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Do Environmental Films Help the Environment?

By
Posted on September 7, 2001

reprinted with permission from Benton.org and The Independent Film and Video Monthly

"Last Days of the Dolphins?"

There may be no environmental network on U.S. television, but there is a network of environmentalists making extraordinary television, video, and film. This kind of media isn't trying to sell you anything other than a voice in the debate about the future of the planet. It is produced for the express purpose of getting you off the sofa and into the political process by clamoring for a cleaner planet. And it is working.

Sometimes when well-funded and well-organized activist-producers document environmental destruction for the first time, the documentation stops the problem. The international environmental organization Greenpeace, for instance, has achieved a good deal of notoriety and success over the past 20 years sending camera crews around the globe -- into the middle of the ocean filming whale hunts, to the bottom of the world documenting pollution in Antarctica, and underneath the sea capturing the murderous impact of driftnets. The power of these images has been essential in moving the public to call for an end to commercial whaling, international protection for Antarctica, and a U.N. ban on driftnet fishing.

Today, with the accessibility and low cost of camcorders, anyone anywhere can be a camcorder vigilante for the environment. All one needs is information, patience, chutzpah, and a commitment to getting the word out by every means necessary for as long as it takes. The same dedication to the mighty strength of the visual that Greenpeace used to save the whales is now being used by concerned citizens to shut down local polluters in towns across America. But the impact of environmental films and videos is manifest not only when a plant closes or a fisherman brings in his net. Environmental films and videos have a more subtle and no less powerful effect when they inspire people to join the fight.

The following portraits of impassioned activist-producers demonstrate the vast potential for independent film and video to galvanize public opinion on the environment. A common thread unites this diverse group -- which ranges from citizens shooting wobbly VHS footage to award-winning filmmakers. Each discovered film or video out of a burning desire to speak on behalf of the planet. They raised their voices and learned filmmaking along the way. The success of their films speaks to the strength of their instincts and the potential for independent video- and filmmaking to be one of the most valuable tools of the environmental movement.

Solo vigilantes

Brenda LiveOak, a computer technician by day and environmental activist by night, did not mean to shut down a Minnesota coke plant with her camcorder. She only wanted the 25-year-old company to stop spewing thick, black smoke into the sky. Trained through an EPA-sponsored course on air quality monitoring, she knew without question that the harmful smoke from the plant directly across the street from a predominantly African American neighborhood had violated air quality standards for years. When state environmental officials ignored her complaints, LiveOak decided to put her camera to work. She invited Alex Sagady, an environmental health expert with the American Lung Association, to help her make a videotape of the spewing plant. "I wanted to do this video and I knew how I wanted to do it," says LikeOak. "By bringing in a large group like that, I knew the video would gain credibility." LikeOak and Sagady met at the plant and got the necessary video, despite harassment by plant officials who put their hands in front of her lens and tried to chase them from the plant.

LiveOak knew exactly what she needed to make her case: 30 minutes of solid evidence, according to state law. She also knew what to do with the tape. She rigged up two VCRs in her living room, made 18 dubs, and mailed them to every member of the Michigan Air Pollution Commission. Upon viewing the tape, the commission found the evidence of the plant's air quality violations to be irrefutable. They ordered the facility to obtain proper pollution control equipment. When the company said it could not afford to comply with the law, they closed the aging plant.

Other grassroots environmental activists have discovered that when it comes to publicizing environmental destruction, the American media machine can be successfully exploited. Terry Moore is one such activist. This Indiana woman broke the story of refrigerated trucks from the East Coast carrying garbage to Midwest landfills, then returning with food bound for East Coast supermarkets. Her video appeared on ABC Nightly News, Donahue, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and numerous local broadcasts. Her story also appeared in Bearing Witness: Homemade Tapes from the Environmental Front, a half-hour program about video activists for the environment, cablecast on access channels through Deep Dish Television. In Bearing Witness

, Moore speaks about the important role of video in her publicity campaign: "In dealing with the news media, just a small amount of footage can say a lot. Without the video, I don't think our message would have gotten out."

