A Crude Awakening

The Oil Crash

add Lethbridge screenings to iCal
Lethbridge screenings RSS feed

Lethbridge, AB
Tuesday October 23, 2007
Screening begins 19h00
Venue: Galileo's Gallery, Students' Union Building level two

Switzerland/2006/85

OilCrash, produced and directed by award-winning European journalists and filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology. Compelling, intelligent, and highly entertaining, the film visits with the world’s top experts and comes to a startling, but logical conclusion – our industrial society, built on cheap and readily available oil, must be completely re-imagined and overhauled.

The idea that the world’s oil supplies have peaked, or will soon, is gaining mainstream currency. Robert B. Semple, Jr., associate editor of the New York Times editorial board, writes in the paper’s March 1, 2006, online edition:

“The Age of Oil — 100-plus years of astonishing economic growth made possible by cheap, abundant oil — could be ending without our really being aware of it. Oil is a finite commodity. At some point even the vast reservoirs of Saudi Arabia will run dry. But before that happens there will come a day when oil production ‘peaks,’ when demand overtakes supply (and never looks back), resulting in large and possibly catastrophic price increases that could make today's $60-a-barrel oil look like chump change. Unless, of course, we begin to develop substitutes for oil. Or begin to live more abstemiously. Or both. The concept of peak oil has not been widely written about. But people are talking about it now. It deserves a careful look — largely because it is almost certainly correct.”

Semple concludes: “These [are] not doomsday scenarios from conspiracy theorists, but hard scientific facts backed by serious research.”

You needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to see a connection between America’s current obsessions with the Middle East and national security, and the world’s looming oil crisis. The frenzied search for alternative sources of energy now being pursued by the largest multinational energy corporations makes it clear they also believe a crisis is fast approaching. Each day’s headlines, whether the subject is Iraq or South America, sheds new light on the issue.

Directors: Basil Gelpke, Ray McCormack
Co-Director: Reto Caduff
Written by: Basil Gelpke, Ray McCormack
Producers: Basil Gelpke, Ray McCormack
Associate Producer: Linda Litowsky
Editor: Georgia Wyss
Assistant Editor: Florian Nussbaumer
Online Editor: Esther Winter,
Michael Hertig
DOP: Frank Messmer
DOP USA: Daniel Pfisterer
Camera: Jim Bowen, Tim Kos, Richard Grell, David Merkofer
Sound: Robert Porter, Heinz Kurz
Research: Fuad Akhundov, Reto Caduff, Basil Gelpke, Patrick Held, Rolando Loewenstein, Linda Litowsky, Steve Mencher, Florian Nussbaumer, Jeevan Sellappah
Production Assistant: Florian Nussbaumer, Gabriela Padron
Archive Research: Ulrich Tilgner, Steve Mencher, Linda Litowsky, Basil Gelpke, Daniel Richtman, Dave Room

» official site