This is a powerful opening for an in your face movie that is bound to win plaudits for its exposure of those who deny, and actually do their bit to cause, and profit from, global climate change.

How you respond to the film will depend on your own journey within the environmental movement: from hard-line activist to armchair academic. It is a film for everyone to see: not a must-see, like I would suggest ‘Age Of Stupid’ is, but certainly one that will stimulate action, discussion, and as the credits announce at the end, possible change through pressure and advocacy.

Craig Scott Rosebraugh’s new documentary is a hard-hitting, pull no punches style of film that exposes the greed and political machinations behind the big corporations that are funding the climate change denial Industry.

In essence it is about eco-systems and human stability. We see drought conditions affecting farmers in the Mid West of the US, and the rising wheat prices due to the low yield.

We see examples of coastal erosion affecting a village in Alaska, where faced with the entire village needing to move (and the efforts to find the huge cost of this from Federal Government), a Tribal Elder says: “we have lost pretty much half the ground I walked on as a little boy…. our people have lost their peace of mind.”

The village hit back in 2008 by suing 24 fossil fuel exploitation companies (Shell, etc) to raise the funds to move.

Trailer of Greedy Lying Bastards
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW0NMjD-wtA[/youtube]

There are no examples given from the Middle East, but those who are based across the dry lands know the issues facing them: increasing desertification, water shortages and coming droughts: environmental collapses combined with unstable Governments (or oil-rich Nations with no interest in measures to hold off or combat changes, or even just changing their ways).

Regular readers of Green Prophet need not be reminded.

After some of these very human-centred examples of the situation of the ground, the doc ratchets up a notch to explore and accuse those involved in the climate change denial businesses. And by god it’s murky!

From the British ‘loony lord’ Monkton (who is forced to admit on camera he has never sat in the British House Of Lords, which kind of discredits him!) (and who is the first speaker featured in the film’s trailer, above) to more serious scientists funded (both privately and through research grants) by the petrochemical Industry (Shell, etc), those who seek to lose their financial stake holdings if the US Govt tightens up its laws on environmental protection, drilling, emissions and various destructive action taken by these Industries, are seen to be hiding behind shady Think Tanks and the so-called ‘Astroturf Groups’, which are (allegedly) “in the business of selling doubt” (about climate change) according to Rosebraugh.

The film, which includes Daryl Hannah as executive director, takes a dive when Myron Ebell (from a prominent Think Tank) is shown saying: “there are no catastrophes in sight due to climate warning.”

Well, Ebell has pretty much hoist by his own petard by now.

Similarly Senator James Inhofe, whose quote “global warming could be the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people” is a chilling statement and battle cry.

Like many of the current crop of feature docs, particularly those that are ‘green themed’, within the first half the film, a lot of information is given, presented clearly and often starkly; the theme is presented and then explored and unpicked, and then halfway through the piece starts to feel too long – nothing new gets explored, or the style becomes predictable.

“GLB’ moves from the personal experience of climate change, to the political arena being fought in public and behind the scenes, and then back to the personal again – this is a worthwhile and traditional method of telling the story, indeed, it is now a standard grammar for documentary practise.

Interview with Daryl Hannah:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfeBATmVAaE[/youtube]

Rosebraugh does eventually gain access to a shareholders meeting, but there is no confrontation or clash of the two sides prevented: activists versus aggressors if you like – it remains largely at the level of ‘us and them’, or more starkly, those who have suffered personal catastrophe, and those who are protecting their own interests in the offending Industries, or through political/financial power.

‘Greedy Lying Bastards’ is what is says on the tin: it exposes those who are corrupt.

It also, tragically, shows a few of the end of the line victims who suffer due to the actions of the corrupt and inert. What we do with this knowledge is now up to us.

