BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND THE ROOSTER'S CROW and OIL ON ICE

Two excellent films that interrogate the problem of oil, the environment, and those who wish to profit from it. These two one hour screenings are part of the BLACK GOLD NIGHT.

BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND THE ROOSTER'S CROW

In the aggressive search for the 'black gold' that drives Western economies, multinational corporations are working to extract billions of dollars of oil reserves from beneath Ecuador's rainforest. BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND THE ROOSTER'S CROW investigates the operations of the EnCana Corporation, a firm that, despite proud public declarations of its social responsibility, is shown to be answerable for widespread environmental contamination and human rights violations.

BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND THE ROOSTER'S CROW focuses on EnCana's development of a heavy crude oil pipeline from the Amazon across the earthquake-prone Andes to the Pacific coast for export. Since oil exploitation represents a solution for Ecuador's economic crisis, the government has gone out of its way to facilitate EnCana's plans, disregarding protests about property destruction and contamination. The government has even lauded EnCana for its supposed responsibility (the film's title refers to a government decision to present EnCana with an environmental award).

Filmmaker Nadja Drost follows the cross-country route of the pipeline, along the way interviewing farmers, indigenous community representatives, environmental activists and others, who recount forced relocation, imprisonment, and intimidation, including shootings and beatings by the Ecuadorian police and army who protect EnCana's pipeline.

Avoiding government and corporate security agents, Drost documents unsafe construction, toxic waste, and contamination of rivers, as well as the affects on Ecuadorians (skin cancer, miscarriages and birth defects) and the destruction of wildlife and natural preserves. Occasionally dredging up a lump of foul-smelling crude on the end of a stick, the filmmaker here becomes, literally, a muck-raking journalist.

We also see Drost presenting evidence of corporate misdeeds to Ecuadorian government bureaucrats, and confronting EnCana's CEO at a stockholders' meeting.

Ultimately, BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND THE ROOSTER'S CROW is a revealing case study of the troubling connections between multinational corporations, insatiable Western consumption patterns, and the resultant devastation wrought on the social, economic, and environmental conditions of foreign countries and populations.

Awards

- Best Documentary, 2005 Paris Environmental Film Festival - Audience Award, 2005 Recontres Internacionales de Documentaire du Montreal - Best Canadian Documentary, 2005 Hot Docs Documentary Festival - Best Documentary, 2005 Bogota Film Festival - 2005 Amnesty International Film Festival - 2005 Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival - 2005 Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival

OIL ON ICE

Oil on Ice is a one-hour documentary that examines the the battle over oil development within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is a classic struggle in a stunning place, featuring the dramatic wildlife that adapted to this environment and the cultures of the Gwich’in Athabascan Indians and Inupiat Eskimos that rely on this wildlife for their subsistence.

The film and WebDVD project exposes the risks of oil extraction in this extreme environment. What happens if another oil spill occurs on the coastal plain or under an ice-covered Beaufort Sea? How can one rationalize development of irreplaceable wilderness areas or ignore the cultural survival of indigenous populations? Already, Eskimo residents and leaders of the North Slope Borough are criticizing the impacts of oil development to their lands and their seas. Gwich’in Indian residents of Arctic Village, on the southern boundary of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, fear their community’s caribou hunting will be severely impacted by oil development in the Refuge.

This project will also examine the effects that improved fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and development of alternative sources of energy will have on this nation’s oil consumption. The issue of oil extraction from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge brings to a sharp focus the broader debate over energy conservation vs. unbridled consumption. It also dramatizes the choice between technologies based on fossil fuels and those that draw upon renewable, efficient, and non-polluting energy resources. Humanity does not need to destroy an irreplaceable wilderness in order to generate power, heat homes, and travel about. The new paradigm is a mode of living with the Earth rather than extracting from the Earth.

Official Film and Campaign Site