Environmental pollution vs neighborhoods of color in Alexander John Glustrom's dire doc, MOSSVILLE: When Great Trees Fall

Right off the bat, we meet a local undertaker who informs us, "Mossville is a small community. But a lot of people do die." Gosh: You think there might be a problem here? More like a mini-apocalypse. Mossville, the very-nearly late and lamented town, as well as MOSSVILLE: When Great Trees Fall, the documentary that tells the town's terrible story, slap you in the kisser with the connection between deliberate environmental pollution and the destruction of not merely individuals but entire communities -- most readily those inhabited by minorities and the poor.

There's nothing subtle about the message or the style here. As directed by Alexander John Glustrom, the film may be about as awful and depressing as any you've seen regarding this growing problem worldwide.  The documentary also seems rather hit-or-miss as to what it has the time and budget to cover. Yet even this somehow works to the film's advantage, as it manages to include what's most important, while doing this in a 75-minute time frame.

In that short period, Mr. Glustrom gives us a history of the town (it began just post-slavery, as seven families joined forces to begin the community, and it had prospered ever since -- until large industry came in and began its destruction).

The latest industry to creep in has been SASOL (a South African-based firm that stands for South African Synthetic Oil Liquid), which we see at work both here, building its new Louisiana plant, and at home, where it began during Apartheid and has continued suppressing South African blacks ever since. (We even see Louisiana's ex-governor Bobby Jindal making his sell-out speech regarding SASOL.)

The man the movie concentrates on most fully is also one of Mossville's last residents: Stacey Ryan (above), a husband and father whose refusal to leave Mossville, where he was born and raised, has resulted in his increasing ill health and living apart from his family. We watch as Stacey must provide his own heat, gas and water -- as all utilities no longer reach his home, thanks to SASOL and the local government.

The final indignity comes when the company tries to prevent him from even driving up to and/or leaving his place of residence. They cannot do this legally, however, so for once Stacey wins the day. The photo above shows his tiny piece of land and home surrounded by a fence he has built; below, we see SASOL's encroachment upon that land.

As the documentary moves inexorably along, you'll probably find yourself alternately sad and/or seething, over and over again. Put yourself in Mr. Ryan's shoes, and you'll feel the kind of torture that leads to a slow, agonizing death. The film makes its necessary point about how environmental pollution and human rights abuses are linked due to the kind of corporate power and sleazy politicians that see lives  -- particularly these kinds of lives -- as utterly expendable.

By the way, the would-be "buy-outs" SASOL offers Mossville residents are shown to be so paltry that they do not allow those residents to move into decent accommodation elsewhere. When, toward movie's end, Ryan prays to his parents, long dead from cancer like so many other Mossville folk, "Daddy, mommy: Give me strength," and then, "Dear Lord, just give me enough time to see my baby raised, then I can go see my parents," you will be ready to plead with the man to toss in the towel. And hope that someone has the courage and smarts to get SASOL off the face of the earth.

Technical aspects are all they need to be, with the music of Carlos José Alvarez properly beautiful, solemn and dirge-like. From Passion River, the documentary opened in virtual theaters this past weekend in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

Chevannes' and Shields' LIVING DOWNSTREAM has FSLC debut on Oct. 20

A shining example of the "personal as political," the new documentary LIVING DOWNSTREAM is only 55 minutes long, but what a bracing amount of content and importance, not to mention feeling, is contained therein. The movie tracks the mission and the story of ecologist and cancer survivor (for now) Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., who struggles righteously and quietly to call attention to what man-made carcinogens from the production and disposal of chemicals are doing to the health of ourselves and our children.

The film's title comes from a parable told at its beginning about villagers who live along a riverbank and the bodies, more and more of them, that come floating down-stream. These good people try to help the drowning victims but it never occurs to them to go upstream to discover who is pushing the people into the river. By the end of this short documentary, the filmmakers -- director and producer Chanda Chevannes (above) and editor-producer Nathan Shields

(below) -- along with their subject, Dr. Steingraber, make certain that we understand that we are those villagers and that we had better do our best to see that these murders cease. As does the recent doc Pink Ribbons Inc., this one also questions why so much time, money and effort are spent looking for a "cure" for cancer, rather than simply preventing its spread via these vile toxins.

The film's secret weapon is simply Steingraber herself. The woman's research is on the mark, while her quiet, reasonable voice somehow makes itself heard quite strongly and beautifully. A bladder cancer survivor, she explains that "There is lots of cancer in my family, but the punch line of my story is that I was adopted." This knowledge made her pay ever closer attention to the environment. But who, she asks us, gets to decide just how bad a certain health problem is -- those who are sick, or those who are creating and disposing of those chemicals that are making us sick? As usual, it's the latter, for that's how we "regulate" and "decide" here in America, whether it's about Wall Street and business or food and drugs.