::Greedy Lying Bastards

The post ‘Greedy Lying Bastards’ Film Review appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Life of Pi is a novel by Yann Martel, first published in 2001. It told the story of a boy whose family is shipwrecked while moving their private zoo’s animals from French India to Canada. It was thought to be unfilmable. In Ang Lee’s film adaptation, Piscine Molitor (aka Pi) , played by the delightful young Suraj Sharma, is the only human survivor of the shipwreck. No, I haven’t given the story away. The Life of Pi is open in Turkey, Jordan and other cinemas throughout the Mideast. It faces stiff competition from Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit and Les Misérables, but if you’re looking for a beautiful movie with a thought-provoking environmental connection, consider the Life of Pi.

“We’re dying Richard Parker. I’m sorry.” A tearful Pi says this to a surviving castaway aboard his lifeboat. His companion is a Bengal tiger who was dubbed Richard Parker after a name mix up between a tiger its hunter. Like the novel it was based on, The Life of Pi takes us on a philosophical adventure. It explores the nature of reality, truth, religion and storytelling. Like the book it also contains some fascinating ecological metaphors. We can imagine his lifeboat as Noah’s ark or as a microcosm of our world. As a boy, Pi studied many religions and several of these hold that humans are stewards over our planet.

From Genesis 1:26:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, to be like us. Let them be masters over the fish in the ocean, the birds that fly, the livestock, everything that crawls on the earth, and over the earth itself!

This is exactly what Pi must do if he is to survive. But as an ethical vegetarian who shares a small boat with a top predator, he finds that this is not a simple task. His strategy mirrors that of human civilization, at first he distances himself from the beast. He builds a ramshackle raft and ties a long rope between it and the more seaworthy boat occupied by the tiger, keeping nature at a distance.

Later Pi makes fun of survival guides by inventing his own which details, “What to do if  you are a castaway alone on a lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger. Step one…”  He considers methods of taming the beast much as a circus trainer might. I don’t want to give too much away but the complex symbiotic relationship between man and nature is a recurring theme in both movie and book. Sustainability is expressed most clearly when it is a matter of survival.

There are some disturbing scenes for animal lovers and children. Most involve animals preying on other animals. Pi’s father uses a goat to teach his son a lesson about the true predator behind the seemingly soulful eyes of a tiger. Much of the blood and gore is off-screen and suggested rather than simulated. This makes The Life of Pi much more watchable than so many films whose directors believe special effects should appeal to the prurient interests of our violent civilization.

Ang Lee seemed to focus much of his special effects budget on creating realistic computer generated (CGI) animal to spare real animals from the horrors of Hollywood. It is mysterious why The Life of Pi didn’t get an official “No animals were harmed” label. Was it that Ang Lee did not feel the need to hire animal rights watchdogs for simulated animals? At least this film doesn’t seem to have triggered the animal cruelty controversy of The Hobbit whose filming location was associated with up to 27 animals deaths. The Life of Pi is proof that it is possible to make a movie about a Bengal tiger without disturbing any of the 1850 remaining in the world.

Ang Lee couldn’t film everything in Yann Martel’s novel but David Magee well-crafted screenplay didn’t leave any gaping holes. Nor did it sprawl out and dilute the book as The Hobbit seems to have. This movie did add something that only the film-making art form can provide. The Life of Pi is a visually beautiful movie that requires neither 3D nor 48 FPS high frame rate (HFR) to enjoy.

This movie’s CGI has finally bridged the so-called uncanny valley which made the simulated life in Jurassic park and Polar Express disturbingly surreal. If real animals were used in this movie it isn’t possible to discern them from their simulations. There are scenes where artistic license was used and the artist chose beauty, poetry and magic over absolute realism or ‘truth’ but if you’ve read the book you’ll understand that that too is what it’s all about.

I have seen pods of dolphins but I wouldn’t have believed they ever reached the numbers portrayed here until I saw the disturbing true-life documentary, The Cove. I have seen luminescent undersea life and can’t prove that they wouldn’t appear as bright in the middle of the lonesome Pacific. Would gazing into the eye of a starving tiger reveal the mysteries of  the world’s religions? I don’t think any of us can say.