But while a few seconds of video brought Moore fame and grabbed the attention of the public, her tape played a more important utilitarian role in her fight at the state capitol. Though the public was disgusted by the image of garbage-stained trucks hauling food, Moore's real goal was to prevent East Coast states -- too crowded and polluted to build more landfills -- from dumping on their Midwest neighbors. Moore and the Dump Patrol, a group of 75 concerned citizens (in a town of just 250 people) documented on video and in print every out-of-state truck entering their local landfill for 60 hours per week for 14 months. After years of lobbying with their video evidence, Moore and the Dump Patrol convinced state officials to pass legislation regulating out-of-state waste. The impact of their tape proves the power of video to persuade -- whether it is used behind the scenes with the state legislature or presented publicly in the glare and glitter of a syndicated talk show.

The professors' cottage industry

The unlikely match of incinerator battles and videotape are the raw materials for a cottage industry of sorts created by two New England university instructors. On Thanksgiving weekend in 1985, Dr. Paul Connett, a professor of chemistry at St. Lawrence University, asked Roger Bailey, an instructor in drawing and printmaking, to drive across New England and videotape a big pile of incinerator ash. Although both men were veterans of an incinerator battle in their hometown, neither knew anything about video. But they believed the story of this polluting ash landfill had to be told. They drove for hours, slept on the floor of local activists' homes, and the next morning taped interviews with concerned citizens and shot shaky footage of contaminated water from the toxic landfill running into a nearby stream. That weekend begot a production company, Video Active Productions. Seven years later, the company is vital and is funded solely by revenue from sales of the 31 titles produced since 1985. With these videos, Paul Connett and Roger Bailey have arguably provided more information to grassroots environmental groups about the issue of waste disposal than any organization in the world.

Their tapes, entitled the Works on Waste series (edited in and distributed from Bailey's attic) are a genre unto themselves. Each features Connett on-camera putting in plain English detailed technical information about waste disposal, mixing it with on-screen reporting at the sites of the world's best and worst waste facilities, and adding a good dose of stand-up comedy in his thick British accent.

Their unconventional style is reflected in the sometimes inauspicious titles of the tapes: Two Views of Hazardous Waste Incineration from Biebesheim, Germany; Warren County's Incinerator: The Wrong Model for New Jersey; and Millie Zantow: Recycling Pioneer. These tapes are not intended for popular consumption at the video store. Rather, they are a critique of the wasteful ways of today's consumers. InWaste Management as if the Future Mattered, Connett, gesticulating dramatically, holds up a disposable razor and says: "I remember watching a half-naked woman on TV sitting on the hood of a Mercedes Benz and thinking, if I bought this I'd get her, the car, and a trip to Bermuda. I didn't believe this, except my subconscious did. And the next time I was in the supermarket, I heard the waves splashing in my brain and I reached for the plastic razors. Maybe it's not a trash crisis after all. Maybe it's a sexual crisis. Maybe we have to keep buying these things and throwing them away because it gives us some kind of sexual orgasm or something."

It's not every chemist-turned-activist who can work the word "orgasm" into a schtick about plastic and elicit laughs. The tapes' audience -- the grassroots audience -- loves them not only for their humor. Activists devour the information and use the well-documented horror stories of poorly managed facilities to galvanize public opinion against unwanted plants at home.

Video Active Productions does not let conventional concerns about copyright interfere with distribution. From December 1985 to November 1992, the company sold 4,454 tapes -- an impressive total in itself. In addition Bailey and Connett encourage people to duplicate the tapes as often as needed. Bailey receives several calls a month from activists who want to reproduce tapes. One caller, upon hearing confirmation of the liberal copyright policy, said, "Good. Because I'm making 400 copies and giving them away." Demand from the front for one tape -- a gruesome inside look at work conditions inside a medical waste incinerator -- was so great and so immediate that Bailey never finished editing it, and to this day he distributes the rough cut.

