Still from Between Midnight & The Rooster's Crow
Still from Between Midnight & The Rooster's Crow
 

On Demand

Between Midnight & The Rooster’s Crow

by Nadja Drost
A doc about ecuadorian farmers who fight against the Canadian Oil company, EnCana, to protect their land, their livelyhoods, and their future.
2005  ·  1h6m  ·  Canada
English, Spanish
English subs
About the Film
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. The documentary 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.
Upcoming Screenings

Stay tuned for upcoming screenings!

Festivals and Awards
2005
Bogota Film Festival
2005
Amnesty International Film Festival
2005
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
2005
Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival
2006
American Sociological Association Film Festival
2005
Bogota Film Festival, Winner, Best Documentary
2005
Paris Environmental Film Festival, Winner, Best Documentary
2005
Recontres Internacionales de Documentaire du Montreal, Winner, Audience Award
2005
Hot Docs Documentary Festival, Winner, Best Canadian Documentary
In the Press
Review
H-Environment
Editor
Cameron Esler
Cinematographer
Cameron Esler
Producer
Nadja Drost
Soundtrack Composer
Diego Marulanda
Writer
Nadja Drost
About the Director

Nadja Drost

Nadja Drost

Nadja Drost is a multimedia journalist based in Bogotá, Colombia since 2009. She is a correspondent for GlobalPost and contributes to radio and print outlets in the US, Canada and Europe. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she specialized in investigative journalism. She has freelanced from Latin America, West Africa and North America.

 

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