Pi promises that his story will make you believe in God. I can’t promise that, but it may reveal the truth that even in this world of science and technology, satellite navigation, and 24-hour digital news, we don’t know everything. Admitting that is a good start. And if you haven’t already read the book, you should. The movie Life of Pi was excellent but the book was even better.

Image of Bengal tiger via shutterstock

The post The Life of Pi Film is a Visual Poem About Humans and Nature appeared first on Green Prophet.

Ten years ago, Turkish government authorities decided to transform an abandoned copper mine in northeastern Turkey into the biggest landfill in the eastern Black Sea region. Despite promises that the waste would be carefully contained, it began leaching into the surrounding soil, water, and air almost immediately. From the beginning, the nearby fishing and tea-cultivating village of Çamburnu has mounted a strong opposition to the development.

Since it began to be filled, pervading the air with a terrible stench and turning local streams brown and foamy, the locals have grown more desperate.

At stake is not only their pristine environment — the pure air, verdant forests, and bountiful rivers of the lush Black Sea mountains — but the very livelihood of the town. Çamburnu’s economy is based on exporting tea and fish to the rest of the country. Spoil those resources, and the village’s 1,7000 residents are out of work.

While the village’s mayor and lawyers filed suits against the dump, locals argued with the dump overseer, blocked bulldozers’ access to it, and tried to bring the situation to the attention of their detached provincial governor. They pointed out that the canvas lining was clearly leaking, that the region’s torrential rains periodically overflowed the dump, and that a wall supposed to hold in the rubbish had fallen down.

Most scenes in the film feature spirited villagers squaring off against government officials or dump workers. In one scene, a spunky older woman confronts an uncomfortable official about the dump, shouting, “I don’t pray for forgiveness from my sins anymore, I just pray that Allah saves us from the garbage!”

Notable examples of opposition movements in Turkey include the 10,000 people who protested a coal-fired power plant in Gerze last November, the movement to prevent the park in Istanbul’s main square from being built over, and the deforestation documentation project led by Turkey’s “environmental grandfather”, Hayrettin Karaca, which may send him to prison.

Window into Black Sea life

Polluting Paradise is more than just an environmental documentary. Several segments of the film draw away from the depressing effects of the dump to snapshot everyday life in the Turkish Black Sea region.

One fascinating sequence shows the process of manufacturing tea, from its harvesting in the field to the Rube-Goldberg-like apparatus that cleans, shreds, dries and packages it. Another scene follows a farmer as he pauses from his work in the fields, runs down to the mosque, and sings the call to prayer through a microphone plugged into the wall.

Less bucolic aspects of life in Çamburnu are also explored. Like most small Turkish towns, the village’s population is dwindling as more young people move to bigger cities for education and work. Akin traces this thread through interviews with several teenage residents of the village. And a hint of the patriarchal system that still dominates rural Turkish culture comes through when the women laughingly explain that they do most of the harvesting work because their men “claim a right to be lazy.”

The film’s biggest weakness is its over-reliance on dramatic scenes and effects — panning shots of the landfill as sinister music swells in the background, shouting matches between villagers and officials — and its patchy explanation of the legal battle against the dump.

It isn’t clear which office in Turkey’s central government authorized the dump in the first place, or who has the power to close it now. The film ends with the mayor’s abrupt declaration that they have lost all the lawsuits they filed. In a country with as many local environmental movements as Turkey, the finer points of Çamburnu’s deserve to be hammered out.

Some scenes, particularly those involving children, also feel a bit staged — as though the kids are parroting lines or retorts about the plant that they have been taught.

A personal connection

Akin’s father’s family is from Çamburnu, but he first came to the region in 2007 while shooting Edge of Heaven.

