A Fierce Green Fire

Filmmaker Mark Kitchell takes a cue from environmental journalist Philip Shabecoff's book of the same name in this documentary, which offers a detailed history of environmental activism. Spanning the course of five decades, Kitchell's film reveals this remarkable history in five acts, each centered around a specific struggle, and featuring a strong central character: In the first act, we see how David Brower and the Sierra Club joined forces to prevent the construction of dams in the Grand Canyon; the second story finds Lois Gibbs and her Love Canal neighbors waging a fierce battle against local, state, and federal governments after learning their homes had been built on top of a toxic dumping ground; Paul Watson joins Greenpeace in stopping whalers from plundering the sea in chapter three; Chico Mendes sides with Brazilian rubber tappers in the struggle to halt destruction of the Amazon rainforest in the penultimate episode; and the final tale follows Bill McKibben in his decades-long attempt to raise awareness of climate change. In the aftermath of such environmental catastrophes as Hurricane Katrina and Fukushima, A Fierce Green Fire attempts to awaken us to the dangers that could lie ahead should we continue to go on ignoring the troubling signs all around us.