GLOBAL WARMING: THE SIGNS AND THE SCIENCE
2005 PBS Home Video (60 min.)
Hosted and narrated by Alanis Morissette

GLOBAL WARMING: THE SIGNS AND THE SCIENCE, a documentary that explores what is arguably the most significant environmental phenomenon of the last 10,000 years, airs on PBS Wednesday, November 2, 2005, 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET. International recording artist Alanis Morissette hosts and narrates this cautionary look at the forces of climate change.

Filmed in the United States, Asia and South America, this wide-ranging, compelling and accessible program brings the reality of climate change to life and offers viewers inspiring examples of people who are making a difference in their own communities.

The program features numerous science experts who review a growing body of evidence of the grave consequences of a changing climate, and explores how individuals, communities and organizations across America are creating new approaches to safeguard future generations.

The documentary also looks at evidence that human activities are provoking an unprecedented era of atmospheric warming and climatic events: more drought, wildfires and flooding; polar melting; more powerful storms; and more variable weather. Tropical diseases are moving north; childhood respiratory illnesses are skyrocketing; and in the last three decades more than 30 diseases new to science have emerged.

THE GREAT WARMING
2006 Stonehave Productions (85 min.)

The world's scientists are in agreement: climate change is real, and we are largely responsible. Earth's enlightened corporations, religious institutions, environmental and political leaders are in agreement - we must recognize our moral responsibility to be stewards of the Earth today and for all future generations. The Great Warming sweeps around the world to reveal how a changing climate is affecting the lives of people everywhere.

TOO HOT NOT TO HANDLE
2006 HBO (56 min.)

Heat waves. Melting glaciers. Rising sea levels. Catastrophic storms. Migrating viruses. Population displacement. Over the past 100 years, the mass consumption of fossil fuels, especially in America, has contributed to a dangerous warming of the earth that has adversely impacted the way we live. The cautionary documentary TOO HOT NOT TO HANDLE offers a guide to the effects of global warming in the United States.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
2006 Lawrence Bender Productions (100 min.)

Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with Mr. Gore's personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change. A longtime advocate for the environment, Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in a thoughtful and compelling way. "Al Gore strips his presentations of politics, laying out the facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions in a charming, funny and engaging style, and by the end has everyone on the edge of their seats, gripped by his haunting message," said Guggenheim. An Inconvenient Truth is not a story of despair but rather a rallying cry to protect the one earth we all share. "It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly, and wisely," said Gore.

- Written by Plantation Productions

THIRST
2004 Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman (65 min.)

Is water part of a shared "commons," a human right for all people? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded in a global marketplace? "Thirst" tells the stories of communities in Bolivia, India, and the United States that are asking these fundamental questions.

Over a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Each year, millions of children die of diseases caused by unsafe water. The numbers are increasing.

These facts drive a debate in the opening scenes of “Thirst” at the 2003 Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan. Politicians, international bankers, and corporate executives gather to decide who will control global fresh water supplies. Their consensus for large dams and privatized, corporate water systems is challenged by experts and activists who assert that water is a human right, not a commodity to be traded on the open market.

BIRDSONG AND COFFEE: A WAKEUP CALL
Old Dog Documentaries (56 min.)

Coffee drinkers will be astonished to learn that they hold in their hands the fate of farm families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions like Costa Rica. In this film we hear from experts and students, from coffee lovers and bird lovers, and-most importantly-from coffee farmers themselves. We learn how their lives and ours are inextricably linked, economically and environmentally.

EDEN'S LOST AND FOUND: SEATTLE
2007 PBS (60 min.)

Seattle: The Future is Now is part of a four-hour public television series highlighting practical solutions and models for urban transformation. Narrated by Former Governor Gary Locke the program reports on the transformation of Seattle as it struggles to combat the environmental consequences of its increasing population.

MAMA EARTH
2005 Leslie Bloom Van Ee (88 min.)