The story Akin stumbled upon is just one of many environmentally disastrous developments occurring around Turkey, promoted by private corporations and central government but opposed by locals who actually have to live with the consequences.

Despite its flaws, Polluting Paradise is a welcome contribution to Turkey’s sparse history of environmental documentaries. Hopefully it will inspire other filmmakers to return to their hometowns and check in on the welfare of the local environment. It may be more threatened than they think.

Read more about local environmental movements in Turkey:

As He Battles Lawsuit, Grandfather of Turkish Environmental Movement Receives Right Livelihood Award
Istanbul’s Main Square To Become Lifeless And Isolated In New Urban Plan, Opponents Warn
10,000 Turks Gather To Protest Coal-Fired Power Plant
“Anatola Won’t Be Blackened” Declare Turkish Anti-Fossil Fuel Groups

The post Polluting Paradise Documentary Follows Turkish Village’s Battle Against Invading Garbage appeared first on Green Prophet.

Under a solitary tree in the desert, a young Prophet Muhammed met with the Christian monk Bahira. This documentary charts the importance of this chance meeting.

The Blessed Tree is a short and beautifully-filmed documentary which tells the story of a chance encounter between a Christian monk named Bahira and the young Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) under a tree in the desert. As well as drawing light on this important meeting, the documentary focuses on the belief that the very tree which witnessed this event is alive today in the Jordanian desert. It also captures a gathering of some of the most important Islamic scholars under that tree and their interpretation of the lessons the incident has to offer the modern world.

Starting with a commentary from the King Abdullah of Jordan about the first time he visited the ‘Blessed Tree’ and the importance of the meeting of Prophet Muhammed with the monk Bahira, the documentary takes you straight into the subject matter. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad from Jordan explains how the tree was re-discovered after his late uncle, King Hussein, put him to work in the Royal Archives after returning from Cambridge University. It was there that researchers discovered numerous references to the tree, and a forgotten inventory made by King Abdullah I of the holy sites in Jordan.

This takes us to a tree near Safawi in Jordan where the young Muhammed (SAW) is believed to have met with Bahira whilst travelling from Saudi with his uncle Abu Talib to modern-day Syria for trade. The trade route they would have taken across the Arabian desert means that the likely location of the meeting would have been the Jordanian desert. The meeting is particularly important as it was the first time that the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) was recognised as a prophet by the spiritual monk. After meeting Muhammed (SAW), Bahira the hermit monk tells Abu Talib to take good care of him and protect him from his enemies as he would be prophet for the end of time.

Prince Ghazi remarks: “The Prophet sitting under this tree, and its reacting to the Prophet makes the tree the only living terrestrial witness to the Prophet, what we would call in Arabic a sahabi.” Whilst those in the film seem convinced that the tree in the Jordanian desert is the tree from story, I am sure there are those who may need a bit more convincing. Either way, it’s great to learn more about the incident and the important place of nature in the life of the Prophet Muhammed as well as the emergence of Islam. ‘The Blessed Tree’ has beautiful footage of the Jordanian desert where the tree is located as well as interviews with some of the most famous Islamic scholars of our time and a great soundtrack.

There is, in a sense, a vertical dimension that goes through our heart vertically through our head and up to Heaven. The line of transcendence. This is the inner tree. The roots of it are actually the roots of the Divine reality in our hearts. For most human beings this tree has dried up because they are not aware of its roots. It is virtually there but not actually; and the spiritual life means the reviving of this tree within us by sinking the roots of the Divine once again in our hearts.”
Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The only downfall of the film is that it can a little repetitive with the scholars recalling the same incident. It’s also a huge shame that the film didn’t take the opportunity to explore the interfaith nature of incident and bring in Christian figures to contemplate the chance meeting. The symbolism of the tree is also left unexplored and none of the scholars (well, not in the film anyway) look at the place of nature in the life of the Prophet more broadly. Overall, a good 6 out of 10.