The tapes give activists the technical information to pursue their local struggles while drawing strength from the knowledge and experience of activists in other parts of the world. When activists hear the stories of people living in the shadow of other facilities or the success of a recycling program, they lose the feeling of working in isolation. One viewer wrote: "Received your tape this afternoon and immediately slipped it into the VCR... What comes to mind while watching [your] film was a battlefield with our forces dug in. We had lots of troops and adequate weapons. What we lacked most was ammo. And lo and behold the ammo arrived. Yes, little David is going to take on Goliath."

For both Connett and Bailey, it is a labor of love to create videos for "little Davids" around the world. They scramble to cover the costs of production (which average less than $2,000 per video) as well as costs for duplication and distribution. In 1991, their peak year so far, they generated $25,000 in tapes sales, almost exactly what they had spent. Bailey has used some of the income to upgrade their equipment from VHS to a Hi8 camera and three-quarter-inch editing equipment.

Connett started a newsletter for activists the year before founding Video Active Productions, but he soon turned to video because, "It wasn't enough just to write it down." In his passionate dedication to furthering grassroots activism, he spends all his free time on the road, rallying the troops and persuading Bailey to forego fine-tuning the tapes to get them out the door and to "the front" as fast as possible. Bailey, who functions as videographer, editor, and producer, turned to video out of dissatisfaction with the opportunities available to voice his opinion in his own local battle against an incinerator. Although the artist in him craves more time to improve the quality of the tapes, the activist says with both resignation and pride, "The citizens don't want Eisenstein's editing. They want the stuff in two days so they can make their argument. It changes the definition of doing something well. We're doing it well simply by getting the tapes to them when they need them."

Bailey summarized the philosophy behind their homespun productions in a recent lecture: "My notion of independent video, as opposed to commercial television, is that it can be the 'public space' where we can share knowledge, ideas, identities within our own communities. Our aim has always been to provide the information and encouragement that will assist communities in finding the best solutions to their waste problems." In thousands of living rooms, church groups, and civic organizations around the world, the tapes of Video Active Productions bring people together in that public space. Their example offers a striking lesson for activist-producers seeking to effect environmental change: create the tapes the audience truly needs and the demand may fuel your endeavor.

Clout from the big leagues

Nancy Bickell, a mother of two and a scholar with several degrees in English Renaissance poetry, never intended to become a video activist. But like LiveOak, Moore, Connett, and Bailey, she got hooked. During a leave from academia during the 1970s, she became actively involved in a local California chapter of the League of Conservation Voters. KTVU-TV in Oakland invited Bickell and other league members to work as volunteer producers on a series of candidate debates and documentaries about local political issues. Then came deregulation. One by one, stations dropped their public affairs programming. KTVU stopped doing joint ventures with the League of Conservation Voters, and Bickell struck out on her own as an independent producer.

Opportunity knocked in 1987 when the League of Women Voters of California released a statewide study of hazardous materials management in California and decided to educate its members on the subject. The League's panel of experts wanted to create two half-hour tapes, Cleaning Up Toxics at Home and Cleaning Up Toxics in Business, to educate the public and specifically promote household hazardous waste recycling drives run by local league chapters. Bickell had the experience and desire to produce the tapes and, no less importantly, she had approval from the League's Education Fund. But she had no funding.

She raised the $125,000 needed for the two tapes in less than a year. But she lost five months negotiating a broadcast deal with a commercial station that never came through. After Bickell had prepared the research and raised the funds, the station wanted editorial control. Bickell said no, and ultimately was able to maintain the integrity of her vision, though she regrets the lost time. She and the league decided to hold the release until fall 1990 -- six months after the twentieth anniversay celebration of Earth Day -- hoping the tapes would hit people with the message: "Did you really do all those things you promised to do on Earth Day? Here's another chance."

