Cinema Fridays: wetlands, down in the delta, and rethinking energy

Harvest to Restore, directed by Michelle Benoit, co-produced by the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, Louisiana Public Broadcasting, and Côte Blanche Productions, Inc.

Harvest to Restore examines the new methods being used to try and save Louisiana's rapidly disappearing coastline and wetlands.

From the website:

It took seven thousand five hundred years for the Mississippi River to create the wetlands of Southeast Louisiana. It took about seventy-five years for Man to effect the environmental changes that would destroy them. Scientists estimate that there's only a decade, at most two, before it's too late to save them. When a problem is this massive - a thousand square miles of coastal lands have already disappeared - exactly what is the best course of action? This documentary looks at one option - pipeline sediment delivery - and how it's being used in other countries around the world, and how it might be implemented in the Louisiana coastal zone.

The 30-minute documentary is directed by award-winning writer/producer/director Michelle Benoit, along with co-producer/husband Glen Pitre, both lifelong residents of the Louisiana coast. "We cannot study the coastal erosion crisis anymore," Michelle Benoit, told he Tri-Parish Times. "The window is closing. We have to get out there and do something."

Ballast, directed by Lance Hammer, Alluvial Film Company, currently in limited theatrical release in New York before going nationwide later this month

Ballast, a powerful story of loss and resilience, is being hailed as a riveting, lyrical portrait of an emotionally frayed family whose lives are torn asunder by a tragic act in a small Mississippi Delta town.

 

Directed by Lance Hammer, the independent feature film was shot in the Mississippi Delta with an unknown cast of local amateur and professional actors. Ballast won the directing and cinematography awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and according to The New York Times review, this films is shaping up as one of the most acclaimed independent films of the year.

 

The Chicago Tribune calls Ballast that rare American indie that brings the viewer "fully into relatively unexplored corners of this bountiful paradox of a country, and without ennobling the people on the screen in phony ways, we get to know their stories, concerns and environs naturally."

 

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Kilowatt Ours: A Plan to Re-energize America, directed by Jeff Barrie, currently showing on PBS affiliates

Kilowatt Ours is an award-winning film that presents a timely, solutions-oriented look at one of America's most pressing environmental challenges: energy.

From the United Nations Film Association description:

Kilowatt Ours follows filmmaker Jeff Barrie on his eighteen-month journey across the southeast United States, where more than six tons of coal are burned annually to generate electricity for the average home. Barrie takes viewers from our light switches at home to the sources of our energy, examining social and environmental consequences such as global warming, mountain top removal, air pollution, childhood asthma and mercury contamination. Barrie makes the case that environmental problems could be minimized by utilizing alternative technologies that are available today. The solutions are surprisingly accessible and affordable to the average American. Kilowatt Ours presents viewers with an ambitious plan for shifting America's energy paradigm towards conservation and renewable power.

In fact the film has become a national movement to promote energy conservation, efficiency and renewable energy by showing how every Americans can conserve energy. Challenging the political leadership's call to use cheap coal from West Virginia mountaintop removal mines -- and nuclear energy -- the film focuses on success stories like the Austin, TX conservation power plant and gives us easy to digest answers using technology and techniques that are already available.

The film is scheduled for broadcast on public television stations in more than 50 cities across the United States this month. Check your local listings to see when your station is planning to show the film and for more information visit KilowattOurs.org.