BigPicture Media

Focusing on Stories that Move Us

2024

HBO

HBO Documentary Films presents 'Stopping the Steal'

Stopping the Steal: A Documentary Film

Recounted in detail by former staff members of the Trump administration, Republican political appointees, and elected state officials, 'Stopping the Steal' tracks the movement to discredit the 2020 presidential election.

Unfolding chronologically, the documentary explores and debunks the claims of ballot tampering, illegal immigrants and deceased people voting, and hacking or malfunction of Dominion Voting Systems’ electronic ballot machines.

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(LA Times / September 17, 2024) ‘Stopping the Steal’ examines Trump’s attempt to subvert 2020 election, and what it means for 2024

• https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2024-09-17/stopping-the-steal-documentary-hbo-trump

Getting folks to watch a documentary about the Big Lie is a Big Ask. Who wants to relive that horrible chapter in America’s political history, especially while we’re writing a new, possibly less-horrible chapter?

Despite its title, HBO’s “Stopping the Steal” is as much about what lies ahead of us as it is about that other election that put Joe Biden in office and then-President Trump on a warpath. The 90-minute film, which premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on HBO, explores the depth and veracity of Trump’s scheme to overturn the election results through the first-hand accounts of the people who were there.

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(NPR/All Things Considered / September 14, 2024) 'Stopping the Steal' documents the efforts to help Trump

• https://www.npr.org/2024/09/14/nx-s1-5107592/stopping-the-steal-documents-the-efforts-to-help-trump

• https://www.npr.org/2022/07/28/1114224368/stop-the-steal-has-moved-beyond-trump-now-its-threatening-future-elections

The new HBO documentary 'Stopping the Steal' takes viewers behind the scenes into the efforts by former President Trump to challenge the 2020 presidential election results. The film features interviews from former White House staff and appointees, including former Attorney General William Barr, as well as elected Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia.

Recounted in detail by former staff members of the Trump Administration, Republican political appointees, and elected state officials, “Stopping the Steal” tracks the evolution of the movement to discredit the American election starting as early as July 2020 when the legitimacy of the election process began to be publicly questioned. Unfolding chronologically through to Jan. 6, 2021, when an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, the film explores the debunked claims of a stolen election including accusations of ballot tampering, alleged voting by illegal immigrants and deceased individuals, and hacking or malfunction of Dominion Voting Systems’ electronic ballot machines.

As President Trump’s supporters pressure officials in Arizona and Georgia responsible for ratifying the count, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recalls when he was told to find 11,000 additional votes for Trump, and Arizona Speaker of the House of Representatives Rusty Bowers describes getting a call from the White House urging him to further investigate the Maricopa County vote results despite any proof of malfeasance. “Stopping the Steal” is a clear-eyed account of Republican officials who stood firmly by their principles often at great personal cost.

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Stand Up and Tell the Facts as Best You Know Them

The 'End Is Nye', a Fall Season TV series exploring Climate Change -- and its coming impacts.

Bill Nye, "The Science Guy" as he is called, continues to educate and reach schools across the Internet, on TV, in films, documentaries, lectures and talks in nations around the world.

This year, 2024, is a good time to watch Bill explain why we need to pay attention to life on Earth, science, our communities and our environment.

Btw, Bill Nye has said he was inspired to begin his career by the famous educational decades of work on TV by Mr. Wizard! Your GreenPolicy360 siterunner, who worked as an editor of Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard in the 1970s in New York City publishing, has a special affection for science education. GreenPolicy360 tips our green hat to two master teachers of science here ... Don Herbert and Bill Nye.

Communicators with a spark in their eyes and care for kids and teaching. Their lessons carry on...

Here's to great teachers who have made a world of difference!!

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Bill_Nye,_the_Science_Guy,_speaks_at_the_March_for_Science-Washington_DC_2017.png

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Mr_Wizard_-_Don_Herbert.png

 

2023

Watch scenes from the PBS 'American Experience' special event documentary film -- The Movement and the ‘Madman’

— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfhHcq-IUQo

Strategic Demands:

In the “Movement and the Madman” 2023 documentary, PBS reveals the how close the U.S. came to using nuclear weapons to force Vietnam to end the war the U.S. had escalated on the election of President Richard Nixon.

Daniel Ellsberg, a nuclear war planner, as his Doomsday Machine ‘confessions’ chronicled, recalls the Vietnam Moratorium Peace demonstrations of October-November 1969 in the book and film — and with National Security Council senior staff now, decades later, retells how close we came to nuclear war.

• https://strategicdemands.com/the-movement-and-the-madman/

Strategic Demands' editor at that time was a student and a coordinator of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee. Steve Schmidt, some 50 years later, became a source of information for the PBS film and, pointing to Daniel Ellsberg and Roger Morris as first-hand source accounts, helped to guide the documentary producers to revealing moments of history here:

The Movement and the Madman - PBS - March 2023

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/The_Movement_and_the_Madman_-_PBS_-_March_2023
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Surviving_Victory:_Security_Priorities
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Vietnam_Moratorium_for_Peace_1969-1970

PBS

The Movement and the ‘Madman’

PBS PREMIERE MARCH 28 ON AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

The documentary film tells the little-known story of a dramatic showdown between a protest movement and a president — and the power of protest …

Citizen action, as is now revealed, prevented the use of nuclear weapons

• https://www.movementandthemadman.com/home

• https://www.movementandthemadman.com/history

• https://www.movementandthemadman.com/preview

• https://www.movementandthemadman.com/interviewees

• https://www.movementandthemadman.com/filmmakers

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Canary

"I had no idea was I was getting into..."