We get the history of DDT vis a vis WWII (and how the left-over chemicals developed at that time were put to use without the proper testing), along with that of Rachel Carson, the scientist who, fifty years ago, warned the USA and the world of the what was already happening, even as she herself was dying of cancer.

We learn about Atrazine, banned by the European Union but still in heavy use here in the USA. We meet Steingraber's family -- husband and kids -- and even her cousin John, a farmer who is trying to use Atrazine as carefully as he can. Good luck.

In a speech she gives before a packed house she uses breast milk, in a sealed bottle that is passed from one audience member to the next, as an example of what's best about a child's nourishment that has now been compromised by our industry. We see Buzzard's Bay in New Bedford, Massachu-setts, the most polluted site for PCB's in the USA (and possibly the entire world). Yet progress is being made here, so why not elsewhere?

This woman knows what she is doing. In another important speech, she explains to her audience that this country claims that there is not enough evidence to ban Atrazine; yet there is now more evidence of its harm that there was that of PCBs when they were finally outlawed. Yet Steingraber is never strident. Neither is this movie. Instead, it is timely, intelligent, deeply felt and very well communicated. Consider it another must-see.

Living Downstream will have its Film Society of Lincoln Center premiere at the -- correction: it will not be screening at the Walter Reade Theater, as I stated earlier, but at the FSLC's new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center this coming Saturday, October 20, one time only at 2pm, followed by a 45-minute Q&A moderated by Mountainfilm director David Holbrooke. The 55-minute film will also be making appearances in cities around the country; to view the schedule, simply click here. And finally, the film will be shown on Outside TV, at some point in November.

DVDebut: Joe Berlinger's CRUDE tackles Ecuador's (via Chevron) oil pollution

A wide canvas filled with visual and verbal sound bites, CRUDE, the 2009 documen-
tary produced & directed by Joe Berlinger (shown below), brings us up close to the 15-year battle going on be-
tween a giant cor-
poration and some Ecuadorian peasants over the petroleum spillage and seepage that appears to be causing horrendous death -- short-term by poison, long-term via cancer. Because the corporation in question began with Texaco, then took a detour via an Ecuadorian consortium, and is now Chevron, portion-
ing responsibility (not to mention bringing about justice) grows ever more difficult and frustrating.

Most viewers, myself included, will be sickened by the havoc caused the villagers and their livestock/animals that live near any of the many polluting sites (the shot of a duck dying is particularly effective) and then made even angrier by the transparent refusal of the flacks and lackeys of the corporation to accept responsibility. The villagers themselves are represented by lawyers from the US and elsewhere who, it seems, do their best to bring the matter to a close. But the foot-
dragging of Chevron (time and its frustrations, as well as vast amounts of money, are on the corporation's side) means that the problem simply goes on and on.

Mr. Berlinger (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica) bounces about from place to place, continent to continent, in trying to tell this story. He manages it, all right, though I would have appreciated less repetition and more information:  How did the chief US lawyer Steven Donziger get involved in all this? Just how much was Ecuador itself responsible for during the interim tenure of the "consortium"?  Activist Pablo Fajardo's murdered brother, whom we hear about briefly, deserves a bit more attention. If you're going to bring something like this to the scenario, fill us in, please.

With the election of left-wing President Rafael Correa, the tide appears to turn, but this tide moves slowly. Then Sting and his wife Trudie Styler (shown above with a village family) become involved. For all that can be said about the nonsense of celebrities and their "causes," the one hands-on, positive thing we see by film's end are huge tanks employed in some villages to collect rainwater that will be safe to drink.  These arrive via the Styler/Sting connection.

We also see some of the natural beauty of the Amazon region, which is easily offset by the sickness and death in the middle of it all.  Crude is an ironic title in several ways. While it obviously refers to the oil at the center of the situation, it also describes the conduct of the oil companies involved, as well as the style of the documentary itself.  If it is preaching to the converted, of which I am one (big surprise: The New York Times loved the film; The New York Post hated it), at least the information it presents is interesting enough to perhaps draw in some newcomers and/or fence-sitters. 

Throughout the documentary, we witness both sides playing their PR cards:  "Try to use the word 'Texaco' as often as possible," lawyer Donziger advises Ms Styler at one point.  There's an even-
handedness at work here, even if the hand directing the film is clearly on the side of the downtrodden. The end credits actually suggest going to the Chevron web site to learn even more about the com-
pany's viewpoint on all this. 

The DVD of Crude, via First Run Features, arrives for sale and rental on Tuesday, Febru-
ary 23, and is filled with extras -- one of the more interesting of which shows the film's pre-
mier in Ecuador, where it is greeted, not surprisingly, with full houses and activist audiences.