A Fierce Green Fire

Mar 1, 2013

1h 41m

★ 5.8

Overview

It is the largest movement the world has ever seen, it may also be the most important - in terms of what's at stake. Yet it's not east being green. Environmentalists have been reviled as much as revered, for being killjoys and Cassandras. Every battle begins as a lost cause and even the victories have to be fought for again and again. Still, environmentalism is one of the great social innovations of the twentieth century, and one of the keys to the twenty-first. It has arisen at a key juncture in history, when humans have come to rival nature as a power determining the fate of the earth.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

Whitewater Films

A Fierce Green Fire Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Meryl Streep

Narrator (voice)

Ashley Judd

Narrator (voice)

Robert Redford

Narrator (voice)

Isabel Allende

Narrator (voice)

Van Jones

Self (archive footage)

David Brower

With humor, chutzpah and a piece of vinyl siding firmly in hand, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand and co-director and award-winning cinematographer Daniel B. Gold set out in search of the truth about polyvinyl chloride (PVC), America's most popular plastic. From Long Island to Louisiana to Italy, they unearth the facts about PVC and its effects on human health and the environment.

0.0

Orphaned

Oct 8, 2021

Through the eyes of ex-engineer, now filmmaker Gillian McKercher, Orphaned explores the huge task of cleaning up thousands of idle oil and gas wells in the prairies before it's too late.

6.7

Once You Know

Sep 22, 2021

Today, like a ship entering the storm, the world faces climate change induced collapse. Once You Know, by director Emmanuel Cappellin, is a poetic and poignant exploration of how four of the world’s leading climate scientists and energy experts find truth, chaos, and hope in their work.

0.0

Deep Time

Mar 14, 2015

Director Noah Hutton returns to the same landowners, state officials, and oil workers he captured at the beginning of the Bakken oil boom six years ago in his 2009 debut documentary feature Crude Independence. A new focus on the relationship of the indigenous peoples of North Dakota to their surging fossil wealth casts the ongoing boom in the context of paleo-cycles, climate change, and the dark ecology of the future.

7.2

Into Eternity: A Film for the Future

Nov 12, 2010

Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storage, which is vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes. In Finland the world’s first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock – a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous.

0.0

Split Estate

Aug 7, 2009

This compelling Emmy Award winning documentary shows the dirty side of hydraulic fracturing and natural gas, an energy source the industry touts as a clean alternative to fossil fuels.

7.3

Surviving Progress

Nov 4, 2011

Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

7.1

How to Change the World

Dec 12, 2014

In 1971, a group of friends sail into a nuclear test zone, and their protest captures the world's imagination. Using never before seen archive that brings their extraordinary world to life, How To Change The World is the story of the pioneers who founded Greenpeace and defined the modern green movement.

10.0

The Sun Queen

Apr 4, 2023

Chemical engineer and inventor Maria Telkes worked for nearly 50 years to harness the power of the sun, designing and building the world's first successful solar-heated modern residence and identifying a new chemical that could store solar heat like a battery. Telkes was undercut and thwarted by her (male) boss and colleagues at MIT, but she persevered. Upon her death in 1995 Telkes held more than 20 patents, and now she is recognized as a visionary pioneer in the field of sustainable energy whose work continues to shape how we power our lives today.

6.8

Psychohydrography

Oct 1, 2010

An analysis of the flow of water from mountain to aqueduct, city to sea. Shot at and around the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Owens Valley, Los Angeles Aqueduct, Los Angeles River and Pacific Ocean.

5.5

Topophilia

Feb 25, 2015

An exploration of built and natural environments along the 800-mile length of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

0.0

Poros Stands

Apr 17, 2024

No overview available.

7.6

Rodents of Unusual Size

Nov 15, 2017

After decades of hurricanes and oil spills, Louisiana faces a new threat - hordes of monstrous 20 pound swamp rats. Known as "nutria", these invasive South American rodents breed faster than bounty hunters can "control" them. With their orange teeth and voracious appetite they are eating up the coastal wetlands that protects Thomas and his town of Delacroix Island from hurricanes, but the people who have lived here for generations will not give up without a fight.

0.0

How the West Was One

Jun 30, 2024

In a contemporary reimagining of the American West, three young women - a snake hunter, a New York artist, and a rodeo queen - challenge the idea of who is permitted to be a cowgirl.

8.0

The Mermaids' Tears: Oceans of Plastic

May 21, 2009

Every km of ocean now contains an average of 74,000 pieces of plastic. A 'plastic soup' of waste, killing hundreds of thousands of animals every year and leaching chemicals slowly up the food chain. In Holland, scientists found plastic in the stomachs of 95% of all fulmar birds. In Germany, plastic has been found to affect the reproductive systems of animals, while in the US, conservationists are seeing increasing numbers of dolphins die in agony, their guts blocked with rubbish. What will be the long term impact of this 'plastic pollution'? Can anything be done to clean up our oceans?

8.0

Waterlife

May 2, 2009

Waterlife is a documentary film about the Great Lakes that follows the flow of the lakes' water from the Nipigon River to the Atlantic Ocean. The film's goal is to take viewers on a tour of an incredibly beautiful ecosystem that is facing complex challenges.

0.0

Trouble in the Forest

Oct 12, 1988

In this compelling film, David Suzuki investigates the frightening phenomenon of forest dieback caused by acid rain and proposes some solutions.

7.0

Bidder 70

May 17, 2013

Bidder 70 centers on an extraordinary, ingenious and effective act of civil disobedience demanding government and industry accountability. In 2008, University of Utah economics student Tim DeChristopher committed an act which would redefine patriotism in our time, igniting a spirit of civil disobedience in the name of climate justice.

0.0

A Thousand Pines

Sep 20, 2023

In this tale of labor and family that shines a light on the precarity of temporary work visas, Raymundo Morales leads a crew of workers who have to make the challenging decision to leave their families in rural Mexico to plant commercial pine forests in the United States.

0.0

Mother Earth

Jan 1, 1991

This short documentary is a celebration of life on planet Earth. Made from haunting visual images selected from 50 years of NFB productions, the film looks at human beings, their place on earth, and their deep interconnection with all other beings. Evocations of forces that threaten the planet and all its inhabitants also offer avenues for reflection.