After several years of regular monthly screenings, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s environmental documentary series Green Screens gets the fest treatment for a six-day program beginning tomorrow, Friday, May 31 and running through Wednesday, June 5.
Among the thirteen doc features in the program are a few films I’ve previously written about, including Sundance title BLACKFISH (pictured), on the dangers of keeping killer whales in captivity; Hot Docs 2012 special jury prize winner PEACE OUT, on large scale energy projects in Canada’s Peace River region; and SXSW alum XMAS WITHOUT CHINA, on America’s dependence on Chinese industry, including fears about toxic products entering the marketplace.
Among the remaining are a few titles that are familiar from elsewhere on the festival circuit, and some others that are less so, including Hannes Lang’s PEAK, about the artificial means needed to maintain enough snowfall in the Alps for tourism in the face of climate change; Scott Elliott’s INTO THE GYRE, an exploration of plastic pollution in the Atlantic marine ecosystem; Jan Van Den Berg and Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann’s SILENT SNOW: THE INVISIBLE POISONING OF THE WORLD (pictured), tracing the surprising spread of pesticides into the Arctic; Bettina Borgfeld and David Bernet’s RAISING RESISTANCE, a look at small Paraguayan farmers struggling to maintain their land and crops in the face of larger chemically treated neighboring farms; and Edward Brown’s UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS, a consideration of the stark increase in humans’ exposure to chemicals and their impact on our bodies.
what (not) to doc 