4100 Redwood Rd #406
Oakland, CA 94619

A FIERCE GREEN FIRE

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Whale_scene-Youtube_FGF.mov

Images

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Act 1: David Brower and the Sierra Club halt the daming of the Grand Canyon
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Act 2: Lois Gibbs rallies against toxic waste at Love Canal
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Act 3: Paul Watson and Greenpeace campaign to save the whales and baby seals
chico.png
Act 4: Chico Mendes and the rubbertappers' fight to save the Amazon
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Act 5: Climate change unifies a global movement for sustainability

Website

http://afiercegreenfire.com

Topics

Environment: Animals, Atmosphere, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Conservation, Environmental Activism, Forests, Nuclear Issues, Oceans, Pollution, Renewable Energy, Rivers, Soils
Human Development: Energy, International Cooperation, Land, Population, Water/Sanitation
Human Rights: Indigenous Rights, Race Politics, Social Exclusion
Information & Media: Culture, Media
Peace and Conflict: Nuclear Arms
Politics: Activism, Civil Society, Democracy, Ethics & Value Systems, Geopolitics, Globalization, Governance, Law

Project Geography

US: National, Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Louisiana, New York, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia
International: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America

Budget

Raised to date: $357,597.00
Estimate to complete: $150,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $507,597.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 01/18/2012

Status

Distribution

Media Type

Video

Project End Use

Theatrical

Key Personnel

Mark Kitchell
Director/Producer

A veteran documentarian, Kitchell is best known as director/producer/writer of Berkeley in the Sixties, which won all the top honors and has become a well-loved classic. His other films include Integral Consciousness and The Godfather Comes to Sixth St. He works as a writer/producer and segment director of non-fiction television, and has a long career in film production. So far he has spent five years developing and making A Fierce Green Fire.

Veronica Selver
Editor

Over forty years Veronica has edited many distinguished documentaries: On CompanyBusiness;You Got to Move;Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin; Coming Out UnderFire; Blacksand Jews;and Berkeley in the Sixties... making this an encore collaboration. She madeWord Is Out, a pioneering film about being gay in America, as well as KPFA On the Air and Raising the Roof

Betsy Bayha
Senior archivist

Betsy made Outsider: The Life and Art ofJudith Scott,plus many shorts for Lucasfilm. She served as Associate Producer on thedocumentary Freedom Machines and on the series Livelyhood. She was a fieldproducer for The Botany of Desire, and has done extensive archival research forNOVA and Frontline programs. She spent ten years as a reporter for KQED.

Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)

The good news is the film is done and premiering at Sundance Film festival in January of 2012. 

Plans are to do a combination of theatrical, non-theatrical, festivals and educational distribution 2012 into 2013. Broadcast will be held back. We are waiting to see what interest develops. Home video we will do in stages, working first with environmental groups and other stakeholders to approach their memberships. We are developing strong outreach and engagement campaigns, working with Active Voice and applying to foundations like Fledgling Fund and the Ford Foundation. Plans are to do a website of unprecedented scope -- something that should prove more valuable and popular than the film. We are at work on a companion book too. All of these projects need support to be realized. Now that it's clear we have one of the defining films about the environmental movement and what a resource it can be, we hope to get funding for outreach and ancillary activities.

Funders

NameAmountDate
Farvue Foundation $20,000.0012/01/2011
Sundance Documentary Fund$35,000.0012/01/2010
Roy A Hunt Fdtn$5,000.0010/01/2010
California Council for the Humanities$30,000.0009/01/2010
wallace alexander gerbode foundation$25,000.0001/15/2009
Gould Family Foundation$100,000.0001/01/2009
Mark Kitchell - personal contribution$59,828.0001/01/2009
Nu Lambda Trust$5,000.0001/01/2009
Lucius & Eva Eastman Fund$2,000.0001/01/2009
Pohaku Fund$5,000.0001/01/2009
LEF Foundation$7,500.0001/01/2009
Andrew Norman Foundation$1,000.0001/01/2009
Fleishhacker Foundation $4,500.0001/01/2009
Individual contributions$5,500.0001/01/2009
Development phase- Gellert Family Fdtn, Nu Lamdba Trust$11,000.0001/01/2003

Location

1016 Lincoln Blvd #10
San Francisco, CA, 94129

Short Synopsis

A Fierce Green Fire is the first big-picture synthesis of environmentalism - grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years worldwide. It tells the story of the environmental movement from conservation to climate change. We focus on activism -- people fighting to save their homes, their lives, the future. Our concerns are connecting causes, how the issues grew, exploring ideas and the evolution of a vision. The common theme is a struggle to save nature against the destructive impact of humanity – from halting dams in the Grand Canyon to battling 20,000 tons of toxic waste at Love Canal; from Greenpeace saving the whales to Chico Mendes and the rubbertappers saving the Amazon; from climate change to the promise of transforming our civilization. Our thesis is that this is the time when mankind must learn to live with nature, move beyond the exploitation at the heart of industrial society and find a way based on biology, balancing human needs with the natural world that sustains us, creating a living planet. As Stewart Brand says in the film, “We’re not passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are Spaceship Earth. We are Gaia.”  

Description/Treatment

It's the largest movement the world has ever seen - andmaybe the most important, in terms of what's at stake. Yet it's not easy being green. Environmentalists have been reviled as much as revered. Every battle begins as a lost cause and even the victories have to be fought again and again. Still, environmentalism is one of the great causes of the 20thcentury and one of the keys to the 21st. 

 A Fierce Green Firetakes a unique approach to environmentalism. Two things stand out. First is thefocus on activism; it's about movements more than issues. The best way toreveal the issues is to see how people acted on them. It's a more engaging approach, emphasizing drama and passion. Second is our emphasis on what we call a grand synthesis - bringing together all the parts and eras of the environmental movement to explore interconnections, resonance and relevance, larger visions and deeper meanings. Never has a film told the full story of environmentalism. This will be a defining film that reaches and teaches a huge and hungry audience.

 A Fierce Green Fire unfolds in five acts, each with a key story and a compelling character:

• David Brower and the Sierra Club’s battle to halt dams inthe Grand Canyon

• Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal residents’ struggle against 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals

• Paul Watson and Greenpeace’s campaigns to save whales and baby harp seals

• Chico Mendes and the rubbertappers’ fight to save the Amazon rainforest

• Bill McKibben and the collective effort to address issues of climate change

 

Each act also sketches the broader picture of an era:

• the ‘60s conservation movement that focused on saving wildness

• a new environmental movement that arose in the ‘70s around pollution

• alternative and radical strands, the ecology wing of the movement, through the ‘80s

• the rise of global issues, loss of resources and biodiversity, from the ‘80s into the ‘90s

• climate change and sustainability as the unifying issues through the last two decades

 

 

 The film combines interviews with glorious archival material, animation, narration and music. Interviewees include central characters like Lois Gibbs, Paul Watson and BillMcKibben; key figures like Amory Lovins, Stephen Schneider, Tom Lovejoy andCarl Pope; Barbara Bramble, whose work on World Bank loans led her to Chico Mendes; Jennifer Morgan, who led WWF’s international campaign to halt climate change; Bob Bullard, author and leader of the environmental justice movement; Paul Hawken and Stewart Brand, Vijaya Nagarajan and Mark Hertsgaard... thirty people in all.

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