Chuck Jaffee’s Review of Just Do It, The Last Mountain, Poppy’s Promise and Schooling the World
Editor’s note: Chuck Jaffee, of Nevada City, continues his years of writing a series of reviews for the Wild & Scenic Film Festival. Find his other movie, film festival, and related reviews at www.startlets.com.
Just Do It: A Tale of Modern-Day Outlaws
Just Do It
“Have a cup o’ tea,” she’ll offer, in her oh so British way, to police and other agents of corporate stoked domination. She can get testy though, like the time police tried to shove her off a protest encampment without letting her pick up her kettle. “It has to be fun and exciting and good friends,” she’ll also offer, knowing that this does not contradict their serious place in the world.
These folks seem more assertive than most of their Occupy brethren, but with a kindred spirit of non-violence. They seem more focused, with their actions against complicity in global climate change. The film runs a bit long and loosely assembled, but this hardly detracts from the personable vérité about something that will be marginalized by the media to everybody’s peril.
An insider look at what they do and why and how, “Just Do It” airs activism that is likely to become more widespread as the divide between the one percent and the ninety-nine becomes more wide spread.
The Last Mountain
Oh, no. Another mountaintop removal movie. What’s different about “The Last Mountain”?
For one, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. appears, demonstrating his activism. For another, it shows hundreds of people putting themselves in the way, willing to be arrested. These people face jail for small crimes needed to fight huge crimes against humanity. Also, “The Last Mountain” presents viable alternative energy that not only begins to replace costly and dangerous coal. It can create sustainable jobs in otherwise devastated areas.
Jobs. That’s the second most strident flag that coal supporters wave against protesters. Fact is, mountaintop removal slashes jobs. Coal companies have systematically kept West Virginia one of the poorest states in the country while guys like former CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, made more than $150 million. Massey pays around $30,000 in yearly taxes to the local county, whereas wind farms on local mountains would pay around one and a half million.
Coal keeps the lights on. That’s the most strident flag that coal supporters wave against protesters. True enough, but what does it mean, that this cheapest form of energy fuels half the country? Heavily subsidized coal companies are not forced to pay for more than a tiny fraction of tens of thousands of violations of the law. They are not forced to pay for the illness and death they cause from pollution and flooding. You don’t even have to get to the topic of global warming before common sense shouts, “There has to be a better way to keep the lights on. There are better ways to keep the lights on.”
Outside agitators. That’s one of the more effective ways of shouting down protesters. Even though many local people fight for their lives and their children’s lives, it’s a national (actually, planetary) concern, and the real question is why not hear what outsiders have to say?
Anti-coal, especially mountaintop removal films, can feel daunting and tiresome, even somewhat old hat, as environmental films go, but “The Last Mountain” shows well that progressive action may be gaining traction. Anyway, big coal equals big badness more than anything you could choose to spotlight.
