BIS 300: Interdisciplinary Inquiry (Groom): Films - Oil and Environmental Justice

Streaming Films

Addicted to plastic
Documentary encompasses three years of filming in 12 countries on five continents as it details plastic's path over the last 100 years and the effects it has had on the environment.
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After the Spill : Louisiana water stories. Part II
A follow-up to the 2010 film SOLA: Louisiana Water Stories, After the Spill introduces some of the most aggrieved victims of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill as well as those who are desperately trying to save the Louisiana coastline.
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Awake : a Dream from Standing Rock
Record of the massive peaceful resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the Dakota Access Pipeline through their land and underneath the Missouri River.
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Bidder 70
In 2008, as George W. Bush tried to gift the energy and mining industries thousands of acres of pristine Utah wilderness via a widely disputed federal auction, college student Tim DeChristopher monkey-wrenched the process. Bidding $1.7 million, he won 22,000 acres with no intention to drill.
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The Big Fix
On Earth Day, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig sank into the Gulf of Mexico, creating the worst oil spill in history. It was one of the largest man-made environmental catastrophes in American history.
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Black ice
As the sheet ice melts around the northernmost region of the world, oil companies see an opportunity to explore the rich deposits underneath. Environmentalists fear that Western oil firms will partner with Russian ones to exploit the lower safety standards, and cash in on this oil. Terrified of a new oil rush, Greenpeace activists were demonstrating at an offshore platform when Russian authorities seized them at gunpoint and imprisoned them without warning.
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Black wave : the legacy of the Exxon Valdez
In the early hours of March 24th, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil supertanker runs aground in Alaska. It discharges millions of gallons of crude oil. The incident becomes the biggest environmental catastrophe in North American history.
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Climate on the edge
The Arctic is on the front line of climate change and it is sending us an urgent message: global warming is having a serious impact on the planet. As temperatures increase, thousands of square kilometres of ice cap will soon disappear. Scientists predict devastation if we don't change our ways.
The Cost of Oil : voices from the Arctic
In this feature-length documentary the Alaskan Inupiat show how oil drilling in their nearby seas will forever alter their subsistence-living lifestyle and multiply the struggles of preserving their rich cultural history.
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Crude
Tells the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet: the infamous $27 billion 'Amazon Chernobyl' lawsuit pitting 30,000 rainforest dwellers in Ecuador against the U.S. oil giant Chevron.
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Dirty business : "clean coal" and the battle for our energy future
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.
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Fort McMoney : vote Jim Rogers!
After the critically-acclaimed documentary game Fort McMoney went online to a global audience, this film returns with an immersive journey into Fort McMurray, Alberta, the world's third largest oil reserve and war chest of Canada. For three years, an obsession recurs in the director's work: Is democracy soluble in oil?
Frontline. The Spill
Martin Smith and Abraham Lustgarten explore the corporate history of BP before the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. This investigation reveals a history of safety and environmental violations.
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A future without oil
When the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, announces in 2007 that he will not exploit its Amazonian oil fields against financial compensations on industrialized countries, he takes on a very bold challenge. The challenge - to convince them that the safeguard of nature is worth more than petroleum extraction.
Groundswell rising : protecting our children's air & water
This film brings us into the lives of people from all walks of life and all sides of the political spectrum who are dedicating themselves to resisting, slowing down or stopping fracking.
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How to let go of the world : and love all the things climate can't change
Traveling to 12 countries on 6 continents, the film acknowledges that it may be too late to stop some of the worst consequences and asks, what is it that climate change can't destroy? What is so deep within us that no calamity can take it away?
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An inconvenient sequel : truth to power
A decade after AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH brought the climate crisis into the heart of popular culture, comes the riveting and rousing follow-up that shows just how close we are to a real energy revolution. Former Vice President Al Gore continues his tireless fight, traveling around the world training an army of climate champions and influencing international climate policy.
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Lords of the Arctic
The unique wildlife that thrives in the Arctic's stark landscape has long captivated our imaginations. Ice plays a critical role in maintaining this fragile ecosystem. As temperatures rise because of global warming, will these northern plants and wildlife be able to adapt? Through its extraordinary footage of polar bears, thick-billed murres, bowhead whales, muskox and caribou Lords of the Arctic permits us to observe the impact of climate change on the wildlife of the North.
