Film Society of Lincoln Center Announces 'Green Screens' Environmental Film Series

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the lineup for Green Screens (May 31-June 5), a six-day film series of environmental documentaries. Previously an ongoing monthly screening presentation, the Green Screens series will expand that effort with a concentrated program of films screened in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (144 West 65th Street) that examine eco-crises, their effects and also highlight what people all around the world are doing to face these challenges.

FSLC Programmer Isa Cucinotta said, "This series of documentaries illuminates and enlightens and in some cases may even frighten the audience as filmmakers focus on the state of our world, its creatures and eco-systems, and the effects climate change, pollution and diminishing resources are having on us at home. These films offer an opportunity to get a first-hand view from the people around the world who are immediately affected as well as from the scientists and investigators looking for the solution to these crises."

Highlights of the six-day series include such media-hot topics as fracking via Charles Wilkinson's PEACE OUT, the battle between corporate genetically modified farming versus smaller farms in Bettina Borgfeld's & David Bernet Peter's RAISING RESISTANCE, and the cap-and-trade debate through Amy Miller's THE CARBON RUSH.

Peter Young's THE LAST OCEAN looks at ongoing threats from the fishing industry in the Ross Sea, with a goal to remove at least half of the Antarctic Toothfish from what is currently the most pristine marine ecosystem on Earth. Gabriela Cowperthwaite's BLACKFISH uses the story of a killer whale that has killed several people while in captivity to explore issues regarding the treatment of the species in the sea-park industry. The film was an audience favorite at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Jan van den Berg's and Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann's SILENT SNOW: THE INVISIBLE POISONING OF THE WORLD and Edward Brown's UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS are films that look at, respectively, the accumulation of chemicals from pesticides in the Arctic snows and their effect on the Inuit people and the connection between our population's rising disease rates and the more than 80,000 chemicals in our commercial system and the 200 synthetic compounds that interact with our cells on a daily basis.

On the lighter side, Alicia Dwyer's XMAS WITHOUT CHINA looks at the impact of the media-fed fear of Chinese products, via two families: one that takes the challenge to live without any Chinese-made products in their home through Christmas, and the other, a recently immigrated family from China fulfilling their idea of the American dream via a new, bigger home complete with outdoor Christmas lights.

All screenings will take place in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam). Tickets will go on sale by May 16, 2013 at the Film Society's box offices; and online at www.FilmLinc.com. Single screening tickets are $13; $9 for students and seniors (62+); and $8 for Film Society members. Visit www.FilmLinc.com for complete information.

Films, Descriptions & Schedule

BLACKFISH (2013) 90min
Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Country: USA
BLACKFISH tells the story of Tilikum, a performing killer whale that killed several people while in captivity. Along the way, director-producer Gabriela Cowperthwaite compiles surprising footage and emotional interviews to explore the creature's extraordinary nature, the species' cruel treatment in captivity, the lives and losses of the trainers, and the pressures brought to bear by the multi-billion dollar sea-park industry. This emotionally wrenching story challenges us to consider our relationship to nature and reveals how little we humans have learned from these highly intelligent and enormously sentient fellow mammals.
Sat June 1: 8:45pm

THE CARBON RUSH (2012) 84min
Director: Amy Miller
Country: Canada
Cap and trade was supposed to be the solution to curbing carbon emissions, but sometimes the best plans have unintended consequences. THE CARBON RUSH takes us across four continents to see up-close the projects working through the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol-designed Clean Development Mechanism. These projects often have negative impacts on local communities. Adding market incentives to create a new industry may benefit project owners, but the poorest and most vulnerable suffer loss of land, jobs and even life.
Sun June 2: 8:15pm
Wed June 5: 4:15pm

ETERNAL AMAZON (Amazônia Eterna) (2012) 87min
Director: Belisario Franca
Country: Brazil
ETERNAL AMAZON investigates successful initiatives that make sustainable use of the rainforest. Farming, fishing, ranching, mining, energy, tourism, logging, and industrial activities, together with the presence of its indigenous people, are all on the rainforest agenda and explored in this documentary. It portrays the daily lives of the forest people as the guardians of this great natural heritage that could last into eternity, if properly managed. The protagonists of sustainable initiatives, engaged in discussions with leading specialists in the environment, public policy and economics, work to find ways to use natural resources with minimal harmful impact.
Sun June 2: 6:20pm
Mon June 3: 2:50pm

FALL AND WINTER (2013) 102min
Director: Matt Anderson
Country: USA
FALL AND WINTER is the result of a 16,000-mile journey across the U.S. in search of answers to our unfolding global crises. Extreme weather, soil depletion, water and air pollution threaten civilization itself. How did we get here? And what do we do about it? Stunningly photographed, the film draws on past wisdom and uncovers new, ingenious strategies for the future. A psycho-spiritual guide for the 21st century.
Fri May 31: 9pm
Wed June 5: 2:10pm

