Environmental activists and just plain folk fight the power in A FIERCE GREEN FIRE
A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: THE BATTLE FOR A LIVING PLANET (Mark Kitchell, 2012)
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Sunday, May 12 & 19, $14, 8:00
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.afiercegreenfire.com
A lot of documentaries wear their hearts on their sleeves, pushing a specific agenda, but as far as agenda go, A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet has a pretty good one. Directed by Mark Kitchell (Berkeley in the Sixties), the film serves not only as a history of the environmental movement around the world but also demonstrates how one person can indeed make a difference. But the hundred-minute documentary does itself no favors by using several narrators who are certain to infuriate conservative Republicans and naysayers, ensuring that the film is most likely going to preach only to the converted and not spread its vital message to a more mainstream audience. A Fierce Green Fire is divided into five thematic sections, narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende, and Meryl Streep, respectively. Using archival footage and new interviews, Kitchell examines David Brower and the Sierra Club’s fight to prevent a dam project in the Grand Canyon; Lois Gibbs’s struggle to prove the alarming health problems at Love Canal; Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd, and Greenpeace’s mission to save the whales; Chico Mendes’s bravery trying to protect the Amazon rainforest; and the continuing controversy over climate change as seen through the work of such activist organizations as Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest. Inspired by Philip Shabecoff’s 1993 book, the film features such talking heads as Whole Earth Catalog publisher Stewart Brand, Earth Day organizer Doug Scott, NRDC founder John Adams, former Sierra Club leader Carl Pope, environmental justice advocate Robert Bullard, Greenpeace cofounder Rex Weyler, WWF conservation biologist Thomas Lovejoy, and legendary naturalist Bill McKibben in addition to Gibbs, Hawken, and Watson. While it’s fascinating to learn that the environmental movement really took off once NASA broadcast images of the earth taken from space, revealing the beautiful fragility of the planet, much of the documentary is told in a fairly stagnant manner, more like an expanded news report than a theatrical film. Still, it shares some intriguing insights and, in celebrating a group of individuals from around the world who fought the power (and sometimes even won), goes a long way in showing that every little step matters. A Fierce Green Fire: is screening May 12 & 19 at 8:00 as part of the ongoing Symphony Space series Thalia Docs.