The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sundance takes close look at climate change
LOS ANGELES — It certainly reads like a political statement: One day before Donald Trump takes the presidential oath of office, the Sundance Film Festival will open its 33rd edition with a climate-change documentary starring Al Gore.
Trump has mocked the science of global warming as a Chinese hoax and selected a climate-change denialist to run the Environmental Protection Agency. What better way for the very liberal Sundance to respond than to put forward “An Inconvenient Sequel,” the followup to the Oscar winner “An Inconvenient Truth”? Not so fast. “We stay free of politics,” Robert Redford, who founded Sundance, said by telephone. “It just happened to coincide.”
He added: “We don’t want to be tied into the current political cycle. That would be a terrible mistake, if we start to drive the story, when our whole mission is to support filmmakers who have stories they want to tell.”
Sundance finds itself navigating some unusually slippery terrain this year. Redford, who recuses himself from programming decisions, bristles when his festival is seen as having an agenda. “We don’t take a position,” he insisted. At the same time, his top programmers, John Cooper and Trevor Groth, say they are taking a specific stance, one that is political by nature: For the first time in the festival’s history, there will be a spotlight on one theme — global warming and the environment. Their goal?
“To change the world,” Groth, programming director, said with a grin over lunch here recently. Cooper, Sundance’s director, added quickly, “Or die trying.”
As the pre-eminent showcase for American independent film, Sundance sets the pace for what art house audiences will be watching for the coming year. Cooper and Groth said that they decided over the summer to use that power to push eco-films because they felt interest in them was waning. “That seemed a bit odd, given how large and important the topic is,” Cooper said. (Redford, it should be noted, is a longtime environmentalist, although he said that had no bearing on the festival.)
A new Sundance subsection, the New Climate, will include 14 documentaries, short films and special projects, including a virtual-reality experience that turns participants into a tree that is violently chopped down.
Sundance runs from Jan. 19 to 29 in Park City, Utah, and environs. Here is a closer look at some of the highestprofile New Climate entries:
‘Water & Power: A California Heist’
Director: Marina Zenovich This is an exposé about “notorious water barons” in California who take advantage of state laws and systems, leaving themselves with plenty of water, even as the state has faced severe drought. In particular, Zenovich and her team (the Oscar winner Alex Gibney is an executive producer) aim their cameras at Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who own the Wonderful Co., a citrus and nut conglomerate.
Zenovich joked that her film was a documentary version of “Chinatown,” Roman Polanski’s tale of water skulduggery. (Zenovich has made two documentaries about Polanski.) “It’s shocking and appalling, and it’s time to pay attention,” Zenovich said of her findings, adding that completing the film had been particularly challenging.
“It’s a really dense subject, and there were a lot of complex agreements to understand,” she said. “And you couldn’t tell the story without showing history and without showing victims.”
National Geographic will run “California Heist” sometime this year.
‘Tree’
Directors: Milica Zec, Winslow Porter
Virtual reality has been an increasing Sundance focus, and this project is especially ambitious. Participants won’t just be handed an Oculus Rift headset and told to have fun. After entering the installation, they will receive an actual seed of a tree and will be told to plant it. They will then step onto a 12-foot-by12-foot circular platform that vibrates during parts of the story. Once they are wearing headsets, participants will be made to feel as if they are rising through dirt, sprouting branches and, finally, basking in the sun as a fullgrown tree. It doesn’t end well. Porter, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, and Zec, who formerly collaborated with the performance artist Marina Abramovic, emerged as VR stars at last year’s festival, when they introduced “Giant,” a six-minute piece that transports viewers to a bomb shelter.
‘An Inconvenient Sequel’
Directors: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk
Produced by the causeoriented Participant Media and acquired for theatrical distribution by Paramount Pictures, “An Inconvenient Sequel” again looks at Gore’s efforts to educate citizens about global warming. But the story has less doom and gloom this time around, focusing on Gore’s optimism that a future powered by renewable energy is attainable — unless fossilfuel interests become newly powerful.
“Because we are on the night before the inauguration, we expect a lot of very heated emotions,” Cohen said. “We’re hoping the film is a bit of a salve. There is great hope in what people can do individually about the climate. And certainly Al Gore’s relentless work has resonance. How you can come back from personal defeat.”
Shenk added: “’An Inconvenient Truth’ really turned out to be the beginning of a journey for him. I think what he’s been doing will surprise people.”
‘Rise’
Director: Michelle Latimer Sundance is not just for films. Television shows now debut at the festival, too (generally in the form of their first few episodes). “Rise” is a coming Viceland show that bills itself as “a celebration of indigenous people worldwide and a condemnation of colonialism.” Three 30-minute episodes will be shown at Sundance, all of which involve environmental activism.
One episode looks at a fight between Arizona tribes and a mining company. The other two focus on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota and the oilpipeline standoff there.
‘Chasing Coral’
Director: Jeff Orlowski A whole film about dying coral reefs? In Orlowski’s hands, it becomes a surprisingly emotional, raceagainst-time effort to document “coral bleaching” as it happens along with global warming. Viewers are taken underwater to reefs around the world as a group of selfproclaimed “coral nerds” offers visual proof that an environmental catastrophe is unfolding because of rising ocean temperatures.