INTO THE GYRE (2012) 45min
Director: Scott Elliott
Country: USA
INTO THE GYRE follows the journey of a team of scientists searching for plastic pollution in the remote Saragasso Sea. Run by the Sea Education Association (SEA), this unprecedented expedition measured the amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean and studied its effects on marine ecosystems, with surprising results.
Screening with:
YASUNI (2013) 30min
Director: Nicolás Entel
Country: Ecuador
YASUNI explores what is at the heart of Ecuador's Yasuni-ITT Initiative, which aims to protect Yasuni National Park from oil exploitation. This documentary was born from a need to provide all indigenous communities that call Yasuni their home a legitimate voice.
And:
CARBON FOR WATER (2011) 22min
Directors: Evan Abramson & Carmen Elsa Lopez
Country: USA
In just five weeks, an innovative company using carbon credits for financing gave 4.5 million people in Kenya's Western Province access to safe drinking water in this award-winning documentary.
Sat June 1: 6:00pm
Tue June 4: 1:30pm

THE LAST OCEAN (2012) 85min
Director: Peter Young
Country: New Zealand
Do we fish the last ocean or do we protect it? The most pristine marine ecosystem on Earth, the Ross Sea, has remained free from widespread pollution, invasive species, mining and over-fishing. Home to high concentrations of wildlife and an incredible array of animals, many found nowhere else on the planet, it is teeming with large predatory fish, whales, seals and penguins that collectively comprise the last intact marine ecosystem on Earth. It is a living laboratory providing scientists with the last chance to understand how a healthy marine ecosystem functions. Facing depletEd Fisheries everywhere else, the fishing industry has found its way south in pursuit of the Antarctic toothfish (sold as Chilean sea bass). Fishers plan to remove 50 percent of the adult toothfish from the Ross Sea and, in so doing, will destroy the natural balance of Earth's last untouched ocean. Featuring beautiful Antarctic footage, this film presents the conservationist case and the campaign to counteract the fishing lobby.
Fri May 31: 2:30pm
Wed June 5: 8:30pm

LOST RIVERS (2012) 72min
Director: Caroline Bâcle
Country: Canada
Early city planners buried polluted waterways underground for the health of the crowded urban communities. Under the cities, they still flow, out of sight and out of mind... until now. Urban dwellers are on a quest to reconnect with this denigrated natural world. LOST RIVERS takes us on an adventure underground and across the globe, retracing the history of these lost urban rivers by plunging into archival maps and going underground with clandestine urban explorers. From China to New York, people are excited to uncover the rivers, now clean after decades of environmental activism, and incorporate them into a new cityscape.
Mon June 3: 1:15pm
Wed June 5: 6:15pm (Q&A)

PEACE OUT (2011) 80min
Director: Charles Wilkinson
Country: Canada
In Canada's vast Peace River region, mega-projects include a major new dam, tens of thousands of hydro-fracked shale gas wells, a nuclear power plant, and the Tar Sands. On the positive side of the ledger, countless jobs are being created, resource revenues are pouring in, and schools and hospitals are staying open. Alternatively, there are credible charges that multi-national corporations are despoiling an area the size of Florida, converting public assets into private fortunes and leaving a wake of Mordor-like destruction. PEACE OUT resists pointing a finger at the usual suspects. Instead, it probes the deeper causes underlying the symptoms of environmental exploitation.
Sun June 2: 2:45pm

PEAK (2012) 91min
Director: Hannes Lang
Countries: Germany/Italy
Shot in the South Tyrolean Alps over the course of a year, PEAK uncovers the drastic steps man must take to preserve a once idyllic natural paradise. The high mountains are a haven for skiers, but the warming climate has diminished the snowfall to a point where technology must take over or the tourist industry will be lost. Snow machines, a reservoir, and other "modifications" require more planning, more money, more technology-all to recreate a supposedly unspoiled natural paradise.
Fri May 31: 4:30pm
Sat June 1: 4:10pm

RAISING RESISTANCE (2011) 84min
Directors: Bettina Borgfeld & David Bernet
Countries: Germany/Switzerland
Repeated exposure to a stressor creates resistance. Focusing on small farms in Paraguay, RAISING RESISTANCE shows how the proliferation of genetically modified soy crops have pushed the campesinos to fight for the preservation of their land and crop diversity. A local farmer tries to block herbicides from being sprayed on nearby corporate-owned farms as the wind and water will carry it to his farm decimating his crops. Worse yet, after repeated sprayings the weeds become resistant to the herbicide, necessitating more applications of ever more potent chemicals. An important film that connects our first world desires to the devastation of small farmers worlds away.
Sun June 2: 4:30pm

