Top picks for an eco-movie night

Image Credit: DirtTheMovie.org

Although I fantasize about canceling the last little bit of cable I have left and throwing my TV off of the roof, the sad truth is that sometime I like the relaxation doing nothing in front of it provides. And you know what? There's no rule saying we can't at least learn something from what we're watching. So grab the organic popcorn, and check out these eco-films that will entertain you and make you think.

Dirt! The Movie

Didn't make to Sundance this year? Well that makes… thousands of us. Living up to a big rep as the quintessential indie film festival, Sundance has started it's own greening process and as such has begun to feature films with a heart for the environment. One of this year's selections was Dirt! The Movie, "an insightful and timely film that tells the story of the glorious and unappreciated material beneath our feet. Inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, Dirt! The Movie takes a humorous and substantial look into the history and current state of the living organic matter that we come from and will later return to.  An eclectic group of participants ranging from biologists to prisoners incarcerated on Rikers Island offer answers to problems and inspire us to clean up the mess that we’ve created.  Dirt! The Movie will make you want to get dirty."

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

Still squirming from An Inconvenient Truth? Well now you're in for A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash. A 90 minute documentary on the planet's dwindling oil resources, the movie is produced and directed by award-winning European journalists and filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, and tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology. Available now on DVD.

Food Inc.

If you've ready any of my previous posts, you know that I'm huge on sustainable food: growing it, eating it and sharing it. If you need some more convincing about why your diet should be the first part of your life to go green, check out the recent release Food Inc. In the movie, filmmaker Robert Kenner "lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA...Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here." Check the official Food Inc. website to find a showing near you.

FLOW

Equally as disturbing as the condition of the food industry, is the global water crisis. FLOW is Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis. "Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel." Available now on DVD.