Marathon for Justice
Explores the ways in which people of color have been disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals and poisonous releases in the air, on the land, and in the water. Locations include a refinery in Philadelphia, uranium mines on Navajo lands in New Mexico, and Native lands in South Dakota and North Dakota.
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Naked Option : A Last Resort
Fueled by the determination for a better future, grassroots women in Nigeria’s Niger Delta use the threat of stripping naked in public, a serious cultural taboo, in their deadly struggle to hold the oil companies accountable to the communities in which they work.
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Oil & Water
The true story of two boys coming of age as they each confront one of the world's worst toxic disasters. Hugo and David were born on opposite ends of the oil pipeline. Hugo comes to America to fight for the survival of his Cofan tribe in the Ecuadorian Amazon, while David goes to Ecuador to launch the world's first company to certify oil as fair trade. Their journeys lead them to explore what could be a more just future, not just for the Cofan, but for all people around the world born with oil beneath their feet.
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People of the ice
For over 4,000 years, the Inuit have lived in harmony with their Arctic environment. Today, global warming threatens the very nature of their habitat. As the ice disappears, so does the Inuit culture it is intimately connected to.
Plastic paradise : the great Pacific garbage patch
Thousands of miles away from civilization, Midway Atoll is in one of the most remote places on earth. And yet its become ground zero for The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, syphoning plastics from three distant continents. In this independent documentary film, journalist/filmmaker Angela Sun travels on a personal journey of discovery to uncover this mysterious phenomenon.
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Priceless
This non-partisan film includes a look at two national policies--agriculture and energy--shaped by a variety of interests including industry groups, political parties, lobbyists, citizen groups, candidates, and officeholders.
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A sea change
Documents how the pH balance has changed dramatically since the beginning of the industrial revolution: a 30% increase in acidification ... Experts predict that over the next century, steady increases in carbon dioxide emissions and the continued rise in the acidity of the oceans will cause most of the world's fisheries to experience a total bottom-up collapse -- a state that could last for millions of years.
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SoLa : Louisiana water stories
Investigates how the exploitation of Southern Louisiana's abundant natural resources compromised the resiliency of its ecology and culture, thus multiplying the effects of the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina.
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Standing on sacred ground. Profit and loss
From Papua New Guinea rainforests to Canada's tar sands, Profit and Loss exposes industrial threats to native peoples' health, livelihood and cultural survival. In Papua New Guinea, a Chinese government owned nickel mine has violently relocated villagers to a taboo sacred mountain, built a new pipeline and refinery on contested clan land, and is dumping mining waste into the sea. In Alberta, First Nations people suffer from rare cancers as their traditional hunting grounds are stripmined to unearth the world's third-largest oil reserve.
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Sweet crude
In a small corner of the most populous country in Africa, billions of dollars of crude oil flow under the feet of a desperate people. Immense wealth and abject poverty stand in stark contrast. The environment is decimated. The issues are complex, the answers elusive. The documentary film Sweet Crude tells the story of Nigeria's Niger Delta. The region is seething and the global stakes are high. But in this moment, there's an opportunity to find solutions. What if the world paid attention before it was too late?
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This Changes Everything
Inspired by Naomi Klein's international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana's Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.
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Toast
One of the most effective energy films ever made, TOAST illustrates our underlying dependence on fossil fuels, and takes as its example the production and distribution of a commonplace item: bread. Using only flowing images set to music, it documents all the fossil fuel inputs, from the oil well head (to make the fertilizer to grow the wheat, etc.) to the toaster.
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To the ends of the earth
This award-winning documentary looks at where we are going to find our oil and gas today - to the ends of the earth - fracking, oil sands, deepwater and unconventional drilling. The film chronicles the rise of extreme energy and a new way forward.
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Washed away
Climatologists fear that global warming will cause ocean levels to rise so drastically that whole islands will be submerged. In Washed Away, we meet two island communities struggling to prevent the disappearance of land they have lived on for centuries.