The official trailer for the Adventure/Climate Documentary about the life story of Lonnie Thompson

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxnQKQQL49M

"The fight for our future begins at 18,000 feet"..."

• https://canary.oscilloscope.net/

About the Directors and the film ...

• https://twitter.com/alexrivest_phd

• https://variety.com/2023/film/news/canary-documentary-oscilloscope-1235697694/

Read more about Lonnie Thompson and Ellen Moseley Thompson

• https://alumnimagazine.osu.edu/story/journey-two-courageous-climate-scientists

Danny O’Malley, directed the film with MIT-trained Neuroscientist Alex Rivest, PhD. It’s set to open in limited release with a special nationwide screening on Sept. 20, 2023.

The subject of the film is Doctor Lonnie Thompson, who is referred to as an explorer “who went where no scientist had gone before and transformed our idea of what is possible.” He’s been globally recognized for his drilling an analysis of ice cores from various regions of the world in the hopes of better understanding the Earth’s climate.

“When we say Lonnie is like a real-life superhero, it’s not hyperbole,” the director said.

“Unlike the glaciers at the poles, the tropical high mountain glaciers Lonnie studies provide water to billions of people, and when they are gone, there’s going to be catastrophic consequences that will affect everyone. Lonnie is doing his work and telling his story because it can save lives. So, it’s not just a great adventure story. It has the potential to make a difference.”

GreenPolicy360: Here's to Paleoclimatology and the science it teaches us as we navigate into the future ...

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Thompson

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology

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Looking Back: At Trinity, the First Nuclear Bomb Test - 1945

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Looking_Back:_At_Trinity,_the_First_Nuclear_Bomb_Test_-_1945

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Stewart Udall: The Politics of Beauty

Documentary film, Directed by John de Graaf

• https://stewartudallfilm.org/
• https://stewartudallfilm.org/about-the-film/
• https://stewartudallfilm.org/about-the-team/

• https://www.udallcenter.arizona.edu/news/getting-know-stew-stewart-udall-politics-beauty

On Utah Public Radio, listen to Film Director John de Graaf talk of Stewart Udall's environmental legacy

• https://www.upr.org/show/access-utah/2023-04-06/stewart-udall-the-politics-of-beauty-on-thursdays-access-utah

Udall called on all Americans to move away from our emphasis on economic growth and consumerism and toward quality of life, and a new politics centered on beauty, frugal living, appreciation of nature and the arts, and a recognition of the Earth’s limits.

"His politics live on.."'

Watch the Udall, 'Politics of Beauty' Preview

* https://vimeo.com/780996587/e108994898

Stewart Udall left a profound legacy of conservation and environmental justice as Secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. His social and environmental successes stemmed from his ability to bring together people with disparate interests, and inspire them to achieve common goals.

Udall called on all Americans to move away from our emphasis on economic growth and consumerism and toward quality of life, and a new politics centered on beauty, frugal living, appreciation of nature and the arts, and a recognition of the Earth’s limits. (Related: See GreenPolicy360, "Quality of Life" as a "Key Value" of Greens and as described in a founding platform of the Green Party -- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Quality_of_Life)

Reviews

• https://stewartudallfilm.org/news/

Director John de Graaf speaks of Stewart Udall and 'the politics of beauty'

• https://www.prforpeople.com/entertainment/arts-culture/politics-beauty

In 2017, troubled by the cynicism and the polarizing style of politics that had ushered Donald Trump into the White House, de Graaf sought to offer an alternative. He launched a website – called “And Beauty for All” – and he hoped it might become a movement.

John de Graaf believes that all Americans, regardless of their politics, ethnicity, religion, or creed, could find common ground in an appreciation of beauty, particularly beautiful landscapes.

“I think it’s one of the most universal experiences we have, and I think it’s an evolutionary thing. Evolution has taught us that things we find harmonious and beautiful are things that are life affirming, that are good for the species. It has to do with settings, with water, with things that are green.”

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2022

Jerry Brown: The Disrupter

A new documentary, “Jerry Brown: The Disrupter”

• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22782658/

Celebrating decades of ideas, service and political vision, the film directed by Emmy Award–winning Marina Zenovich premiered Thursday, November 3, 2022, at the Doc Stories festival.

Marina Zenovich, film director: “Jerry Brown is a man of ideas, not somebody who wants to sit down and talk about himself...", so she went for the "emotional side" in her film about Jerry.

GreenPolicy360: Like him, love him, don't like him, hate him -- Jerry Brown is a man of his times. His story is a generational story. GreenPolicy360's siterunner is fortunate to have shared, as I have written elsewhere, many adventures in politics from the 1970s on... And those Jesuits, they truly know how to debate... For those who know of our mutual work and a political platform launched in the 90s, a vision doc we called a "Platform in Progress", the ideas are still making waves #PlanetCitizens #PlanetCitizenAction

* https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Jerry_w_Steve_%2792_pres_campaign_at_the_Dem_plat_hearing_m.jpg

The son of Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, who was California’s governor from 1959 to 1967, San Francisco–born Jerry Brown, aka Edmund G. Brown Jr., grew up surrounded by politics but didn’t initially want a political career. He studied at a Jesuit seminary and then changed paths, attending UC Berkeley and Yale Law School. He found the law books “tedious,” while political discourse stirred him.