Poppy’s Promise: Secret Life of a Cornfield
 Poppy's Promise The star of “Poppy’s Promise” is a hamster and her offspring. However, a wealth of creatures populates a film subtitled “Secret Life of a Cornfield.” How crafty the filmmakers had to be to infiltrate the details of this secret. With cameras installed inside a hamster’s burrow, we get to see hamster sex. (They must have edited out the X-rated parts.) Anyway, the female only tolerates the male a few days per year. Mama hamster tends to her babies. The babies mostly snuggle sleepily, punctuated by lively hunger and learning. Much cuteness is on display, be it mama busily stuffing her cheek pouches with seeds or babies transforming from hairless newborns to scurrying independents. Top notch nature photography seems to have set up shop everywhere, high and low, in the teeming fields. Rabbits mate (of course), but their boxing matches are more interesting. Deer mate (of course), but their scampering through the grassland intones the art of their lives. In a film like this, it’s the smaller creatures that elicit the most fascinating camera work. Gall flies mate (of course), but curiosity peaks more when the zigzag patterns on flayed wings scare off a predator spider. A “roundabout” flower attracts a wasp and dusts it with pollen. Attracting the wasp a second time, the pollen rubs off onto the flower that cleverly changed sex from male to female between visits. A British narrator, with his soothing educational tone, sneaks in a few well photographed lessons about the benefits of organic farming. One lady bug eats up to 40,000 aphids, quite an alternative to chemical spraying. Five hundred earthworms per square meter eat and poop, eat and poop, enriching chemical-free soil. A diversity of flowers thrives amidst the cornfield. A fundamentally satisfying nature film, “Poppy’s Promise” has orchestrated a parade of birds, insects, flowers, and other players in a cycling dance of the seasons. —- Q and A with the “Poppy’s Promise” filmmaker, Jan Haft —- Chuck Jaffee: I have the nerve to think that a better title for your film would have been “Cornucopia,” because you display the abundant vitality of nature, such a horn of plenty. Why did you choose a relatively minor piece of your film for the title, “Poppy’s Promise”? Jan Haft: In Germany, documentaries traditionally have very descriptive titles. The German title translates to “The Cornfield – Jungle for one Summer.” We felt the poppy comes back year after year, exactly what cornfield inhabitants must do, even if their habitat is “destroyed” each year when harvesting takes place. We enjoy that films in the English speaking world often have cryptic and bloomy titles. CJ: What did it feel like, capturing tiny and tucked away places? JH: Many things were so rare that we had to travel quite a lot. We drove 300 kilometers just to see a field with one rare species of flower. And we filmed many things we had never seen before. We had to gather a great deal of the information ourselves, for instance, finding out how long the natural processes take in various species and when flowers bloom. CJ: Tell us a little bit about the vibrancy of the colors you put on screen, as well as the soothing, erudite tone of the narrator you chose. JH: We always try to run the camera after dusk and before dawn, when colors are most intensive and contrasts are low. We run our HD Cams with a reduced detail level, so the footage appears soft and smooth. We avoided enhanced sharpness to capture a warm and somewhat dream-like style. For a narrator, we also sought that warm feeling of “good old times” (or, maybe, “good new times” to come). CJ: You seem to have tread lightly talking about organic farming and any message of sustainability. Do you feel this was an important and effective film making choice? JH: We discussed this in making the film. We felt it was enough to show what lived and could live in an organic farming landscape. We felt that things such as bio-diversity loss and the push for cheaper agricultural production would find its way into the film well enough. CJ: Why do you think there is such a ready audience for yet another nature film filled with flowers and bugs and creatures big and small? JH: Our motto is, “Show the unknown within the well known.” We find that people like to see an environment they know well, and at the same time, hear stories they never heard before. It is just like getting news about your neighbors. That is much more likely to attract your interest than news about people you don´t know. |
Schooling the World
This is a movie review of “Schooling the World.” I won’t tell you anything about it. See it.
While you’re here…. I am very well educated. Yet, there is so much I don’t understand.
For instance, there are individuals in the world who have billions of dollars. I don’t mean I don’t understand how that could be fair. Well, that, too.
I mean, I can’t really comprehend billions of dollars, and I definitely don’t get it that any single person has that many of them. It’s a number on a piece of paper, right? I mean, after the 20,000 square foot house and the fully staffed personal jet and the $5,000 bottle of wine, it’s numbers on a piece of paper, right? It isn’t a pile of dollars somewhere.
There are more than 6 billion people in the world. About 80% of them live on less than ten dollars per day. About 40% of them live on less than two dollars per day. I don’t mean I don’t understand how that could be fair. Well, that, too.
I mean, I can’t really comprehend billions of people, and I definitely don’t get it that any single person can survive on less than two dollars per day. Each of these people has this amount of money, and they pay it to various other people. Does that happen? That money actually pays for food and clothes and shelter and anything else that costs money to live a life? I don’t understand the arithmetic.
Millions of people pay more than two and a half billion people less than two dollars per day – to do what? (And can it be done without billionaires?) I don’t understand.
This is a movie review of “Schooling the World.” I won’t tell you anything about it. See it.
– Chuck Jaffee