You can purchase the The Blessed Tree DVD from One Thousand Films or download a HD digital version for half the price at $9.85.

For more on Islam and the environment see:

How Islam Could Tackle Water Scarcity

What can Islam do for the Environment? Lots, Actually…

Islam’s Environmentally Friendly Architecture – Where Did It Go?

The post Film Review: ‘The Blessed Tree’ – An Interfaith Meeting Under The Shade of Nature appeared first on Green Prophet.

You cannot be against development, progress, innovation and even education. We count on these things to solve our biggest problems, whether it’s the ecological crisis, malnourishment or peak oil. If you don’t believe in them, you’re a defeatist. But do they earn the blind faith we have in them? The documentary film Green Mirages, directed by Egyptian Nadia Kamal and Tunisian Habib Ayeb, about the Tunisian village of Demmer, suggests we shouldn’t, and points out some important questions to ask.

Demmer, Tunisia’s version of Egypt’s Fayoum Oasis, is the home town of social geography researcher Professor Habib. Compared to the rest of Tunisia, you can call this area undeveloped. And you would feel inclined to pledge for more development, not question it. It’s not the typical flip side of the coin. Not a garbage dump or a polluted mining site in Congo where you would go and see the devastation caused by the development elsewhere. But this makes sense. Demmer is not an accident de parcours, but a typical example of how development works. It might be Egypt.

The government brought unemployed people from the city, lawyers and such, to reclaim and farm an arid area, and while their wells are emptying the valuable aquifer, the local knowledge to farm without irrigation will vanish along. Exit sustainable agriculture, forever.

Habib shows us the community’s disappearing methods to cope with drought. And it’s not desertification or climate change, a real hazard, but development itself that makes them disappear.

You’re saying that we should educate people more, or raise awareness – the solution that’s repeated ad nauseam?

Even worse, modern education appears to have had the worst impact, bringing mostly unemployment, and making the young people eager to leave the community.

Habib doesn’t want to turn the clock back, though. After showing us his ancestral house, and the impact a small act of modernity, such as plastering, has on the cooling system, he questions himself. He couldn’t live among his own people anymore. Just like the local youngsters.

Development seems unavoidable and unstoppable, but it might be time to ask deep questions about it. A must see, if you get the chance.

::Egypt Independent

Image of green mirage from Shutterstock

The post Seeing Green Mirages, a Film Review appeared first on Green Prophet.

Five men and four Bactrian camels travel 1500 km through India, but it doesn’t go quite the way it was planned.

If there are two things we love (apart from the planet), it’s camels – because they are the desert dweller’s best friend – and adventure. Do the two go hand in hand? Absolutely. And not only in Morocco and Dubai, but also in India.

Collective Moments of Madness is a heartful documentary about five international travelers who planned to trek 1500 km with Bactrian (double humped) camels through the Himalaya Mountains in Northern India all the way south to the Pushkar Camel Festival in the desert. But as we discovered recently in Tunisia, even the best laid plans go awry, and the camel odyssey was fraught with unexpected challenges that began with ominous words from an Indian Oracle.

Not so long ago we wrote about an Australian woman who spins camel wool in an effort to save more than one million camels in the outback. That was Helen Durrant, who we can thank for putting us in touch with Kamahl Druesne, the talented filmmaker behind Collective Moments of Madness.

We had no idea what the documentary would entail, and admittedly expected an amateur flick that would only appeal to the most die-hard camel lovers, but because we are always interested to demonstrate how valuable these animals are – not only in themselves but also for the numerous services they provide to humanity – we asked for a copy of the film.

And we are definitely glad we did.

The film traces the entire length of the journey from Ladahk in Northern India, where three Frenchmen, an Australian (Druesne, the creative mastermind behind the documentary and the charismatic narrator), and a Brit gathered, all the way past Rajasthan to the annual Pushkar festival that attracts 300,000 cameleers and visitors.