Brown served as California’s secretary of state from 1971 to 1975 and, in 1974 at 36, an age that many, his father included, deemed too young, he ran successfully for governor of California.

Governor Brown went on to serve four terms. His service and politics, his ideas and travel among political eras and forces, are a story that, in many ways, defines a generation.

“He was dismissed” at the time for his views on issues now recognized as critical, the film's director says. “But he was spot-on... He was a different drummer.”

A born “disrupter,” Brown brought climate change into the spotlight, along with subjects like renewable energy, nuclear proliferation and the possibility of launching a California satellite to monitor the environment. When Mike Royko created the “Governor Moonbeam” moniker (Royko later took back those words), Brown thought it was a compliment for his unconventional thinking.

“Jerry Brown is a man ahead of his time,” notes a description of the film. “A natural disrupter, Jerry kickstarted the national debate about climate change and spiraling inequality back in the 1970s… For over five decades Brown has proven his willingness to sacrifice everything – even getting elected – for the causes to which he’s devoted. In this candid and emotionally compelling portrait, Brown opens up about his remarkable fifty-year political career, his singular private life and the lessons learned from a life in the public eye.”

In a director’s statement, Zenovich noted, “I’ve always wanted to make a film about Jerry Brown. I know him both as a political figure and as a layered, complex human. I want people to hear Jerry’s hard-won truths about politics and public life – and about where he thinks America is heading.”

Visit Deadline's review and exclusive video here:

• https://deadline.com/video/jerry-brown-the-disruptor-exclusive-clip-marina-zenovich-documentary-news/

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Douglas Trumbull, visionary filmmaker and visual effects

Douglas Trumbull's VFX work for Stanley Kubrick in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey"

In memory of Douglas Trumbull

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Trumbull

Douglas Trumbull

Steve Schmidt, GreenPolicy360 Siterunner:

Looking back to July 2015 as we were writing about 'high definition' creative work in Florida.

We were discussing with Doug interactive visual designs for the Kennedy Space Center and Gateway - https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/landing-pages/gateway

• https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/explore-attractions/all-attractions

NASA's startling visions of the Home Planet, recall the original Mission Statement from the launch of the US space agency... and beginnings of a new 'whole earth' movement as many of us saw our planet as never seen before...

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Whole_Earth

I can see back to the beginning of an Earth Observation "Inventory". I remember meeting, then years of learning, sharing and work alongside a congressman who set in motion and for decades shepherded U.S. earth science research programs. George E. Brown was a special person who brought a physics and engineering background to Congress. George saw what others didn't really understand and when he showed me the original Mission Statement of NASA, I began to understand. Here is the key phrase again -- “To understand and protect our home planet..."

2001, a sci-fi movie invented a pivotal new genre

Steven Schmidt: One of the first and most impactful sci-fi films to tackle ecological crisis still resonates today...

Back in 1972, while the seeds of the modern environmental movement were starting to take root, a sci-fi movie called "Silent Running" arrived. The emotional elements of this intriguing space film had a seismic impact on viewers of a certain age, one that still resonates in today’s time of climate change.

Directed by Douglas Trumbull, the special effects wizard behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Silent Running was a revelatory experience for audiences. Trumbull, who passed away on February 7, 2022, bestowed a quiet grace on the serious subject matter of 'Space Freighters' acting as giant greenhouses to protect the flora and fauna of a post-apocalyptic Earth...

• https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/silent-running-50-year-anniversary

~

(Wikipedia)

2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke's 1951 short story "The Sentinel" ...

The film is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of space flight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous imagery. Kubrick avoided conventional cinematic and narrative techniques; dialogue is used sparingly, and there are long sequences accompanied only by music. The soundtrack incorporates numerous works of classical music, by composers including Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Aram Khachaturian, and György Ligeti.

The film received diverse critical responses, ranging from those who saw it as darkly apocalyptic to those who saw it as an optimistic reappraisal of the hopes of humanity. Critics noted its exploration of themes such as human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Pioneering 'Immersive Reality'

A nod of respect to Douglas Trumbull who has aligned with us (M Channel/GreenPolicy360) and the "Overview Institute"

continuing his big picture, visionary work looking to change the ways we can see...

"Trumbull and...future of cinema / NY Times"

Doug in his Berkshires studio / 2016

"Hypercinema" --- Immersive Cinema beyond 3D

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Origin_of_Oculus_Rift_Smithsonian_photo-illus_by_Dan_Saelinger.jpg

This is not a metaphor or a breathless smile. Trumbull has literally created alternative universes.

Trumbull's Berkshire-area virtual reality creations... are on a higher level.

"What we try to do here is create a whole new viewing experience," said Trumbull.

"An experience where people are not just viewing the movie but being a part of it."

AR/Immersive/VR

New Realities — Augmented, Immersive, Virtual

• http://www.digibod.com/newrealities

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:2001_pic3.jpeg

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Overview_Effect

Whole Earth Perspective

"Planetary Awareness" | www.planetaryawareness.org @GreenPolicy360

Overview Effect

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Overview_Effect

Now is time to go beyond old ways of thinking and shape new visions of our communities and our living home -- Planet Earth

Six NASA Astronauts Describe the Moment in Space When “Everything Changed”

“This is what heaven must look like.”