The two tapes emphasize what citizens and small business owners can do to reduce the volume of toxic waste. They stress simple, practical steps people can take to reuse unwanted toxic waste (like donating old paint to community groups) and to reduce the amount of toxic products used in the first place (like using vinegar or baking soda in place of commercial cleaning products). The tone is so unthreatening to the corporate world that several corporations are among the funders of the project, including Dow, Clorox, and Hewlett-Packard. But by encouraging people to consider alternatives to toxic products, the message of the tapes does challenge business as usual, just in a much quieter, subtler, less confrontational way.

This approach, not surprisingly, has been extremely successful in reaching a very broad audience. Bickell did a mailing to the 1,100 League presidents in the U.S. a month in advance of the satellite feed through PBS's Pacific Mountain Network. A hundred Leagues responded, and 98 public stations took down the feed. Bickell also designed a press packet and distributed it to every league chapter in California, stressing local angles to the story. Persuaded by local Leaguers, if not by Bickell herself, 100 commercial broadcast and cable stations in California aired the series and promoted local toxics clean-up programs.

In addition to promoting the tapes, the league prepared materials encouraging citizen participation. Concerned viewers were sent a "Cleaning Up Toxics Fact Sheet" upon request. Stations received a series of public service announcements promoting ways to eliminate toxic products from the home. League chapters in California received a free "Cleaning Up Toxics Kit" with suggestions about how to use the tapes effectively. One group of league chapters in Silicon Valley obtained a $5,000 grant for training speakers to use the video and lead discussions at meetings of civic organizations, senior citizens clubs, and environmental groups.

Yet the work of an independent is never done -- even one with the backing of an organization the size of the California League of Women Voters. Bickell says she must wage a "constant campaign in this group of very print-oriented people to convince them that if they want to affect public opinion on public policy issues, they have to turn their emphasis to television." The commitment to constant and comprehensive public outreach campaigns like this one is exactly what Americans need to find the way to a greener future.

Saving the dolphins

In 1975 Stan Minasian read an article about dolphins being killed by tuna fishing boats. Fishermen using purse seine nets (named for the way they close like a change purse) in the eastern tropical Pacific were slaughtering dolphins, which swim above schools of large yellowfin tuna in the hundreds of thousands. Minasian decided to make a film about the issue. With an idea and absolutely no experience, he approached various broadcasters to see if they would bite. KPIX-TV, a CBS affiliate in San Francisco, provided everything Minasian needed to make the film - producer, crew, publicists. Everything, that is, except the funding. So Minasian raised the $35,000 needed for his 16mm film, titled The Last Days of the Dolphins.

After the film aired on KPIX, Minasian obtained permission to distribute it to other broadcasters. With the help of the Environmental Defense Fund, Minasian provided the film free of charge to 325 commercial and public stations. Though it was an enormously successful first film, the surrounding publicity had no lasting impact on the tuna industry. The film contained no damning visual evidence of tuna boats slaughtering dolphins, and an industry representative told Minasian to his face that they could wait it out. They did. And Minasian went on to a career producing films about marine mammal issues.

Thirteen years later, biologist Sam Labudde walked into Minasian's office and told him he could get the tape needed to make the tuna industry change its ways. LaBudde went to Mexico and got a job as a cook on a Panamanian fishing boat. The camcorder over his shoulder, he told his coworkers, was a gift from his father to document his wayward life at sea.

Over the next four months, Labudde shot the first evidence of the gruesome death of dolphins in tuna fishing nets. His images of dolphins drowning in the nets, crushed in the machinery, and thrown dead back into the water catapulted the slaughter to world attention. Despite extensive use of the tape by both national and international broadcasters, the tuna industry still showed no sign of changing its ways.

