Ridgefield Playhouse to Screen SILENT SNOW: THE INVISIBLE POISONING OF THE WORLD, 9/8

Silent Snow: The Invisible Poisoning of the World, a documentary film event, will come to The Ridgefield Playhouse Sunday, September 8.

The Arctic plains are an eminent example of nature's untouched beauty: an endless nothing in which only few know how to survive. But a silent assassin is destroying the Inuit community in Greenland. Chemical residues from all over the world accumulate here invisibly, poisoning both humans and animals. By ocean currents and attached to snow, pesticides like DDT are carried northbound into Inuit land, causing illness and premature death. On Sunday, September 8, at 6:30 p.m., Silent Snow: The Invisible Poisoning of The World, ?will be screened as a Ridgefield Playhouse Documentary Film Series event. Silent Snow explores what turns out to be a structural pollution of the entire global environmental system.

A post-screening Q&A with Director Jan van den Berg and Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann, the subject of the film (via Skype), will be hosted by Emmy Award-winning journalists Ira Joe Fisher and Morton Dean. This event is underwritten by Cohen and Wolf, P.C. and The Ridgefield Press with media sponsor WSHU Public Radio Group.

In Silent Snow: The Invisible Poisoning of the World, Pipaluk, a young Inuit woman, searches for the silent assassin that slowly poisons her people. A research journey through three continents makes it clearly evident that persistent pesticides are not only threatening her own country, but the entire world. This feature documentary by award-winning Netherland's director Jan van den Berg aims to raise international awareness of the issue. A group of experienced Inuit starts out on a dangerous dog-sled expedition through their barren land. But while global warming and disappearing icebergs are problems they can perceive directly, the pollution of their land remains a hard to imagine threat.

Interwoven with the polar expedition, a young Greenlandic woman (Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann) starts on a journey around the world to find the local causes of the contamination. She travels to three continents, where she is confronted with conflicting interests of short-term gains and healthy solutions for agriculture, industries and health care. Pipaluk meets the people behind the sources of pollution and discovers the heartbreaking dilemmas that lie at the heart of it. In Africa, for example, where some people are looking for alternatives for DDT, its grey poisonous clouds are a cheap way of saving millions of lives in malaria prevention. The disastrous health issues that result on the long term are conveniently put aside. In Central America, Pipaluk meets plantation workers who suffer from various diseases caused by the use of dangerous pesticides. In India, a river keeper who fights against the contamination of the river tells her that people from his own community are threatening him, as they depend financially on the chemical factories there.

For reserved seats ($10 adults, $7.50 seniors & $5 students by calling the box office), call the box office at (203) 438-5795, or order online tat ridgefieldplayhouse.org. The Ridgefield Playhouse is a not-for-profit performing arts center located at 80 East Ridge, parallel to Main Street, Ridgefield, CT.

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