• https://www.inverse.com/article/42902-nasa-astronauts-describe-overview-effect-everything-changed

 

Over Planet Earth, Spacewalk

They Saw Earth From Space. Here’s How It Changed Them

#TheOverviewEffect

For most of us, Earth is inescapably larger than life. Even now, after nearly six decades of human spaceflight, precious few people have rocketed into orbit and seen the sun peeking out from behind that curved horizon. Since 1961, a mere 556 people have had this rarefied experience. Fewer, just 24, have watched Earth shrink in the distance, growing smaller and smaller until it was no larger than the face of a wristwatch. And only six have been completely alone behind the far side of the moon, cut off from a view of our planet as they sailed in an endlessly deep, star-studded sea.

Earthrise and Whole Earth images from December 1968 and published famously in January 1969

Beginnings of the modern environmental movement

GreenPolicy360: Apollo 8 launched on Dec. 21, 1968. History was made. Humanity's picture of our place in the universe changed. Life on Earth changed as a result. Cognitive awareness, planetary awareness changed. Environmental awareness changed forever.

Apollo 8 was the first human mission into to deep space, deep enough to see the Whole Earth and share images of what they saw. The images were taken "serendipity", they were not planned as part of the mission. It was a magic, monumental event -- and the images forever changed humanity's perspective of ourselves and our home planet.

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Apollo.jpg

"Earthrise": Historic First-ever Vision of Our Home Planet (1968)

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2021

Don't Look Up

December 2021

Leonardo DiCaprio

Interviewed about his new film "Don't Look Up"

"He (director Adam McKay) is taking a real chance with this film. It’s really a very tough tight rope to manage from a cinematic perspective. I've been looking for a project to do about climate change for decades now. But it's nearly impossible to do something with that narrative and he cracked the code by creating this sense of urgency and tension and seeing the hysteria with all of our characters - these scientists, these politicians, the media - trying to react to what do we do to survive. And he did it within a six-month time period as opposed to a climate movie, which could only be throughout decades."

DiCaprio, speaking of his many years as a climate activist and his work with many scientists on his climate documentaries, says he built on their emotions in portraying Randall Mindy. He mentions Jennifer Lawrence's portrayal of his grad student, Kate Dibiasky, in the film and how she talks 'to the truth' like Greta Thunberg, as climate scientists have difficulties explaining the truths and facts of the science: "Scientists get frustrated when they have to try to articulate their life's work and science and urgency about a certain issue on what's going to happen to all of us. [Adam McKay] had these seeds within the script of him having anxiety, taking Xanax constantly, also becoming a Fauciesque figure that tries to work within this insane political system.... I try to work with the private sector, the powers that be, and sort of lose my way. Whereas Kate's character is more like Greta Thunberg - who just speaks loudly and openly and consistently and tries to penetrate to the truth."

Dr. Volts, David Roberts reviews "Don't Look Up"

• https://www.volts.wtf/p/dont-look-up-the-first-good-movie

Courtesy of @MichaelEMann

A Comedy Nails the Media Apocalypse

With “Don’t Look Up,” Adam McKay makes a star-studded allegorical satire that shows the news media whistling past the climate-change graveyard

New York Times Film Review by Ben Smith

December 12, 2021

@benyt / https://twitter.com/benyt

What makes “Don’t Look Up” interesting is that its writer and director, Adam McKay, is putting his money, and his career, where his mouth is.

“Don’t Look Up” has a raft of stars — the president is played by Meryl Streep — and the familiar arc of big-budget disaster flicks like “Armageddon” or “The Day After Tomorrow.” But while all of Mr. McKay’s films have been attuned to the intertwined roles of media and politics...

The new opus shows Mr. McKay as “one of America’s most incisive media critics, even if he’s not necessarily recognized that way,” said David Sirota, a co-producer of the film, who is better known as a combative journalist who advised Senator Bernie Sanders during his 2020 presidential campaign and now runs The Daily Poster, an investigative news site.

Mr. McKay said he tried five different ideas that would allow him to make a movie about the climate crisis, but nothing worked. “How do you tell this story, the biggest story in 66 million years, without exaggeration, since the Chicxulub comet, bigger than the Black Plague, bigger than Krakatoa?” he said in an interview, describing the question that kept him up at night.

“How can we be looking at the greatest story in human history,” he continued, “but most nights I’m not hearing it talked about — or when it is being talked about, it’s in the fourth block, or the ninth story down?”

He hit on the solution while talking one night in January 2019 with Mr. Sirota, who was venting about the news media’s passive reaction to climate change, saying it was as though a meteor was headed for earth and no one seemed to get it. Soon, the two were texting plot points back and forth.

“Don’t Look Up” is populated by politicians and Silicon Valley madmen denying reality for their own reasons, behaving in ways that are recognizably self-interested and deluded. But the real villain is a news media that is forever chasing after a distracted audience and, as a result, simply … cannot … focus...

When it comes to the climate story, the media’s failings are undeniable, and there is still a wide gap between the urgency and the attention it commands. However, the journalism on the topic has grown more urgent in tone and more widely seen over the last few years. It’s harder-edged, more numerate and more closely connected to the floods, fires and December tornadoes that have upended millions of people’s lives.

