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Members On Outreach: Working Films

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Posted on February 12, 2002

Mobilizes at Sundance 2002

WORKING FILMS AT SUNDANCE 2002

We are collaborating on national outreach campaigns with two films that premiered at Sundance 2002. In partnership with the filmmakers, various non-profits and activists, and with the support of local activist Jill Sheinberg, Working Films organized six events outside the official Sundance schedule, connecting these films to local Utah issues and audiences.

BLUE VINYL

This feature documentary, co-directed and co-produced by Judith Helfand and Dan Gold, in collaboration with Julia D. Parker, is as entertaining, warm and accessible as it is effective, strategic and urgent. Blue Vinyl won Sundance's Excellence in Cinematography Award in the documentary category and The New York Times called Blue Vinyl "scary and hilarious", Roger Ebert said "funny and irreverent; one of Sundance's best documentaries." Read about Blue Vinyl in the Deseret News.

Working Films is managing Blue Vinyl's national community education and consumer-organizing project: My House is Your House. Our specific goal at Sundance was to leverage the screenings to both alert the general public about the toxic trail of PVC, America's most popular and second fastest selling plastic, and to show average citizens how they can play an effective role in ensuring environmental health via the My House Is Your House organizing campaign. We started our local organizing in Utah right after we were notified about Sundance through the combined efforts of WF, Blue Vinyl's producers, a local grassroots group called FAIR (Families Against Incineration Risk) and Judy Robinson of Coming Clean's PVC Working Group, a collaborative of national, regional and local grassroots groups that organized around the Bill Moyers Special Report on the Chemical Industry "Trade Secrets."

TWO TOWNS OF JASPER

Two Towns of Jasper looks at the 1998 murder of James Byrd, an African American chained to a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas and dragged behind it for three miles until his body disintegrated. Co-directors Marco Williams and Whitney Dow used two separate filmmaking teams — an all-white crew filming white residents and an all-black crew filming black residents — to reveal the often-hidden underside of a community by capturing very different views of townsfolk on opposite sides of the racial divide. It premiered at the 2002 Sundance Festival in the documentary competition.

Two Towns of Jasper received excellent press, including articles in The New York Times, the L.A. Times and others. Read about the film in the Deseret News. The Washington Post said the film has "an unusual level of candor in the always-touchy discussion about race. There is a comfort level evident among those being interviewed, whether it is a local white family frowning on James Byrd for being drunk on the night of his murder, or the women at the local black beauty parlor confiding that Jasper has a lot of skeletons in its closet in terms of race." Working Films held a rough-cut community screening for Two Towns this past October and created all the Sundance events with Jim Sommers and Jill Sheinberg of ITVS' Community Connections Project. Working Films will be collaborating on the film's national outreach.

Blue Vinyl

BLUE VINYL EVENTS

Postcard

Blue Vinyl screened for nine packed audiences. As they exited the theater, we offered our Sundance audiences the chance to participate in a "direct action" to influence the PVC market by signing postcards to Intimate Brands, the parent company of Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works. The postcards encouraged the company to use alternatives to PVC packaging which are readily accessible. By the end of our Sundance week and 1,500 postcards later, Intimate Brands called Greenpeace who initiated an activist fax campaign to the company in early January, netting over 4,000 messages in favor of ending PVC packaging to discuss their PVC policy.

Greenpeace and Intimate Brands met in early February and Intimate agreed to 0% future use of PVC packaging. Intimate now says that during the first quarter of this year they will convert 70% of their Victoria's Secret packaging to PET and that by 2003, it will reach 100%. The Bath and Body Works line is huge, over 1.4 million bottles/year. Intimate says say that during 2002, they will convert 20% to PET in the fourth quarter and by 2003, 96%.

We are sure that our quirky postcards sent from a glitzy high-profile film festival helped. Text read as follows:

GREETINGS FROM SUNDANCE, WISH YOU WERE HERE! I just saw the premiere of the feature documentary BLUE VINYL at the Sundance Film Festival, and learned the toxic truth about PVC. After the screening, I was informed that in an investigation of over thirty name brands of personal care products, Greenpeace and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice found that Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works (both Intimate Brands) are still using polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic bottles. Why? Because it's cheap? This is not a good answer; we'll just pay the real costs later.

At both ends of the PVC lifecycle, during manufacture and disposal (by incineration), the chemical by-product dioxin is produced and released. Dioxins are among the most toxic substances ever created by humans. Dioxins travel on air currents, accumulate in soils and sediments and on vegetation, meaning they are ingested by the fish and mammals and settle on the fruits and vegetables that we eat. According to the EPA, the amount of dioxin already in the average American's body is at or near levels that may cause health problems. While there are other sources of dioxin, if PVC production and incineration continues, this source of pollution will continue to exacerbate an ever-increasing global toxic threat.

I urge you to replace your non-recyclable PVC packaging with non-PVC alternatives, which are already in use in some of your products. Please help ensure a safer, healthier and more sustainable future by ending your use of PVC. Thank you.