An inspiring road map of successful ways to achieve sustainability through reinventing old business methods and finding new paths to healthy communities, protecting natural resources and attaining a more profitable bottom line.

While some environmental observers predict doomsday scenarios in which a rapidly increasing human population is forced to compete for ever scarcer natural resources, Bill McDonough sees a more exciting and hopeful future.

In his vision humanity takes nature itself as our guide, reinventing technical enterprises to be as safe and ever-renewing as natural processes.

Can't happen? It's already happening...at Nike, at Ford Motor Company, at Oberlin College, at Herman Miller Furniture, and at DesignTex...and it's part of what architect McDonough and his partner, chemist Michael Braungart, call "The Next Industrial Revolution."

Shot in Europe and the United States, the film explores how businesses are transforming themselves to work with nature and enhance profitability.

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR
2006 Chris Pane (93 min.)

A documentary that investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.

40 corporate insiders and critics explore the nature and spectacular rise of the most pervasive institution of our time.

The Corporation is an entertaining and provocative look at the inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures of the modern global conglomerate.

(NRN - No Resume Required for viewing)

FAST FOOD NATION
2006 Richard Linklater (114 min.)

The plotline follows separate subplots that all coalesce around the meatpacking industry. From the meat company executive sent to investigate charges of shoddy processing, to the processing plant use of illegal immigrant labor, to all the lives that are collaterally touched by each participant in the food chain, the movie examines the entire US ethic of providing a packaged experience better, faster, and cheaper.

The movie does not leave out gory details, but instead lets the viewer decide what the end result should be by providing no neat conclusions, nor happy endings, but more importantly imparts a series of possible topics for discussion with a background of how the problem developed and the interdependent parties involved. In total, the film could easily be shown as an instructional video for a college level course in corporate responsibility.

BLACK GOLD
2006 Marc Francis and Nick Francis (78 min.)

Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.

But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.

Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.

Against the backdrop of Tadesse's journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world's coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled grocery store shelves over the past decade. THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system.

The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.

McLIBEL
2005 Franny Armstrong (85 min.)

McLibel is the true story of a postman and a gardener who took on McDonald's and wouldn't say "McSorry," in a legal battle since described as "the biggest corporate PR disaster in history. "McDonald's loved using the UK's libel laws to suppress criticism. Major media organizations like the BBC and The Sun had crumbled and apologized. But then McDonald's sued penniless activists' Helen Steel and Dave Morris.

In what became the longest trial in English legal history, the "McLibel 2" represented themselves against McDonald's USD$19 million legal team.
Every aspect of the corporation's business was cross-examined: from junk food and McJobs, to animal cruelty, environmental damage and the company's advertising to children. Outside the courtroom, Dave brought up his young son alone and Helen supported herself working nights in a bar.

McDonald's tried every trick in the book against them. Legal maneuvers. A visit from Ronald McDonald. Top U.S.executives flying to London for secret settlement negotiations. Even spies. Seven years later, in February 2005, the marathon legal battle finally concluded in the European Court of Human Rights. And the result took everyone by surprise - especially the British Government.

Filmed over ten years by no-budget Director Franny Armstrong (Drowned Out), McLibel features reenactments of key courtroom scenes directed by Ken Loach.
McLibel is not about hamburgers. It is about the power multinational corporations wield over our everyday lives and two unlikely heroes who are changing McWorld.

THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN
2005 Awakened Media(82 min.)

The epic tale of a maverick Midwestern farmer. Castigated as a pariah in his community, Farmer John bravely transforms his farm amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and arson. He succeeds in creating a bastion of free expression and a revolutionary form of agriculture in rural America.

LIVING WITH WOLVES
2005 Discovery Channel (100 min.)

For centuries, wolves have been characterized as bloodthirsty beasts, tormentors of ranchers and the bane of helpless livestock. Determined to overcome this misconception, filmmakers Jaime and Jim Dutcher – creators of the Emmy-winning Wolves at Our Door – spent six years in a tented camp in the wilderness of Idaho, living with a pack of wolves, listening to them and earning their trust.