But great satire amplifies obvious truths, and there’s no doubt that “Don’t Look Up” contains those moments of recognition. David Roberts, the author of the clean energy newsletter Volts, called it “the first good movie about climate change.”

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Reviewing the Making of Climate 'TragiComedy' :

"If the world wasn’t such a careening, shifting, shaking, distorted, bizarre place right now, I would happily go back to making comedies..." -- Adam McKay

Adam McKay Is Tired of Our Climate-Politics Garbage Fire

• https://newrepublic.com/article/164691/adam-mckay-climate-politics-dont-look-up

How Adam McKay’s near-death experience led to ‘Don’t Look Up’

• https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-12-14/adam-mckay-the-envelope-podcast

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''The 11th Hour''

• https://leonardodicaprio.com/the-11th-hour/

Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The 11th Hour” is a feature length documentary concerning the environmental crises caused by human actions and their impact on the planet. The 11th Hour documents the cumulative impact of these actions upon the planet’s life systems and calls for restorative action through a reshaping of human activity.

DiCaprio: “With the onset of global warming and other catastrophic events, environmentalism has become a broader unifying human issue. We as citizens, leaders, consumers and voters, have the opportunity to help integrate ecology into governmental policy and every day living standards.”

With the help of over fifty of the world’s most prominent thinkers and activists, including reformer Mikhail Gorbachev, physicist Stephen Hawking, and Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, “The 11thHour documents the grave problems facing the planet’s life systems. Global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction, and depletion of the oceans’ habitats are all addressed, and their causes rooted in human activity. The combination of these crises call into question the very future not of the planet, but of humanity.

The most powerful element of “The 11th Hour is... the offering of hope and solutions

• http://www.11thhourfilm.com/

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IBG2V98IBY

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Flashback to 1990 and Carl Sagan

Warning of Science Predicting a Climate Change Emergency

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Carl_Sagan_at_the_Emerging_Issues_Forum.png

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The 15-Year Process Behind the Documentary ‘Fantastic Fungi’

With Filmmaker Louis Schwartzberg @ Moving Art

September 2021

• https://youtu.be/5yq0_mqN97s

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxABOiay6oA

• https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/09/fantastic-fungi-making-of/

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Today's Visual Trip is an Animation from Red Side

Comparing the Largest Trees on Earth (with accompanying Cosmonaut & Wolf)

“Trees in Perspective” (Watch on YouTube

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Project Drawdown

Solutions to Climate Change

Watch the online video series

• https://drawdown.org/climate-solutions-101

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In memory of Stephen Brown

“That’s the story, isn’t it?”

March 2021

The instinct to protect his reporters stemmed from Brown’s firm convictions about the mission of journalism — reasons he would often cite for why he loved getting to work each morning: to hold power to account; to expose wrongdoing; to explain complex issues; to bring injustices into the spotlight. In a profession crowded with cynics, he was an idealist about the power of reporting and its capacity for civic good.

• https://www.politico.eu/article/stephen-brown-politico-obituary/

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2020

Diversity in Hollywood: The Time Is Now

Academy President on Diversity Push: "We Will Keep the Pedal to the Metal"

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences spotlighted the diversity of invitations to join the voting Academy in 2016.

"Back in 2012, 30 percent of that year’s invitees were women and 10 percent were non-white. In 2016, 46 percent are women and 41 percent are people of color."

• 2020 - Hollywood Diversity Report, Film, A Tale of Two Hollywoods --- Diversity in Hollywood, TV

The seventh in a series of annual reports to examine relationships between diversity and the bottom line in the Hollywood entertainment industry.

• 2019 - https://www.npr.org/2019/02/21/696471501/hollywood-diversity-report-finds-progress-but-much-left-to-gain

• 2018 - https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-academy-new-members-list-2018-06252018-story.html

• 2017 - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/motion-picture-academy-invites-largest-class-ever-diversity-push-n777826

• 2016 - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/24/arts/hollywood-diversity-inclusion.html

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From Wildscreen 2020, a Conversation between David & Greta

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRFY4ss2W2A

Celebrating and advancing the art of natural world storytelling.

• https://www.wildscreen.org/about/

Films and photographs are major elements in the battle to protect our imperilled natural world. Wildscreen work with the best photographers and filmmakers to help promote conservation. They are the best at what they do and all their initiatives reflect this. - Sir David Attenborough, Wildscreen Patron

Top of the News @GreenPolicy360

Netflix's ‘David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet’ Is The Most Important Documentary Of The Year

Via Forbes

Attenborough is now 94, and throughout his long life, has watched the natural world wither before his eyes. He seems tired of keeping quiet about it.

The scale of the problem is so overwhelming, so gargantuan, that it can be difficult to absorb, and to communicate through a single documentary. But by framing environmental destruction through Attenborough’s eyes and unique career, A Life on Our Planet manages to humanize an issue that can often seem distant, and somewhat abstract.

Like the Lorax, who speaks for the trees, Attenborough attests to the fact that a significant amount of wildlife has been forever lost, painting a terrifying picture of a not-so-distant future in which humanity continues down the path of senseless self-destruction.

Watch the Preview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-91umZ7cQE

Watch an Episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfO-3Oir-qM

Teaching Resources - https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-life-on-our-planet-12412175

Read Reviews:

• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11989890/

• https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/david-attenborough-life-our-planet

• https://www.indiewire.com/2020/10/david-attenborough-a-life-on-our-planet-review-netflix-1234590155/

• https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/entertainment/david-attenborough-a-life-on-our-planet-review/index.html

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/04/movies/david-attenborough-a-life-on-our-planet-review.html

• https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/david_attenborough_a_life_on_our_planet

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Watch the 13th, Now on YouTube / Netflix

Read about Ava DuVernay's powerful documentary film

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Gunda

Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky shows a world that most people never notice or care to understand, one that respects other living creatures and sees, really sees, their distinct behaviors and relationships. To an extent, the movie reflects the issues that John Berger broached in his 1970s essay “Why Look at Animals?,” which mournfully weighed what has been lost as humans have increasingly severed their ties with animals. “Everywhere animals disappear,” Berger wrote. “In zoos they constitute the living monument to their own disappearance.”

• https://thefilmstage.com/berlin-review-gunda-is-a-spell-binding-take-on-animal-sentience/

Great Ideas Why Look At Animals? (Penguin Great Ideas)

by John Berger

• https://www.amazon.com/Great-Ideas-Look-Animals-Penguin/dp/0141043970

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Planet of the Humans

Documentary / April

Negative reviews extensive -- Sample

The new movie Executive Produced and promoted by Michael Moore is unfactual, unscientific, flies in the face of decades of renewable energy science, engineering and research and is counter productive in the age of urgent need for Climate Action.

Intro:

Planet of the Humans, directed by Jeff Gibbs and Produced by Michael Moore, promotes a thesis that is patently untrue on many levels.

1. The film states that renewable energy such as solar and wind are inefficient, useless and dependent on fossil fuels to work. Quote fro the film “One of the most dangerous things right now is the illusion that alternative technologies, like wind and solar, are somehow different than fossil fuels….You would have been better off just burning the fossil fuels in the first place., instead of playing pretend.”

This assertion, which is echoed over and over in the film is patently untrue and ridiculous. The notion that solar and wind and other renewable technologies don’t work to produce energy in ways that are cheaper, more efficient and at low or zero carbon emissions over their life span flies in the face of everything engineers, scientists and energy planners have been writing in peer reviewed science for decades.

2. The film trades in debunked fossil fuel industry talking points that are specious and meant to disparage the efficiency, durability and affordability of renewable energy. Quote: “Intermittency is one of the major challenges.” “Solar panels are built to only last 10 years, so it’s not as if you get this magic free energy, right? I don’t know if it’s the solution.” These notions, which are untrue, antiquated and outdated do not pertain to the technology and science of today , in which intermittency and efficiency are no longer issues due to the significant advances that renewable energy science, planning and technology. The fact is that RENEWABLE ENERGY WORKS and is currently cheaper than coal and natural gas, other fossil fuel generated electricity sources.

3. The film totally ignores the last ten years of peer-reviewed renewable energy planning and policy. Absent from this anti-renewable energy screed are important policy and science innovations such as the 100% renewable energy plans for each state, over 150 countries and the world from Stanford University, Physicians Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy and the Solutions Project. Also absent is any mention of the Green New Deal, which is the most important policy advance on green energy of all time. Bear in mind that this work on renewable energy, such as the 100% plans for New York and California are all ready well under way and are being enacted now with solar and wind energy growing exponentially- all backed up and predicted by science.

Peer reviewed

Stanford University plans: https://thesolutionsproject.org/why-clean-energy/

PSE Research: https://www.psehealthyenergy.org

4. The film attacks important environmental campaigners, scientists, policy leaders and activists in unfair and misleading ways. The climate movement, the anti fracking movement, the movement for renewable energy and against fossil fuels has been an important part of the advancement of thinking and policy towards changing our energy system away from coal oil and gas. The film attacks movement leaders like Bill McKibben, Van Jones and others as well as taking pot shots at important local campaigners like Nathan Sooy of Clean Water Action, accusing them of supporting forms of energy that they do not (like biomass) and taking money from fossil fuel interests (which they do not). See the extensive and detailed rebuttal by Bill McKibben here:

• https://350.org/response-planet-of-the-humans-documentary/

5. The film ignores that the IPCC and other scientific bodies are saying that we must cut our carbon emissions in half in the next ten years and that the only way to feasibly do that is what a total transformation of our energy systems. These scientists point overwhelmingly towards transformations in our economies towards renewable energy.

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Explore a Vibrant Forest Garden

An Amazing How-to Story in the UK

Martin Crawford growing a wondrous forest garden

Agroforestry ... Edible Landscapes, The Food Forest Revolution

• https://www.ulule.com/edible-landscapes-food-forest-documentary/

• https://www.nationalgeographic.com/video/shorts/1438178883749/

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Agroforestry

Industrial agriculture, monoculture, brings unsustainable impacts with loss of forest land and loss of fertile soil. Big corporate petro-chemical growing regimens lead to water pollution, aquifer depletion, environmental and adverse health impacts. The reduction of critical CO2 absorption that forests provide is becoming a profound problem. What can agro-forests provide as an alternative to industrial ag?

From the Filmmaker

Increasing food production by expanding conventional agriculture leads directly to large-scale deforestation which in turn is destroying biodiversity, damaging water cycles, and driving devastating climatic change.

Rethinking forests as our food larder is the only way to simultaneously stop deforestation while providing food through a democratic supply chain.

A forest garden or food forest is a plant growing system modeled on the structure of a young natural woodland, utilizing plants that bring direct and indirect benefits to people - mostly edible plants. Humanity has been producing abundant food in forest gardens since the dawn of civilization. The crops which can be produced include fruits, nuts, edible leaves, spices, medicinal plant products, poles, fibres, basketry materials, honey, fuelwood, fodder, mulches, sap products, and on and on...

The structure and diversity of forest gardens ensure that they are resilient to the impacts of climate change including extreme weather conditions like droughts and heavy rain. The beauty of forest gardens is that they are so perfectly suited to collective engagement, functioning as well in urban spaces as in rural ones.

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Via Ecodads

Gratitude

By Louie Schwartzberg

• https://vimeo.com/44131171

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A Holiday Message

David Attenborough speaks of saving the planet (video)

• https://www.ourplanet.com/en/video/how-to-save-our-planet/

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2019

Harriet Tubman, the Movie

September 2019

‘Harriet’ makes its worldwide premiere at Toronto International Film Festival

The first feature film on the story of Harriet Tubman, Harriet, made its premiere Tuesday night at the Toronto International Film Festival. Harriett is directed by Kasi Lemmons, best known for her work directing Eve Bayou, Talk to Me, and Black Nativity, who was on hand for the introduction of the film by festival director Cameron Bailey.

Official Movie Trailer - July 2019

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqoEs4cG6Uw

Creative Credits

The extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes, whose courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.

• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4648786/

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President Trump says no to plans to replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the $20 US bill

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Bravery Amid Decimation in the Amazon

 

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Bill Nye, The Science Guy, Brings It

The twists of fate that allow life to thrive on Earth

• http://natgeotv.com/ca/one-strange-rock/videos

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2018

A tip of the green hat to Robert Redford and the Redford Center.

Much of what we, activists in environmental, political reform, encounter in changing the world can be difficult, almost impossible, and very often we must have resilience and persistence in the face of forces arrayed against visionary work needed to make a difference.

 

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Look Around, 360° Around

Climate Change is the defining issue of our time and we are at a defining moment. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. -- United Nations

Must See Climate Change Movies, via Climate Reality

List of environmental films (Wikipedia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Environmental_films

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH / AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth

Al Gore (controversially) lost the race for U.S. president in 2000. A door closed, a window opened as he chose to become a full-time, full-on environmental activist and educator.

>After seeing former US Vice President Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, people worldwide finally understood the reality of the climate crisis devastating our planet. For many, it was the moment they knew they personally had to do something about it. The film’s impact continues to be felt more than a decade after it won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary and took its place among the highest-grossing documentaries ever.

>Last year’s follow-up, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, took the Climate Crisis story further...

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/A_Day_with_Al_Gore

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BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beasts_of_the_Southern_Wild

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-benh-zeitlin-made-beasts-of-the-southern-wild-135132724

>Living in a Louisiana bayou community called “the Bathtub,” six-year-old Hush Puppy (youngest-ever Best Actress Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis) can’t get the prehistoric aurochs her teacher tells her will be released from melting ice caps off her mind – even as the world in front of her crumbles and cowers, the victim of powerful storms, failing levees, and familial health problems.

>While the film’s setting is technically fictional, it was inspired by several very real fishing villages in Southern Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish. These small, isolated wetland communities are threatened by climate-driven erosion, extreme weather, and rising sea levels. Most notable among them is the rapidly disappearing Isle de Jean Charles, former home of “the first American climate refugees.”

IMDB

Storyline

Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in the Bathtub, a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink's tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he's no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack, temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink's health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother. (Written by Sundance Film Festival)

First Review

Magical, thought-provoking, very, very watchable

26 July 2012 | by oldgirl

I can understand how most people view this film within the context of Hurricane Katrina. But even as a former denizen of the Gulf coast who sat out Alicia, Claudette, Allen, Rita, and Ike, I view this film in a much, much larger context. It goes beyond stereotype and into archetype -- the denizens of the Bathtub aren't poor drunks at the mercy of the environment, they are The People of the world they inhabit. Hushpuppy doesn't have a drunk father, she has a Father, with many of the faults and strengths of the immortal epic heroes -- anger, pride, genuine love and concern. Hushpuppy herself isn't just a little girl, she is The Child -- the purveyor of a magic which is real, intimately connected with her world, imaginatively linked with All Things. The outside world is a place of Things and Machines, of paperwork and rules -- and is never actually named, you see, because that would diminish it. Everything in this film exists within the realm of archetype, and if you watch it with that in mind, its multiple messages take on cosmic significance. Beautifully shot, beautifully acted -- it's going to take a few more days for the entire thing to completely sink in. Outstanding!

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CHASING CORAL - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/chasing-coral-review-sundance-2017-967131

From GreenPolicy360's friends at the Bioneers and Leo DiCaprio ...

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Chasing_Coral.jpg

• https://youtu.be/b6fHA9R2cKI

>That coral reefs are existentially threatened by the climate crisis is a truth near-universally acknowledged. But filmmaker Jeff Orlowski doesn’t simply telegraph a report on this impending ecological catastrophe.

>Instead, Orlowski infuses his film with such empathy and ardor for our world’s oceans and their vibrant ecosystems – as well as those working hard to save what’s left – that it’s impossible to not walk away pumped up and ready to join the fight.