Friday, January 11

We were determined to leverage our Sundance media opportunities as well, especially with the local Utah press, to talk about the long-term cumulative damage of the PVC life-cycle, from manufacturing to incineration. We made this rather abstract issue concrete, newsworthy and human by linking residents from two very different fence-line communities: Lake Charles, Louisiana - one of the vinyl resin producing capitals of America (and featured in the film), and Layton, Utah - a middle-class suburb not far from Sundance and Park City, where PVC products and other consumer trash is burned daily in the region's largest municipal incinerator. Simply put, the folks who get hurt first from PVC were connected to the folks who get hurt last.

This link was made via "Bucket Brigade" training. The Bucket Brigade, available through Global and Community Monitor, is a simple yet empowering air monitoring device that allows concerned citizens to directly monitor what toxics might be entering their neighborhoods from nearby plants and incinerators. Activists from Louisiana, Laura Cox and Beth Zilbert, traveled to a local Mormon church to train Layton residents living on the fenceline of the incinerator how to monitor their air by collecting samples via the "bucket system".

Results from Bucket trainings can be lab analyzed and turned into data that local activists can use to push for enforcement and more sustainable waste policies, such as recycling. From both an organizing and a P.R. perspective, the way we leveraged our Sundance cachet and the PVC life-cycle" story into serious—off the arts pages press were great successes. The "Bucket Brigade" story got immediate attention in newspapers across the state and aired on ABC affiliate's 10pm news two nights in a row

Sunday, January 13

An audience and community dialogue, focusing on how the film relates to environmental health issues in Utah, followed the Sundance Blue Vinyl screening in Salt Lake City. At Gore Auditorium at Westminster College, an expert panel and audience members engaged in a lively discussion that touched on the role of national environmental networks in statewide efforts, how to hold industry responsible for contamination that impacts communities, what health effects might be associated with toxic exposure, and how to better promote green building in Utah. The audience also took the opportunity to ask the filmmakers specific questions about the making of Blue Vinyl.

In addition to the filmmakers, the panel was made up of characters from the film, including a renowned chemist and community expert, a West Cost green building guru, and leadership from the national environmental collaboration to clean up the Chemical Industry, Coming Clean. Utah environmentalists from Families Against Incinerator Risk and HEAL Utah were also on hand to field questions from the audience and ask questions of the panel.

Tuesday, January 15

An important free community screening of Blue Vinyl, outside the Sundance Festival, occurred on a sleety evening at the Davis County Library North Branch, near the Layton incinerator. This was an emotional moment: a Sundance film telling a story of toxic poisoning to local residents living in the dioxin fallout zone of an incinerator. Nowhere else at Sundance was the urgency of the film's message clearer; at no other screening were the stakes so high.

Two Towns of Jasper

TWO TOWNS OF JASPER EVENTS

Monday, January 14

For five years, Utah has been attempting to pass a hate crimes bill that would more aggressively protect all individuals and communities from hate motivated crimes. While Utah has legislation, it is generally agreed the current law as written has no teeth. State courts have repeatedly thrown out hate crimes brought before them, citing the vagueness of the current law. State Senator Alicia Suazo, taking over for her husband, the late Senator Pete Suazo, who passed away in a tragic ATV accident in August, and legislator David Litvack are leading the effort to strengthen Utah's current law.

ITVS's Community Connections Project and Working Films organized a free community screening of Two Towns Of Jasper at the Calvary Baptist Church in Salt Lake City. More than 450 audience members attended, with a volatile and lively debate afterwards on new Hate Crimes legislation. This racial and culturally diverse audience was overwhelming in support of the pending bill.

Wednesday, January 16

Two Towns Of Jasper held a special legislative screening, also organized by ITVS and Working Films, at Salt Lake City's State Capitol to help inform legislative votes for the pending Utah Hate Crimes Bill.

State Representative David Litvack, the moderator for this screening and sponsor of a hate crimes bill last year, hoped the voices within the film will inform his colleagues, who will be voting shortly whether or not to strengthen current Utah legislation. More than 15 legislators, their staffs and interns, with filmmakers Marco Williams and Whitney Dow, joined us for this invite-only screening in the media room off the statehouse's rotunda.

Even legislators who were wavering on supporting the Hate Crime Bill stated they thought the film was a powerful testament to how race divides a city. One intern asked for a copy of the tape, saying his legislator was unsure about his support for the new bill; he plans to use the tape to lobby for its support.

Utah's Fox News led their broadcast that evening: "Sundance Film Keeps Hate Crime Bill Alive" and an article in the Deseret News, reporting on both the statehouse screening and Calvary Church, stated, Indications are that movement (for the hate crime bill) is growing.

Working Films was on Sundance's Outreach: Making an Impact panel. Panel members talked about community engagement and civic involvement and how to make a lasting impact. Panelists: Moderator: Ellen Schneider, American Documentary/TRI/Active Voice; Patricia Aufderheide, Center for Social Media, American University; Arthur Dong, Filmmaker; Julia Pimsleur, MediaRights.org; Jim Sommers, Independent Television Service-Community Connections Project; Robert West, Working Films.