Monday, August 31, 2009 8:00pm Eastern

Crude: The Real Price of Oil

Chat with Joe Berlinger about his new movie over at FDL. Hosted by Lisa Derrick.

Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous “Amazon Chernobyl” case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

The landmark case takes place in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, pitting 30,000 indigenous and colonial rainforest dwellers against the U.S. oil giant Chevron. The plaintiffs claim that Texaco – which merged with Chevron in 2001 – spent three decades systematically contaminating one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, poisoning the water, air and land. The plaintiffs allege that the pollution has created a “death zone” in an area the size of the Rhode Island, resulting in increased rates of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, and a multiplicity of other health ailments. They further allege that the oil operations in the region contributed to the destruction of indigenous peoples and irrevocably impacted their traditional way of life. Chevron vociferously fights the claims, charging that the case is a complete fabrication, perpetrated by “environmental con men” who are seeking to line their pockets with the company’s billions. The case takes place not just in a courtroom, but in a series of field inspections at the alleged contamination sites, with the judge and attorneys for both sides trudging through the jungle to litigate. And the battleground has expanded far beyond the legal process. The cameras rolled as the conflict raged in and out of court, and the case drew attention from an array of celebrities, politicians and journalists, and landed on the cover of Vanity Fair. Some of the film’s subjects sparked further controversy as they won a CNN “Hero” award and the Goldman Award, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Joe Berlinger, Director/Producer/Executive Producer/Cinematographer
Joe Berlinger is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist and photographer, whose films include the celebrated documentaries Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. In addition to his feature documentary work, Berlinger has produced and directed a great deal of television, both fiction and nonfiction, including The Begging Game for ABC News and PBS/Frontline and Where It’s At: The Rolling Stone State of the Union, an ABC primetime special created in celebration of the magazine’s 30th anniversary. Berlinger was the creator of the VH-1 series “FanClub,” and the Court-TV series “The Wrong Man.” He was the director of HBO’s Judgment Day: Should the Guilty Go Free, an unblinking look at crime and the U.S. parole system, and the Emmy-nominated Gray Matter, which chronicled his personal search for 86-year-old former Nazi Dr. Heinrich Gross, for Cinemax, CBC and France 2. Berlinger’s fiction television directorial credits include Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana’s groundbreaking series Homicide, among others, and he directed and co-wrote the feature film Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 for Artisan Entertainment.

Berlinger is co-executive producer and director of the acclaimed series Iconoclasts, now in its fourth season on Sundance Channel. In 2006, he won an “Outstanding Nonfiction Series” Emmy as co-executive producer of The History Channel’s 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America, for which he also directed an episode about the assassination of President William McKinley and the rise of Theodore Roosevelt. (http://www.crudethemovie.com/)