films Inspiring change

STINK!

STINK! is a must-watch for all. It is amusing but goes straight to the point. It opens with a pair of kids pajamas- and a single father trying to find out what that smell could possibly be. But instead of getting a straight answer, director Jon Whelan stumbles on an even bigger issue in America, which is that some products on our store shelves are not safe — by design.

Watch Stink.

Rachel Carson, The American Experience

When Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in 1962, the book became a phenomenon. A passionate and eloquent warning about the long-term dangers of pesticides, the book unleashed an extraordinary national debate and was greeted by vigorous attacks from the chemical industry. But it would also inspire President John F. Kennedy to launch the first-ever investigation into the public health effects of pesticides — an investigation that would eventually result in new laws governing the regulation of these deadly agents.

 Rachel Carson is an intimate portrait of the woman whose groundbreaking books revolutionized our relationship to the natural world. Drawn from Carson’s own writings, letters, and recent scholarship, this film illuminates both the public and private life of the woman who launched the modern environmental movement and revolutionized how we understand our relationship with the natural world.

Watch Rachael Carson on PBS

Toxic Beauty

Toxic Beauty is a documentary feature film with exclusive access to scientists, lawyers, advocates, regulators, politicians, a dynamic whistleblower, survivors, and women who have lost their lives. It follows the class action lawsuit against J&J and the plaintiffs, personal stories of women fighting for justice in a race against time with this deadly disease. Woven throughout the film is a human experiment. We document, as Boston University medical student, Mymy Nguyen, measures her chemical body burden from over 27 products. Scientists monitor her shocking results. In the end, the film meets the companies and people who offer solutions and optimism for safer, toxicant free cosmetics.

Watch Toxic Beauty online!

Merchants of Doubt

An investigative documentary that looks at how the manufacturing of doubt has become big business.  The film exposes pundits-for-hire who present themselves as scientific authorities as they speak about topics like toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and climate change.

Watch Merchants of Doubt 

Dark Waters

An incredible and true story of environmental attorney Robert Bilott uncovering the truth about Teflon, Dupont, and PFOA toxins over the years. He uncovers a dark secret that connects a growing number of unexplained deaths to one of the world’s largest corporations. While trying to expose the truth, he soon finds himself risking his future, his family, and his own life.

Watch Dark Waters 

Watch News Coverage of the movie.

Bilott published a memoir Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont

Take Action after the film by going to the Dark Waters Take Action Website 

Generation Zapped 

Generation Zapped is an eye-opening documentary, which reveals that wireless technology poses serious health risks, from infertility to cancer. Through interviews with experts in science and public health, along with people who suffer from high sensitivity to wireless radiation, the film suggests ways to reduce your exposure and protect your family. The film features an impressive array of international scientists: Martin Blank, Lennart Hardell, Magda Havas, and more, and public health policy experts. 

Go to Generation Zapped 

Poisoned Water

What exactly went wrong in Flint—and what does it mean for the rest of the country?

Public Television Series NOVA investigates what happened in Flint, Michigan, when local officials changed the city’s water source to save money, but overlooked a critical treatment process resulting in extensive and avoidable lead poisoning. NOVA uncovers the disturbing truth that reaches far beyond Flint— How can we protect ourselves from contaminated water?

Watch Poisoned Water

Toxic Hot Seat

Toxic Hot Seat follows a courageous group of firefighters, mothers, journalists and scientists, politicians and activists as they fight to expose a shadowy campaign that persuaded legislators that toxic flame retardants were critically needed.  In fact, there is no evidence that chemical flame retardants avoided a single fire death and growing evidence of their toxic legacy in our homes and bodies.    The campaign to require the widespread use of these unnecessary toxic chemicals has taken nearly 40 years to unravel.

Watch Toxic Hot Seat

Toxic Trespass

Filmmaker Barri Cohen launches an investigation into the effects of the chemical soup around us starting with her 10-year-old daughter, whose blood carries carcinogens like benzene and the long-banned DDT. Then Cohen heads out to Windsor and Sarnia, Canadian toxic hotspots with startling clusters of deadly diseases. The filmmaker interviews activists working for positive change, along with doctors and scientists who see evidence of links between environmental pollution and health problems. 

Toxic Trespass is available in two versions: an 80-minute Director’s Cut, and a 53-minute Television Hour, accompanied by a 67-page Resource Guide.

