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POWERFUL DOCUMENTARY ON FIVE DECADES OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL
MOVEMENT, BEGINS NATIONWIDE THEATRICAL RELEASE MARCH 1ST
AT NEW YORK’S CINEMA VILLAGE
Lois Gibbs and Marc Weiss will be in attendance on opening night
Interviews are available with filmmaker Mark Kitchell, Marc Weiss (Sierra Club)
and Lois Gibbs (Love Canal) and others
 A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: The Battle for a Living Planet is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement – grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years from conservation to climate change. Directed and written by Mark Kitchell, Academy-Award nominated director of Berkeley in the Sixties, and narrated by Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Ashley Judd, Van Jones and Isabel Allende, the film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2012 and has won acclaim at dozens of festivals around the world.
First Run Features’ theatrical release of the film begins March 1st at the Cinema Village in New York; continues March 15th at the Nuart in Los Angeles and Landmark theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area; then opens across the country from Minneapolis and Denver to Seattle and San Diego, including a return to Washington DC’s prestigious Environmental Film Festival hosted by the National Geographic Society. See the full list of play dates here.
Inspired by the book of the same name by Philip Shabecoff and informed by advisors like the biologist E.O. Wilson, A FIERCE GREEN FIRE chronicles the largest movement of the 20th century and one of the keys to the 21st. It brings together all the major parts of environmentalism and connects them. It focuses on activism, people fighting to save their homes, their lives, the future – and succeeding against all odds.
The film unfolds in five acts, each with a central story and character:
• David Brower and the Sierra Club’s battle to halt dams in the Grand Canyon
• Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal residents’ struggle against 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals
• Paul Watson and Greenpeace’s campaigns to save whales and baby harp seals
• Chico Mendes and Brazilian rubbertappers’ fight to save the Amazon rainforest
• Bill McKibben and the 25-year effort to address the impossible issue – climate change
Surrounding these main stories are strands like environmental justice, going back to the land, and movements of the global south such as Wangari Maathai in Kenya. Vivid archival film brings it all back and insightful interviews with activists shed light on what it all means. The film offers a deeper view of environmentalism as civilizational change, bringing our industrial society into sustainable balance with nature. It’s the battle for a living planet.
The film arrives at a moment of promise: nearly 25 years after Dr. James Hansen first warned of global warming; 8 years after Katrina; 3 years after the Gulf oil disaster; 2 years after meltdown at Fukushima; a year and a half since halting the Keystone Pipeline; and half a year since the wakeup call that was Hurricane Sandy, the capper to the hottest year on record. As Obama begins a second term, more people than ever are active, with actions such as Stop Oil, the Obama Climate Legacy Campaign, and the February 17th Day of Action in Washingon, DC. 2013 may be the year that grassroots pressure finally forces action to halt climate change.
A FIERCE GREEN FIRE tells stories about four successful movements, then takes up the biggest cause of all – climate change – still in suspense. The film gives us reason to believe change can come.
Narrators for each act include Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, activist Van Jones, author Isabel Allende, and Meryl Streep.
Featured in the film are Lois Gibbs, who led the protests at Love Canal, started the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, and has spent 30+ years in grassroots activism; Paul Watson, a founder of Greenpeace who headed the baby seal campaign and was subsequently kicked out of the organization for going too far, and then founded the Sea Shepherd Society; Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, the first book about global warming, who after a decade of frustration founded 350.org, a leading organization battling climate change; Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism and Blessed Unrest, an eco-entrepreneur and visionary, now pursuing new solar technologies; Stewart Brand, publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Co-Evolution Quarterly, who recently wrote Whole Earth Discipline which explores paths to the future; Martin Litton, a main ally in conservation battles from Dinosaur Monument in the ‘50s to the Grand Canyon and Redwood National Park in the ‘60s; Carl Pope, former Executive Director of The Sierra Club; John Adams, founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the most influential environmental groups ever; and Robert Bullard, pioneering environmental justice advocate and author of Dumping in Dixie as well as the study Toxic Waste and Race, who closes the film on a universal note: “There’s no Hispanic air. There’s no African-American air. There’s air! If you breathe air – and most people I know do breathe air – then I would consider you an environmentalist.”
Director/Producer/Writer Mark Kitchell’s Berkeley in the Sixties – one of the defining films about the protest movements that shook America during the 1960s – received the Sundance Audience Award and the Dupont-Columbia Award, was nominated for an Academy Award and named Best Documentary by the National Society of Film Critics. Kitchell went to NYU film school, where he made The Godfather Comes to Sixth St., a cinema verite look at his neighborhood caught up in filming The Godfather II – for which he received another (student) Academy Award nomination.
Executive Producer Marc Weiss is the creator and former Executive Producer of P.O.V., the award-winning documentary series now preparing for its 26th season on PBS. A longtime activist, Weiss was recently asked to help work on the Sierra Club's Obama Climate Legacy Project, a 100-day action plan designed to encourage President Obama to lead on climate in his second term.
Early Praise for A FIERCE GREEN FIRE:
"The material is vast and it’s an incredibly dynamic film. It’s shaping up to be the documentary of record on the environmental movement."
- Cara Mertes, Director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program
"Winningly spans the broad scope of environmental history… connecting its origins with the variety of issues still challenging society today." - Justin Lowe, The Hollywood Reporter
"Rarely do environmental-themed films come with the ambitious scope of ‘A Fierce Green Fire’… which aims at nothing less than the history of environmentalism itself."
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Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times
"The most ambitious environmental documentary since 'An Inconvenient Truth' tries to make the case that we just might win." - Michael Roberts, Outside Magazine
"The film left me emotionally drained and profoundly hopeful."
-Bruce Barcott, On Earth Magazine
"Brilliant! Should be assigned viewing for all of us, especially those political leaders currently manning the helm of spaceship earth." - Jay Meehan, Park Record
A FIERCE GREEN FIRE
101 minutes, 2012
Producer, Director & Writer: MARK KITCHELL
Cinematographer: VICENTE FRANCO
Editors: KEN SCHNEIDER, VERONICA SELVER, JONATHAN BECKHARDT, GARY WEIMBERG
Senior Archivist: BETSY BAYHA
Narrators: ROBERT REDFORD, MERYL STREEP, VAN JONES, ISABEL ALLENDE, ASHLEY JUDD
Original Music: GEORGE MICHALSKI, DAVE DENNY, RANDALL WALLACE, GARTH STEVENSON, SONYA KITCHELL, TODD BOEKELHEIDE.
Inspired by the book: A FIERCE GREEN FIRE by Philip Shabecoff
Press notes, photos, trailer and more at www.firstrunfeatures.com/fiercegreenfire_press.html |
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