Coming to the WORLD Channel’s Global Voices series this Sunday, May 24: OIL & WATER
Laurel Spellman Smith and Francine Strickwerda’s look at two young men’s encounter with ecological disaster had its world premiere at Seattle last year. Other screenings included Rhode Island, Rio, Bahamas, Wild & Scenic, Maryland, Sebastopol Doc, and Princeton and DC’s Environmental fests.
Despite vastly different backgrounds, David and Hugo are linked by a common interest. David is an American who became passionate about the negative impact of oil exploitation in South America when he was a pre-teen, and eventually made his way to Ecuador working for fair trade practices in oil. Hugo is of the Cofan people, and was sent by his tribe to get an education in the US in order to return with the knowledge of the Western world and become a leader to help his people against the further destruction of their lands and traditions. Spellman Smith and Strickwerda follow both men’s stories over six years, as David finds success in his efforts, while Hugo initially struggles to figure out a way to attend university without American residency so he may fulfill the mandate of his people. Unfortunately, in addition to Hugo largely playing second fiddle to David’s more dynamic trajectory, their two stories are always very separate and only tangentially related, ultimately making the project feel somewhat arbitrarily structured.
what (not) to doc 