FILMS+EVENTS
Earth Days
Special Programming

Running Time:
101 minutes
Screening Info:
Sunday, April 5
4:15PM
Cinema Three
Director(s):
Robert Stone
Producer(s):
Mark Samels
Editor(s):
Don Kleszy
Cinematographer(s):
Howard Shack
Release Year:
2009
Country:
USA

Robert Stone’s sweeping history of the modern environmental movement serves as both inspiration and warning. Blending stunning archival footage with eyewitness accounts, the film traces American environmentalism from its post-World War II beginnings to its emergence as a national force on April 22, 1970—the first Earth Day—to our current preoccupation with global warming and sustainability.  In the early fifties science and economic growth promised a bright new dawn for America; by 1970 the only thing keeping pace with alarming population growth rates was the rise in environmental pollution. The startling realizations that came with Earth Day and later the energy crisis of 1979 propelled the environmental movement into the major political and moral force it is today. With probing insights from such environmental crusaders as former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, biologist Paul Ehrlich, and astronaut Rusty Schweikart, Earth Days poignantly reminds us how carefully we must tend to our delicate and fraught relationship with the earth.  ST

 


Q & A with filmmaker following screening.