Labudde and Minasian teamed up to create a film that forced the tuna industry to listen to the public's outcry against the slaughter. With Labudde's support, Minasian produced Where Have All the Dolphins Gone? (1990), an elegant film that conveys a gentle sense of the mysterious affinity between humans and dolphins. It chronicles the long struggle to prevent the tuna industry from killing dolphins. But the cornerstone of the film is LaBudde's footage. Though the film has received critical acclaim (first place at the 1991 U.S. Environmental Film Festival) and extensive play in 33 countries, the true success of the film lies in its impact on just one man: Anthony O'Reilly, chief executive officer of H.J. Heinz, which owns Starkist, the largest tuna packer in the United States.

A few weeks before the film aired nationally on the Discovery Channel in April 1990, Minasian sent a copy directly to O'Reilly and informed him that a series of PSAs would run throughout the hour asking viewers to call an 800-number and send telegrams to H.J. Heinz protesting the dolphin-slaughter. (In lieu of payment from the Discovery Channel, Minasian requested three-and-a-half minutes of advertising time for the PSAs during the broadcast of the film). One week before the airdate, O'Reilly announced that Heinz would buy only dolphin-safe tuna. An updated version of the film was cut the following year which included an interview with O'Reilly saying: "Because of the gross scenes that were shown in the LaBudde film, there was a growing barrage of criticism, well-orchestrated, which I think served to convey a growing sentiment...that the previous fishing methods were no longer acceptable." Once Heinz announced that it would buy only dolphin-safe tuna, Minasian rewrote and retaped the celebrity PSAs that originally called for a boycott of Heinz products. Instead, viewers were asked to send mailgrams to Washington in support of legislation banning the importation of tuna caught by methods that killed dolphins. When the film aired in 1990 and 1991, 60,000 people responded.

For a film so successful on so many fronts -- aesthetically, politically, and critically -- it received remarkably little support from broadcasters and cablecasters. Minasian first approached PBS, but it would not allow the use of a toll-free number (other than for its own fundraising and tape sales). In January 1990 Turner Broadcasting verbally committed to air the film. In exchange, Labudde and Minasian allowed Turner's series The World of Audobon to use three minutes of Labudde's tape in a program of their own on dolphins. After the Audobon program used 14 minutes, Turner turned down Where Have All the Dolphins Gone, saying the story had already been told. When the producers finally made a deal with the Discovery Channel, the network promised to publicize the cablecast widely; ultimately, however, it did almost nothing. Minasian placed ads himself in major publications. Discovery, which got free advertising and great ratings, criticized Minasian for going around it.

When asked about the success of the film, Minasian replies that his overriding feeling is one of relief. It took him 15 years and two films to tell the world about the dolphin slaughter. Now he is excited at the prospect of educating the public about other threats to marine mammals. Currently Minasian has four films in various stages of production. He is most animated when he talks about one on driftnet and fillnet fishing, which he says may be the most impassioned film he has ever made. It will be worth watching what happens when executives in the fishing industry turn on their television sets and find Minasian once again at work.

As the experiences of these diverse producers demonstrate, to change business as usual in the environment we need to begin by changing business as usual on television. And we need to train more people, particularly grassroots activists, to turn to media when they have an important environmental issue to communicate. In this relatively new business of using media to protect the environment, a few simple maxims apply: there are no rules about who can produce; give the people the information they need, and they will respond; loosen the reins on copyright, and you will widen your circle of influence; think creatively about marketing, and you will find new audiences; spend the years it may take to get the word out, and you will be rewarded with the satisfaction of being heard, the gratification of seeing change, and the appreciation of future generations.

Karen Hirsch has worked in the fields of independent film and non-profit media for the past 15 years. She served as director of video production for Greenpeace in North and South America and executive director of 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle. She edited Making Television Matter: How Documentaries Can Engage and Mobilize Communities (see www.benton.org/MakingTelevisionMatter). Karen lives in Seattle where she serves as a consultant to independent filmmakers and foundations. Email her at firefly@speakeasy.net