This is a big, busy weekend everywhere. James Bond is back, basketball is back and high schools have lots of musicals. (One quick correction on that: Lansing Catholic's "Beauty and the Beast" starts at 7 p.m. today and Saturday, not 8; it's also 2 p.m. Sunday.)
All of that is worth catching. The MSU women's basketball team could be terrific this year; it starts its season at 6:30 p.m. today and 1 p.m. Sunday at the Breslin Center.
For now, though, let's stick to the "Green on the Big Screen" film festival. It has more than 30 eco-oriented films in four rooms of the Communications Building, through Sunday. That's $3 per screening $6 for three, $15 for the whole festival.
Details and interviews were in Thursday's What's On section. The full schedule is at http://cas.msu.edu/filmfest. Meanwhile, I've had a chance to see several of these. Here are mini-reviews; please add your comments about the ones you've seen:
-- "Cuba: The Revolution" (2 p.m. Saturday): Fidel Castro called it "the special time." The Soviet Union ran out of money; suddenly Cubans had no gas, no chemicals, no pesticides. They had to commit agriculture ... well, the way their ancestors did it for centuries. And then they did, creating community, organic gardens that seem to work. It's not easy, working without pesticides. A bug expert takes an hour-long ride to a community garden, stays all day to advise on bug-vs.-bug strategy, takes the hour ride back home, then helps others in the neighborhood. Still, it kind of works. There's a feel-good suggestion that the old ways can work.
-- "The Water Front" (4:30 p.m. Sunday): Here's the flip side, a feel-bad film. Highland Park, surrounded by Detroit, has lost three-fourths of its population. Its government was going broke; so was its water works. The state sent consultants to run the place; they promptly cracked down on water bills. The movie even has a designated victim -- Jan Lazar, a former Lansing official, drew some unpopularity for her get-tough stance ... then drew a lot more when news got out that she was making $250,000 a year to manage this impoverished place. By the end of the film, she's been replaced, Highland Park is still in trouble and we realize that even alongside the world's great lakes, water can be expensive and elusive.
-- "Oil plus Water" (9:15 p.m. Friday and 4:30 p.m. Saturday). Here's something much lighter. Two kayakers offer the tone of a perpetual surfer-dude party. Now they've decided they're going to kayak around the world; during the streamless stretches, they'll drive in a former fire truck, rigged up to run on any kind of vegetable sludge. Along the way, they pick up young women (one happens to be a folk-singing physician, others clearly are not) and guys. What could go wrong? Well, almost everything. The truck breaks downm the sludge gets sticky ... and at one point, on of the guys is arrested and handcuffed for taking discarded oil from a sort of garbage pail. Throughout it all, they keep laughing. They prove that anything can be done eco-style ... if you have youth, vigor and surfer-dude outlook.
-- "Mining Madness, Water Wars" (4:30 p.m. Saturday, along with "Freshwater"). Now back to the solemn side ... and, alas, to Michigan. We see the potential effects of sulfide mining on Upper Peninsula wildlife, health and American Indian culture. It's a disturbing picture, set in a beautiful part of the world.
-- "Kilowatts Ours" (9:15 p.m. Friday and 4:30 p.m. Saturday, each time with "Oil on Ice"). Here are lots of handy tips, both big (solar panels) and small (changing the light bulbs). It can't hurt.
-- "King Corn" (9:30 p.m. Saturday). Two Yale grads went back to where their grandfathers thrived -- the lush farm land of northern Iowa. They leased an acre of land, grew corn -- and were disturbed to find that consolidation and mass agriculture had done much to destroy the family farm and the small town. This is true and well-crafted ... but mildly midleading. Iowa is far more prone to this than other spots, because of its fertility and its long, flat surface. Head to north-central Wisconsin (my old turf) or northwest Michigan and you'll find bumps and nooks and family farms.
-- "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" (7 p.m. Friday and Saturday). John planned to work his farm near Peoria, Ill., just as his late father and grandfather did. Then he went to Beloit College, where he met lots of artists and party-goers. He invited friends to live in the farm, built extra buildings -- and found himself $500,000 in debt. That's when he sold all but 22 acres. Along the way, John had several sophisticated, city-bred girlfriends, none of whom stayed to be full-time farmers. It's a long, complicated story ... but it also has a happy ending dealing with community-based farming for city folks. It's an interesting story, if you can survive all the twists.
