Crude Impact

Robert Newman's History of Oil

Stand-up comedian Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years, from WWI through to the 2003 invasion of Iraq; but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, this show places oil centre stage as the cause of all commotion. This innovative history programme is based around Robert Newman's stand-up act and supported by resourceful archive sequences and stills with satirical impersonations of historical figures from Mayan priests to Archduke Ferdinand.

Planet of the Humans

Forget all you have heard about how “Renewable Energy” is our salvation. It is all a myth that is very lucrative for some. Feel-good stuff like electric cars, etc. Such vehicles are actually powered by coal, natural gas… or dead salmon in the Northwest.

Changing Landscapes

Changing Landscapes meditates upon the care and carelessness humans brought to bear on the environment in Scotland. Rare archive combines with performances from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

spOILed

America is addicted to oil. President George Bush said so… and now that phrase is echoed everywhere. But are we really “addicted”? Our daily lives are dripping in oil. It’s in virtually everything we use and fuels everything we do. To be sure, it is something to worry about. Are we going to run out? Aren’t we fighting wars for oil? But, if we do slow the flow, how will that change the way we live? When it comes to what we’re told about oil, there’s rhetoric and then there’s reality. Who can we believe? The media? Politicians? Environmental activists? You’d be surprised. For nearly ten years, journalist turned media analyst MARK MATHIS has studied our use of oil. And what he found shocked him so thoroughly that he made a movie about the misinformation, distortions and even outright lies about oil. We do have an “oil problem” in America (and the world), but it’s not what you’ve been told. So, it’s time to Fill Up on Truth… for a change.

La Buena Vida - The Good Life

The village of Tamaquito lies deep in the forests of Colombia. Here, nature provides the people with everything they need. But the Wayúu community's way of life is being destroyed by the vast and rapidly growing El Cerrejón coal mine. Determined to save his community from forced resettlement, the leader Jairo Fuentes negotiates with the mine's operators, which soon becomes a fight to survive.

Deep Time

Director Noah Hutton returns to the same landowners, state officials, and oil workers he captured at the beginning of the Bakken oil boom six years ago in his 2009 debut documentary feature Crude Independence. A new focus on the relationship of the indigenous peoples of North Dakota to their surging fossil wealth casts the ongoing boom in the context of paleo-cycles, climate change, and the dark ecology of the future.

The Solar Film

Educational film about solar energy, told with striking imagery and animation.

Tomorrow's Power

Tomorrow’s Power is a feature length documentary that showcases three communities around the world and their responses to economic and environmental emergencies they are facing. In the war-torn, oil-rich Arauca province in Colombia, communities have been building a peace process from the bottom up. In Germany activists are pushing the country to fully divest from fossil-fuel extraction and complete its transition to renewable energy. In Gaza health practitioners are harnessing solar power to battle daily life-threatening energy blackouts in hospitals.

That's the Price

What happens to two dying coal towns in British Columbia when an American corporation provides a contract for millions of tons of coking coal? The film follows the consequences for the towns of Natal and Michel, suggesting that industrial growth has its price, especially with regard to the environment.

Petro-Melancholie

Do the Math

It’s simple math: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we rise up to stop them.