FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead

Paul Watson confronts whalers in At the Edge of the World

The 16-day Vancouver International Film Festival gets underway on October 1. If previous years are anything to go by, you can expect a program bursting at the seams with world cinema, documentary, music and arthouse works from across the globe. In particular, with the Earth Summit in Copenhagen coming in December, expect festival artistic director Alan Franey to field a strand of hard-hitting environmental documentaries when the full VIFF program goes live on September 12 at www.viff.org

Two such docs that reveal a swelling wave of righteous green anger are At the Edge of the World and H2Oil. At the Edge of the World follows Captain Paul Watson, a buccaneering, white-bearded bear of a man and crews of two of his ships as they set sail on an annual mission to hunt down and stop Japanese whalers in the frozen South Seas. Watson, a co-founder of Greenpeace, quit the organization to take a more proactive approach and is renowned for his aggressive, “interventionist” tactics when policing the oceans. He flies a Jolly Roger from his mast and is famous for the steel blade attached to the hull of his ship, the Farley Moat, to dispense with his enemy. On the side of his hull, markings of sunken vessels indicate that Watson is not afraid to use his so co-called “can opener.”

The captain of the second ship, the Robert Hunter, is Dutchman Alex Cornelissen, a combination of cool head and fiery spirit. The two men make natural leading characters in what becomes a gripping drama involving chases through icy seas as treacherous as they are scenically spectacular. At the Edge of the World is like a modern, eco version of a Hornblower adventure as it follows the motley crew of volunteers as they enter a freezing conflict zone. The difference is that the weapons are Zodiac speedboats, stink bombs – to sabotage the whale meat-processing boat – and frayed rope to foul a ship propeller. Director Dan Stone’s fly-on-the-wall approach pays off. Using multiple cameras, and some great aerial shots taken from Sea Shepherd’s helicopter, allows the filmmakers to knit together a compelling tale of green heroism.

Although less dramatic, H2Oil is quietly incendiary. The largely aboriginal community of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, downstream from the Tar Sands at Fort McMurray, has become a cancer hotspot. Local wetlands and fresh water sources are drying up. Vast, oily tailings ponds, so big you can see them from space, now define the area and the Athabasca River is a toxic mess. But as interviews in H2Oil reveal, addressing these problems is frustrating. Government leaders, seeing dollar signs, slither away from responsibility and sidle up with the oil barons. Worse, when the local doctor shares his fears about Tar Sands pollution, Health Canada removes him from his post for “alarming” his community. Left with no choice, we see the community go global with their concerns and “Fort Chip” is now making international headlines. If you want to put faces behind some of those headlines, H2Oil makes a good introduction.

Finally, a self-plug: the Museum of Vancouver’s excellent Velo-City exhibition, which looks at the historic role of the bicycle in Vancouver, ends this month with a double bill screening of You Never Bike Alone and Portland documentary feature Veer (Sunday September 6, 1:00 PM). The films celebrate the vibrant, urban sub-culture surrounding the ultimate green machine.

Robert Alstead made the Vancouver documentary You Never Bike Alone. www.youneverbikealone.com. He writes at www.2020Vancouver.com