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August 27 - September 11: Rooftop’s Six City GASLAND Tour Begins

Beginning August 27, Rooftop Films, The Fledgling Fund, and International WOW Company are taking Josh Fox’s powerful new documentary Gasland on tour to potentially affected regions. Gasland has been getting all sorts of attention for its exposure of the horrible effects of a new type of natural gas drilling called hydraulic fracturing. The tour will bring free screenings of the film to some of the areas most seriously affected by this type of drilling, including Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania and Callicoon, Syracuse, and New York City in New York.

The tour is part of Rooftop Films ongoing expansion into new cities.

Gasland is the story of what happened when a natural gas mining company offered Josh Fox and his upstate New York neighbors $100,000 each for the right to drill for gas on their land, and Fox thought he’d better examine what was going on before he signed away his property. This led him on a cross-country odyssey that uncovered a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. The result is an eye-opening documentary that is part vérité travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, and part showdown.

Fox serves as the film’s emotional divining rod, wandering and wavering throughout the US, picking up on tragic tales of people, animals and places contaminated beyond repair, pointing always toward the hazardous link between “clean” natural gas and dangerously polluted water. Explaining the problem, Fox says, “Let me start at the beginning: this is Dick Cheney.” In 2005, Cheney’s secretive Energy Commission designed a bill that was able to overturn parts of various decades-old environmental-protection legislation, allowing for a relatively new process of gas drilling, invented by Halliburton. Commonly referred to as “fracking,” in this new process, the mining companies inject a cornucopia of toxic chemicals deep into the ground and explode the rock beds. Companies across 38 states are doing this with almost no oversight or regulations, often operating within feet of homes, schools, streams, wells and aquifers. An EPA spokesmen describes the legislation as “Orwellian” and “Un-American.”

As Fox chases the companies’ operations across the country, he encounters cats and horses losing their hair in clumps, men and women with sudden painful illnesses, and houses where you can literally light the tap water on fire. Cowboys and roughnecks in the far west and deep south–certainly not your granola-eating tree-huggers–decry the situation with pathos, charm and a bit of mordant humor. The gas companies deny, deny, deny.

Fox is able to explain the process and the repercussions with an easy-going verve and a dire sense of urgency. With a swelling populist love for America, Fox gets the viewer to understand the problem and care deeply. Gasland begins as a personal query about Fox’s own land, morphs into a documentary as he encounters people with stories to tell, and ends as activist rallying cry exposing one of America’s most dangerous environmental secrets.

Rooftop Films, The Fledgling Fund, and International WOW Company are proud to help expose these horrifying stories–amazingly wide-spread and consistent wherever natural gas is drilled–in the hopes that this won’t be a secret for long.

Presented in Partnership with: Allegheny Defense Project, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, Catskill Mountainkeeper, Cinereach, PennEnvironment, Clean Water Action, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, the Delaware Youth Center, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Keep Cochecton Green, the Philadelphia Underground Film Fest, and Solar One.

Show Details:

Friday, August 27
Pittsburg, PA
Venue: Frick Park
Address: Beechwood Blvd, Pittsburgh, PA 15206
Directions
Rain: In the event of rain, this event will be held on Saturday, August 28

7:00 PM: Doors Open
7:30 PM: Live Music
8:15 PM: Film Begins
9:30 PM: Q&A with Director Josh Fox and Local Activists

This show is FREE. More information here.

Friday, September 3^rd
Philadelphia, PA

Venue: At the Piazza at Schmidt’s
Address: North Second Street and Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19123
Directions
Rain: This event will be held rain or shine.

7:00 PM: Doors Open
7:30 PM: Live Music
8:15 PM: Film Begins
10:00 PM: Q&A with Director Josh Fox and Local Activists
10:30 PM: After Party

This show is FREE. More information here.

Sunday, September 5
Callicoon, NY
Venue: Delaware Youth Center
Address: 8 Creamery Road, Callicoon, NY 12723
Directions.

Rain: This event will be held rain or shine.

6:00 PM: Performances and speeches by local artists and activists
7:30 PM: Live Music
8:15 PM: Film Begins
10:00 PM: Q&A with Director Josh Fox and Local Activists

This show is FREE. More information here.

Tuesday, September 7 (tentative)

Harrisburg, PA
Venue: TBA
Rain: In the event of rain, this event will be held on Wednesday, September 8

6:30 PM: Doors Open
7:00 PM: Live Music
7:45 PM: Film Begins
9:30 PM: Q&A with Director Josh Fox and Local Activists

Thursday, September 9

Syracuse, NY
Venue: The amphitheater at Thornden Park
Address: Syracuse, New York 13210
Directions: The park is adjoined by Ostrom Avenue, Madison Street, and South Beech Street. The amphitheater is in the center of the park, to the east of the tennis courts.
Rain: In the event of rain, this event will be held on Friday, September 10

6:30 PM: Doors Open
7:00 PM: Live Music
7:30 PM: Film Begins

9:30 PM: Q&A with Director Josh Fox and Local Activists

This show is FREE. More information here.

Saturday, September 11
New York, NY
Venue: On the pier along the East River at Solar One
Address: 2420 FDR Drive, Service Road East at 23^rd Street and the East River

Directions: R/6 to 23rd St., walk all the way east.
Rain: In the event of rain, this event will be held on Sunday, September 12

6:00 PM: Doors Open
6:30 PM: Live Music
7:30 PM: Film Begins
9:30 PM: Q&A with Director Josh Fox and Local Activists
10:00 PM: After Party

This show is FREE. More information here.

Starts	August 27 2010
Ends / Deadline	September 11 2010
Homepage	http://rooftopfilms.com/blog/2010/08/announcing-a-six-city-tour-of-josh-fox-gasland.html
Contact	info@rooftopfilms.com
Issues	Economic Justice, Environment, Family & Society, Health/Health Advocacy, Human Rights, Media, Politics/Government