The wisdom to survive : climate change, capitalism & community
The wisdom to survive accepts the consensus of scientists that climate change has already arrived, and asks, what is keeping us from action? The film explores how unlimited growth and greed are destroying the life support system of the planet, the social fabric of society, and the lives of billions of people. Will we have the wisdom to survive?
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DVDs @ UW Bothell Library

Black wave : the legacy of the Exxon Valdez
For twenty years, Riki Ott and the fisherman of the little town of Cordova, Alaska have waged the longest legal battle in U.S. history against the world's most powerful oil company -- ExxonMobil.
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A Concerned Citizen : Civics in Action
A documentary about Dr. Riki Ott, a whistleblower who predicted the Exxon Valdez oil spill hours before it happened. A toxicologist, author, and activist, Riki has been organizing the Gulf coast communities to recover from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
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Crude Impact
Journeying from the West African Delta region to the heart of the Amazon rainforest, from Washington to Shanghai, from early man to the unknown future, Crude Impact unravels the complex entanglement of our fierce devotion to oil with the fate of indigenous cultures, human rights, our global economy and the planet itself.
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Dirty Energy
On April 20th 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and spewing 200 million barrels of oil into the ocean. DIRTY ENERGY brings to light the personal stories of the Louisiana fishermen and local residents directly impacted by the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
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Elemental
Delivers a powerful and unusually intimate portrait of modern environmental activism through the story of three eco-warriors united by their deep connection with nature and commitment to confront some of the most pressing ecological challenges of our time.
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Groundswell rising : protecting our children's air & water
This film goes beyond the subject of hydraulic fracturing. It's an optimistic documentary about civil rights, the growing movement to defend our communities from industrial harm, and the tenacious people who are deeply committed to preserving the planet for future generations.
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March Point
the story of three boys awakening to the destruction two oil refineries have brought in their communities. Ambivalent environmental ambassadors at the onset, the boys grapple with their investigative video assignment through humor, sarcasm, and a candid self-knowledge.
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Petropolis : Aerial perspectives on the Alberta tar sands
The Athabasca tar sands in Alberta are an oil reserve the size of England. Extracting crude oil that lies beneath the unspoiled wilderness requires a massive industrialized effort, effecting catastrophic damages on land, air, water, and climate.
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Shell Shock
When oil conglomerate Shell stunned investors by announcing a 20 percent reduction in its proven reserves, pensions and portfolios suffered around the world. This program reveals a pattern of exaggeration and cover-up at the company's top level -- specifically involving the former chairman and head of production.
Sweet Crude
Sweet Crude is a documentary film about the Niger Delta of Nigeria -- the humanitarian and environmental devastation there in the wake of 50 years of unregulated oil extraction, the history of non-violent protest by Niger Deltans demanding control of their own resources and the emergence of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).
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To the Ends of the Earth
Follows concerned citizens living at the frontiers of extreme oil and gas extraction, bearing witness to a global crossroads. They call for human ingenuity to rebuild society at the end of the fossil fuel era.
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White Water, Black Gold
White Water, Black Gold follows David Lavallee on his three-year journey across Western Canada in search of the truth about the impact of the world's thirstiest and dirtiest oil industry. This is a journey of jarring contrasts, from the pristine mountain ice fields that are the source of the industry's water, to the Tar Sands tailing ponds, where thousands of migrating birds have unwittingly landed and died.
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Who Killed the Electric Car?
Examines the Bush administration's role in the car's being peremptory pulled from production, the influence of the automobile industry and oil interests, and implications for the future of sustainable energy in the United States.
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DVDs @ UW Libraries (requestable)

Oil on Ice
A documentary connecting the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to decisions America makes about energy policy, transportation choices, and other seemingly unrelated matters. Caught in the balance are the culture and livelihood of the Gwich'in people and the migratory wildlife in this fragile ecosystem.
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When two worlds collide
Chronicles the conflict that arises when indigenous Peruvians take a stand against the government when President Alan Garcia begins an aggressive program of oil, gas, and mineral extraction in untouched lands in the country's Amazon region.
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