created by French photographer, journalist, reporter and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Home is both a gorgeous and illuminating documentary about our home the Earth as well as a global project and teaching tool. Available for viewing free of charge on YouTube, the film has been produced in multiple languages, including French, English, Spanish, German, Arabic and Russian in order to reach as broad an audience as possible. According to Arthus-Betrand, we may only have a scant 10 years to take action to prevent irreparable harm to the planet. “The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and Home has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.” To enable this, the film is sponsored by the PPR Group, and its distributor, EuropaCorp, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.      



- Take me back home -