-- Those are the films I've seen and my mixed emotions about them. Still, there arfew others I'd take a chance on: "Flow" (7 p.m. Saturday and 4:30 p.m. Sunday), because it was accepted in competition by the Sundance Film Festival ... "Ansel Adams" (also 7 p.m. Saturday and 4:30 p.m.) because Adams was a great landscape photographer ... And three movies because of the people involved. Werner Herzog directed the Antarctica-people documentary "Encounters at the End of the World" (7:30 p.m. Thursday); Sean Penn directed the scripted, true-life "Into the Wild: (9:15 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday); and Haskell Wexler, the great cinematographer, shot "A Sense of Wonder," adapting a one-woman play about Rachel Carson (7 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday). Somewhere in there, you'll probably find a film worth seeing.
Anyone who goes to see the FLOW documentary, especially Michigan residents, will find it interesting to watch a brief video found at: http://www.nestlewatersissues.com/streaming/.
It was produced for Nestle Waters but consists largely of the comments of third party experts. You can hear directly from local and state officials who made key decisions, and who say FLOW’s claims of environmental harm in Michigan are false. You can also hear from a Michigan environmentalist who says that FLOW’s focus on bottled water distracts from the real issue: protecting water from pollution so that it is safe to drink.
Beyond Michigan, the documentary leaves other impressions that are just not true, such as the idea that bottled water is no different than public water in terms of quality and safety. Nestle Waters spring water brands come from groundwater sources that are more isolated from contamination than typical public sources. And even the Nestle Pure Life brand, which starts with public water, uses extra filtration steps that most public suppliers cannot afford to remove contaminants. So while public water is generally safe to drink, bottled water often provides a higher and consistent level of quality.
Bottled water didn’t cause the environmental risks to public water described in this film and if it disappeared tomorrow, none of those risks would be lessened. In fact, people would lose an important option in situations where they don’t have access to reliable drinking water for the reasons identified in the film.
Bottled water represents four one thousandths of one percent (0.0004%) of total fresh water withdrawals world-wide. Does it make sense to blame bottled water, when the film itself points out that 70% of water use goes to agriculture (which involves pesticides and fertilizers that affect water quality), 20% is industrial (pollution again), and 10% domestic? The film makes bottled water a convenient scapegoat, instead of exploring what real solutions might look like.
Posted by: DeborahM | November 16, 2008 at 03:18 PM
Anyone who goes to see the FLOW documentary, especially Michigan residents, will find it interesting to watch a brief video found at: http://www.nestlewatersissues.com/streaming/.
It was produced for Nestle Waters but consists largely of the comments of third party experts. You can hear directly from local and state officials who made key decisions, and who say FLOW’s claims of environmental harm in Michigan are false. You can also hear from a Michigan environmentalist who says that FLOW’s focus on bottled water distracts from the real issue: protecting water from pollution so that it is safe to drink.
Beyond Michigan, the documentary leaves other impressions that are just not true, such as the idea that bottled water is no different than public water in terms of quality and safety. Nestle Waters spring water brands come from groundwater sources that are more isolated from contamination than typical public sources. And even the Nestle Pure Life brand, which starts with public water, uses extra filtration steps that most public suppliers cannot afford to remove contaminants. So while public water is generally safe to drink, bottled water often provides a higher and consistent level of quality.
Bottled water didn’t cause the environmental risks to public water described in this film and if it disappeared tomorrow, none of those risks would be lessened. In fact, people would lose an important option in situations where they don’t have access to reliable drinking water for the reasons identified in the film.
Bottled water represents four one thousandths of one percent (0.0004%) of total fresh water withdrawals world-wide. Does it make sense to blame bottled water, when the film itself points out that 70% of water use goes to agriculture (which involves pesticides and fertilizers that affect water quality), 20% is industrial (pollution again), and 10% domestic? The film makes bottled water a convenient scapegoat, instead of exploring what real solutions might look like.
Posted by: DeborahM | November 16, 2008 at 03:21 PM