SILENT SNOW: THE INVISIBLE POISONING OF THE WORLD (2011) 71min
Directors: Jan van den Berg & Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann
Country: Netherlands
Travelling on ocean currents and carried in snowfall, chemical residue accumulates in the once-pristine Arctic. These pesticides are poisoning both the Inuit people and the animals, causing illness and even threatening the unborn. Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann travels from her home in Greenland to communities in Uganda, India and Costa Rica to find local causes of the contamination that makes its way to the Arctic. The result is a film both highly personal and universal.
Sun June 2: 8:30pm
Mon June 3: 4:50pm

UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS (2012) 90min
Director: Edward Brown
Country: USA
We have over 80,000 chemicals in our commercial system, and some of those have found their way straight into our bodies. With constant, daily exposure, we have approximately 200 synthetic industrial compounds that are interacting with our cells every single day. Until recently, science really didn't understand what that could mean for us in the long run, but that is changing. Globally, disease rates are on the rise without explanation-yet the issues are complex and often muddied by the maneuvering of political and corporate interests. Director Ed Brown explores these issues as a father and a filmmaker to see if we can prevent disease before it happens.
Fri May 31: 6:30pm
Tue June 4: 3:30pm

XMAS WITHOUT CHINA (2013) 63min
Director: Alicia Dwyer
Country: USA
Following a media-fed fear of Chinese products, Tom Xia, who immigrated to the U.S. with his parents as a child, challenges a family to live without any Chinese-made products in their home through Christmas. One concerned young family takes him up on it. But while the Jones family empties their home into a storage unit, Tom's parents are fulfilling their idea of the American dream: a new, bigger home complete with outdoor Christmas lights. Through the filter of these two families, ideas of globalization, American identity and living in a cross-cultural world are explored. The good-natured participants are genuinely open to the humor of the situation and to understanding one another.
Sun June 2: 1:15pm
Mon June 3: 9:15pm

Free Amphitheater Screenings
Cool Stories for When the Planet Gets Hot
Cool Stories for When the Planet Gets Hot is an international art video and short film competition now in its fourth edition. Producer ARTPORT, making waves invited video artists from all over the world to submit, in particular from areas most affected by Global Warming. As varied as the conceptual and technical approaches of the "Cool Stories" are, their core message is unmistakable; if we destroy nature, we threaten our very own existence. All the videos are between 30 seconds and 3 minutes long and will screen throughout the day.
Free and open to the public!
May 31 - June 5 (on loop)

Public Screening Schedule

Screening Venue:
The Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65 Street, between Broadway & Amsterdam

Friday, May 31
2:30PM THE LAST OCEAN (85min)
4:30PM PEAK (91min)
6:30PM UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS (90min)
9:00PM FALL AND WINTER (102min)

Saturday, June 1
2:30PM SILENT SNOW: THE INVISIBLE POISONING OF THE WORLD (71min)
4:10PM PEAK (91min)
6:00PM INTO THE GYRE (45min)/YASUNI (30min)/CARBON FOR WATER (22min)
8:45PM BLACKFISH (90min)

Sunday, June 2
1:15PM XMAS WITHOUT CHINA (63min)
2:45PM PEACE OUT (80min)
4:30PM RAISING RESISTANCE (84min)
6:20PM ETERNAL AMAZON (Amazônia Eterna) (87min)
8:15PM THE CARBON RUSH (84min)

Monday, June 3
1:15PM LOST RIVERS (72min)
2:50PM ETERNAL AMAZON (Amazônia Eterna) (87min)
4:50PM SILENT SNOW: THE INVISIBLE POISONING OF THE WORLD (71min)
9:15PM XMAS WITHOUT CHINA (63min)

Tuesday, June 4
1:30PM INTO THE GYRE (45min)/YASUNI (30min)/CARBON FOR WATER (22min)
3:30PM UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS (90min)
9:30PM THE LAST REFUGE (55min)

Wednesday, June 5
2:10PM FALL AND WINTER (102min)
4:15PM THE CARBON RUSH (84min)
6:15PM LOST RIVERS (72min)
8:30PM THE LAST OCEAN (85min)

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize and support new directors, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of film. Among its yearly programming of film festivals, film series and special events, the Film Society presents two film festivals in particular that annually attract global attention: the New York Film Festival which just celebrated its 50th edition, and New Directors/New Films which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine and a year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures, educational and transmedia programs and specialty film releases at the famous Walter Reade Theater and the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stonehenge Partners, Stella Artois, the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts.