By Pamela Calvert/Plain Speech

Pam Calvert’s film on health issues arising from endocrine disrupters in the First Nation’s community surrounded on three sides by the chemical in Sarnia Ontario, across from Port Huron Michigan, is in rough cut and will be shown locally in mid September. The nerve center of Canada’s petrochemical industry, Sarnia, Ontario once enjoyed the highest standard living in the country—but now the bill has come due, in compromised environmental and community health. How do you stay in the home you love when the price you pay may be not only your own life, but the safety of future generations? In The Beloved Community, a petrochemical town faces a toxic legacy head-on. THE BELOVED COMMUNITY is a co-presentation of Detroit Public Television. Jeff Forster, Executive Producer.

For more information: pcalvert@plainspeech.tv

Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on “where,” but on “what’s there.” It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103767/ ($11.32 VHS @ amazon.com)

A collection of Cold War public service announcements and other kitsch synthesized into “a comic horror film” by Rafferty et al (1982). From the IMDb website: “An ostensibly tongue in cheek documentary about the nuclear age of the late 40’s and 50’s, juxtaposing the horrific realities of the arms race with cheery misinformation(and simplistic redbaiting) doled out to the public by the US government and private sector. The overall effect is chilling- for every scene of hilariously misguided propaganda and dismissal of nuclear danger(an army film cheerfully assures a fictional fallout victim that his hair will grow back in no time) there’s scenes of Pacific islanders affected by fallout from remote nuclear tests and US soldiers getting debriefed on the minimal dangers of witnessing a nuclear detonation a few miles away(with goggles on, to be fair). Not an objective documentary by any means – not that it should be – the filmmakers excoriate the duplicity of the government and the mock the complacency of the public with equal zeal, but there’s a certain absurdist charm to the whole affair.”

AFFLUENZA is a groundbreaking film that diagnoses a serious social disease – caused by consumerism, commercialism and rampant materialism – that is having a devastating impact on our families, communities, and the environment. We have more stuff, but less time, and our quality of life seems to be deteriorating. By using personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips, and “uncommercial” breaks to illuminate the nature and extent of the disease, AFFLUENZA has appealed to widely diverse audiences: from freshmen orientation programs to consumer credit counseling, and from religious congregations to marketing classes.

With the help of historians and archival film, AFFLUENZA reveals the forces that have dramatically transformed us from a nation that prized thriftiness – with strong beliefs in “plain living and high thinking” – into the ultimate consumer society.

The program ends with a prescription to cure the disease. A growing number of people are opting out of the consumer chase, and choosing “voluntary simplicity” instead. They are working and shopping less, spending more time with friends and family, volunteering in their communities, and enjoying their lives more.

www.bullfrogfilms.com ($250) (can sometimes be found on amazon.com)

Animation by Chung (1996)
I have a VHS tape collection of the show’s segments that aired on MTV’s “Liquid Television” years ago. Female bionic anti-hero struggles against the forces of order and oppression, and with the great questions of postmodern ontology. From Wikipedia website: “Æon Flux is set in a bizarre, dystopian, future world of mutant creatures, clones, and robots. The title character is a tall, scantily-clad secret agent from the society of Monica, skilled in assassination and acrobatics. Her mission is to infiltrate the strongholds of the neighboring country of Bregna, which is led by her sometimes-enemy and sometimes-ally Trevor Goodchild. Monica represents a dynamic anarchist society, while Bregna embodies a centralized, scientifically planned state. The names of their respective characters reflect this: Flux as the self-directed agent from Monica and Goodchild as the technocratic leader of Bregna.

Jeffrey Stine tells us: The Scout Report has reported on several aspects of the AIRNow website before, but this is the first time that we’ve noticed that they have a very fine selection of short movies on their website. These short films are designed for the general public, and they deal with such topics as air quality control, how ozone is formed, and a special presentation for children on ozone. The films range in length from 13 to 21 minutes, and one can imagine that these multimedia presentations could be used in a variety of classroom settings as they are quite accessible and jargon-free. Additionally, the air quality presentation is available in Spanish, and the rest of their website is definitely worth looking over.

Air Quality Movies [Macromedia Flash Player, Windows Media Player]
http://www.airnow.gov

Directed by Jennifer Baichwal

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as “stunning” or “beautiful,” and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.

The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.

Shot in Super-16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us: there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of pre-senting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.

2006, Canada, 90 mins.