Join the Dutchers as they share their extraordinary experiences living with the Sawtooth wolf pack. Exclusive footage reveals the innermost details of life in the pack – its unique social structure, how wolf cubs are raised within the group and how these powerful creatures interact with man. Overcoming forest fires, marauding mountain lions and sub-zero winters, the Dutchers and these elusive, intelligent animals share the heartwarming and unique partnership of human and predator.

LOLITA: SLAVE TO ENTERTAINMENT
2003 Produced by Tim Gorski, Rattle The Cage Productions and associates (60 min.)

When Two Species Collide in the Icy Waters of Puget Sound a Storm of Epic Proportions is Unleashed. Man versus nature; in the summer of 1970 a barbaric hunt kills five orca whales and destroys the lives of countless others. Six young orcas are ripped away from their family, sold to marine parks, and shipped across the world to enter into a life of slavery. Three decades later only one survives. And she just so happens to be Miami’s biggest performer.

Lolita: Slave to Entertainment is a stirring wake up call. For those who have visited a marine park, for those who think they might do so in the future, and for those who simply wish to know the truth about performing marine mammals, this film is a "must see." ~James Laveck Tribe of Heart (Producer of the award winning doc. The Witness)

Since that fateful day in 1970, waves of controversy have pounded both shores of the US as freedom fighters from across the globe battle for her liberation. It is a story of beauty, grace, passion, respect, exploitation, greed, prejudice, and domination. Disturbing footage of marine mammal captures and alarming interviews with former "Flipper" trainer Ric O'Barry, marine mammal specialist
Ken Balcomb, animal sociologist Howard Garrett, animal advocate and President of Ocean Drive Magazine Jerry Powers, and former whale hunter John Crowe.

WHALES IN CRISIS
2006 National Geographic(56 min.)

The film takes an intimate look at four types of whales: pilots, humpbacks, bowheads and orcas, through the eyes of the humans who are closest to them. From the struggle to save a pod of pilot whales in the Florida Keys to the groundbreaking work of a scientist risking life and limb in the Arctic to the controversy over military sonar, the Special takes us to the front lines of whale conservation.

PLAGUES AND PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA
2005 Chris Metzler(71 min.)

This film details the rise and fall of the Salton Sea, from its heyday as the "California Riviera" where boaters and Beach Boys mingled in paradise to its present state as a decaying, forgotten ecological disaster.

OIL ON ICE
A Dale Djerassi / Bo Boudart Production in Association w/ Lobitos Creek Ranch
Winner 2004 Pare Lorentz Award for International Documentary

The fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is explored in this frank look at the current dilemma of oil production (Prudoe Bay and environs) and an ancient, complex eco-system that is still the homeland of the Gwich'in people. Interviews with Amory Lovins, Carl Pope and Wade Davis underscore the need for a long term rational policy in this magnificent region.

SONG OF THE SALISH SEA
2006 Earthwise Media and People for Puget Sound(45 min.)

The Puget Sound, Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca (collectively called the Salish Sea by Native Americans) are the subject of Song of the Salish Sea. The movie explores the geological history of the region, as well as the water cycle, beach and estuary environments, eelgrass meadows, rocky-bottomed aquatic habitats, open-water food web, and life cycle of the salmon.

THREE MICROBES
2004 Earthome DVD(8.5 min.)

Animation giving us a microbe's view of how ecological problems can become opportunities for creativity if we simply follow Nature's design principles.

RIVERS AND TIDES
A film by Tomas Reidelsheimer
The Confluence of Nature and Art - Andy Goldsworthy

The meditative qualities of Andy Goldsworthy's smack in the dab of nature's art installations are profound. In a Zen-like contemplation of these works, their relation to the movement of energy (tide, wind) in the landscape, you will be transfixed by a new way of seeing.

Watching Goldsworthy painstakingly work through successes and defeats, you will nonetheless be amazed by the results. Especially recommended for younger artists.