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INTERSTELLAR - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_(film) (kudos to Co-producer Lynda Obst)

>Director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is that rarest of Hollywood anomalies – a wildly complicated, lavishly expensive, wholly original mainstream blockbuster. It doesn’t exist in the Marvel or DC cinematic universes; instead, it occupies a not-so-distant-future version of our very own – and things aren’t exactly going great.

>While the words “climate change” are never explicitly said in the film, the impacts of the crisis are writ large, driving a plot about an attempt to flee a near-future Earth reeling from drastically changing weather patterns and global food shortages for the safety of a new habitable planet.

>Featuring one of the most stacked casts in recent memory, including Oscar winners Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, and Ellen Burstyn and nominees Jessica Chastain, Timothée Chalamet, and John Lithgow, Interstellar takes on a very real consequence of climate inaction, though it offers up an untenable solution.

>After all, there’s still no Planet B.

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SNOWPIERCER - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer

>The film is set in a future where a failed geoengineering experiment to counteract climate change plunges the planet into a new ice age, killing all life except for those lucky enough (a phrase we’re using loosely here) to have boarded the titular train. This train now circles the globe on a constant loop and a tyrannical class system has taken hold onboard.

>It’s an important cautionary tale: While we should investigate any and all scientific developments to stop the climate crisis, dangerous gambles like geoengineering – or for that matter, fleeing our planet for an imagined oasis somewhere deep in the universe – could come with unintended consequences.

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Eco-films for you

• https://www.imdb.com/list/ls052614234/

• https://medium.com/greenpeace/7-environmental-films-that-you-need-to-watch-right-now-296d4ffd21b8

• https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/top-10-environmental-films-of-all-time

• https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/ten-films-to-inspire-your-inner-environmental-superhero

• https://www.cinemadailies.com/the-best-environmental-movies-and-documentaries-of-all-time/

• https://tmff.net/environmental-film-festivals-a-list-for-the-planet/

One Strange Rock... Diatoms, microalgae

Secret to the Earth's oxygen supply...

First Look at One Strange Rock / Gasp

@GreenPolicy360 / www.ThinBlueLayer.com

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2017

Virtual Reality in Space

New Perspective of the Home Planet

Space VR

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Jamie & Robert Redford

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Cliff Curtis: Leader To Be of the Reef People Clan (Avatar)

https://www.bestmovie.it/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Cliff-Curtis-Avatar.jpg

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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/bill-nye-science-guy-review-986806

No more Mr. Nice Science Guy?

With his beloved PBS series having officially wrapped back in 1998 (although still playing in perpetuity on TV and classrooms everywhere), Bill Nye finds himself at a career crossroads.

While his trademark bow tie is still very much intact, his struggle to be taken seriously as a passionate advocate for the environment, facing off against dismissive climate change deniers and the anti-science movement, is intimately chronicled in the documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy, which had its world premiere at South by Southwest.

http://www.geek.com/tech/bill-nye-the-science-guy-hopeful-for-the-future-1687963/

Facts Matter today, yesterday & tomorrow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_for_Science

https://satellites.marchforscience.com/

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:March_for_Science-2.png

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Bill_nye-march_for_science-earth_day.jpg

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Miyazaki Is Making a New Film!

Remembering Princess Mononoke

Mononoke, a Teachable Moment

Nature, Environment & Industry: a Film for the Ages

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A Beautiful Planet

May - 2016 / IMAX

• http://abeautifulplanet.imax.com/

Watch the Intro to Beautiful Planet

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Leonardo takes an Oscar and speaks out...

"Making The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It's the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.

"We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this. For our children's children and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed, I thank you all for this amazing award tonight.

"Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted. Thank you so much."

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Film/Media Reviews

In the movie industry the term "look-see" is used to describe a first look...

a glimpse of a project, a creator's idea, an initial concept, story, package, a pitch of a screenplay...

Our media reviews are quick look-sees, online intros, scoops and insights of projects worth your time and thought.

So pull up to your screen, log on, stream, download, rent it, buy it, go out to a movie, get virtual, take it to the next level... Act out!

-- www.mchannel.org

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Racing Extinction

Racing Extinction ○ #RacingExtinction @RacingXtinction

“I told the crew, 'We’re not making a movie – we’re starting a movement'. This film is one component of a movement that will go on and on...

and hopefully live in people’s hearts and minds and change behavior. We are the only generation that can save species for millions of years going forward...”

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New Ways of Seeing

Douglas Trumbull: I believe we are at the threshold... time to make breakthroughs.'

Time for Technology to Revolutionize Cinema

• http://www.indiewire.com/article/visual-effects-master-douglas-trumbull-gives-us-a-sneak-peek-at-the-techology-that-will-revolutionize-cinema

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Premiere of BigPicture Media

A Brief Message from SJS - GreenPolicy Siterunner

Here on the Big Picture we throw a eco-Spotlight on important environmentally attuned films/movies/media.

We visit the work of #planetcitizen media makers, creators and visionaries. We look at the BIG and the tiny -- and life in between and all around us.

At GreenPolicy, we bring a dramatic 360° perspective.

And a personal POV as "Planet Citizens".

Welcome to a Blue Planet adventure.

~ GreenPolicy360 Siterunner from Clearwater, Florida

http://www.mchannelonline.com