FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead

Scene from Saving Luna

A new environmental film festival, Projecting Change (www.projectingchange.ca), runs at the Ridge Theatre May 8-11. Festival opener Flow: For Love of Water (8, 11) sets the tone with a globe-trotting look at the state of things in South America, India, the US and China. Fresh water and the lack of it on this planet is a recurring film fest theme, and the documentary takes the view that clean, free, fresh water should be a human right, and that water security relies on de-centralizing the water supply rather than allowing the concentration of the precious liquid in a few hands through government- sanctioned privatization. Water sources everywhere are in danger of becoming degraded, it seems, but the film remains upbeat with a look at initiatives such as a new cost-effective UV filtration system in India that is saving lives, money and the environment.

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai (10) tells of the courage of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wangari Maathai and her part in the evolution of Kenya’s socio-political landscape. From humble beginnings, Maathai became a force for change in the seventies by quietly educating and organizing groups of women in villages across Kenya to plant trees with her Green Belt Movement – trees now grown into tall forests. Maathai’s spirited and peaceful defence of her ideals in subsequent decades, in spite of beatings, imprisonment, threats and public ridicule by then dictator Moy, is an inspiration.

Mine Your Own Business suggests that environmentalists are like modern missionaries whose selfish idealism is denying the poor in developing nations jobs and housing. Affable business journalist Phelim McAleer visited the sites of major, new mine projects in Romania, Chile and Madagascar and asked locals which they would prefer: their current, impoverished lifestyle or a steady job at a new mine? The deck is stacked against the environmentalists; the film was funded by Canada’s Gabriel Resources which is developing the Rosia Montana open-pit gold mine project in Romania, and NGO spokespersons succeed in digging themselves in deeper with some thoroughly patronizing comments about the people they are purporting to help.

Unlike Tibor Kocsis’s award-winning documentary New El Dorado, which paints a very different picture of local feeling toward the Rosia Montana project, McAleer’s interviewees always say they want the mine.

The closing film is Saving Luna. I caught snippets of the Luna story in the news; a young Orca was separated from its pod and began befriending sailors along Nootka Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. But it’s not until seeing this film that I realized quite how deep peoples’ bonds were with the whale, particularly the Mowachaht / Muchalaht First Nation and filmmakers Mike Parfit and wife Suzanne Chisholm who became personally involved in protecting the whale.

Luna positively thrived on human attention, but he also created a unique problem as playful whales and boats don’t mix well (some people even threatened to shoot the whale if it came close to their boat). This tension about how to save this gregarious and intelligent creature is the heart of the matter and as we follow the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in its initially flawed attempt to fine people for befriending Luna, and its later failed attempt at trucking Luna to a new location, we can’t help but ask important questions about our relationship with animals.

The Unforeseen at Vancity Theatre (until May 9, not 4,6,7) is an excellent eco-docu based around a drawn-out battle to protect Barton Springs in Austin Texas, one of North America’s largest spring-fed swimming holes, from property development. It’s an even-handed story with beautiful imagery that needs to be fully appreciated on the big screen.

Robert Alstead made the Vancouver-set bicycle documentary You Never Bike Alone, available on DVD at www.youneverbikealone.com