 A Healthy Baby Girl

In 1963, filmmaker Judith Helfand’s mother was prescribed the drug diethylstilbestrol (DES), meant to prevent miscarriage and ensure a healthy baby. But technology is rarely a benign midwife. In 1990, at age twenty-five, Helfand was diagnosed with DES-related cervical cancer. She went home to her family to heal from a radical hysterectomy. There she picked up her camera. Her video diary, A Healthy Baby Girl, was shot over five years and goes beyond loss to document mother-daughter love, family renewal, survival, political awakening, and community activism.

Watch A Healthy Baby Girl

RiverBlue

Did you know it takes 2,700 liters of water – enough water for one person to consume in two and a half years – to make one cotton shirt? This documentary covers how the fashion industry is killing one of the most important sources of water and marine life – our rivers. The film follows conservationist Mark Angelo as he travels the globe to dive deep into one of the world’s most polluting industries, fashion.

Watch RiverBlue

The True Cost

The True Cost focuses on fast fashion. It discusses several aspects of the garment industry from production—mainly exploring the life of low-wage workers in developing countries—to its after-effects such as river and soil pollution, pesticide contamination, disease, and death. Using an approach that looks at environmental, social, and psychological aspects, it also examines consumerism and mass media, ultimately linking them to global capitalism. The documentary is a collage of several interviews with environmentalists, garment workers, factory owners, and people organizing fair trade companies or promoting sustainable clothing production.

Watch the True Cost

Living Downstream

Based on the acclaimed book by ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., Living Downstream is an eloquent and cinematic feature-length documentary following Sandra during one pivotal year as she works to break the silence about cancer and its environmental links.

Watch Living Downstream

The Human Experiment

Narrated by Sean Penn, the documentary “The Human Experiment” alleges a correlation between four decades of increased chemical use in the United States and health issues such as cancer, miscarriage, autism, and birth defects.

The film also contends that the American Chemistry Council lobbies for a $720-billion-a-year industry that has politicians in its pocket and sabotages attempts at passing regulatory legislation.

Watch the Human Experiment

MisLEAD: America’s Secret Epidemic

MisLEAD: America’s Secret Epidemic is a documentary feature-film on childhood lead poisoning directed and produced by Tamara Rubin. Filming began in October 2011 and the project is currently in post-production. 

You can watch the latest cut here. 

Our Water, Land & Air

This mini-documentary from the WQED archives tells the stories of environmental neglect that led to positive change in our water, our land, and our air. Stories include the Donora Smog pollution tragedy of 1948, the environmental comeback story of Nine Mile Run, and a visit to the landmark home of Rachel Carson, a woman from Springdale, Pennsylvania who took on corporate America when few others would.

Watch Mini Docs 

Blue Vinyl

Blue Vinyl is a documentary film follows one woman’s quest for an environmentally sound cladding for her parents’ house in Merrick, Long Island, New York. It also investigates the many negative health effects of polyvinyl chloride in its production, use, and disposal, focusing on the communities of Lake Charles and Mossville, Louisiana, and Venice, Italy.  It was aired on HBO as part of the series America Undercover.

Watch Blue Vinyl

If this link does not work then go to Bull Frog Films

You can buy the film here. 

No Impact Man

No Impact Man follows Colin Beavan and his family in New York City during their year-long experiment to have zero impact on the environment. They would live without electricity, use no fossil fuel-driven transport and buy almost nothing new except locally grown food. The idea was to live carbon-free.

Watch No Impact Man

China Blue

This documentary follows the life of a young worker named Jasmine Li from Sichuan province. She works in a blue jeans factory exposed to a harsh working environment.

This film investigates the denim fashion industry and how China and the international retail companies that manufacture there have hidden a tragic reality for years.

Watch China Blue

Take Back Your Power

A  must watch film about smart meters and the smart grid’s implications for privacy, national security, human and environmental health, constitutional rights, and energy savings.  

Watch  “Take Back Your Power”  

Gasland 1 and 2

Gasland 1 is an Oscar-nominated documentary that focuses on communities in the United States where natural gas drilling activity was a concern and, specifically, on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), a method of stimulating production in otherwise impermeable rock. 

Watch Gasland 1

Watch Gasland 2 on Vimeo

Full Signal, The Hidden Cost of Cell Phones 

 by Talal Jabari

2010: Winner of several awards, filmed on four continents and translated into seven languages, this riveting film explores the hidden dangers of cell phones and accompanying cell tower infrastructure.  

Watch  Full Signal, The Hidden Cost of Cell Phones