Shoot us an email, or give us a call.! But McAleer, who guides us through his investigation on-screen and in voiceover narration as if he were the sole, first-person-style director of FrackNation, dominates the foreground of this film in a theatrical manner as well. In its early years, EPA acted primarily as the nation’s environmental watchdog, striving to ensure that industries met legal requirements to control pollution.

Those thousands, all credited as executive producers, helped to finance a movie that they believed in, sight unseen, because of a cause they agreed with, to the collective tune of more than $200,000 -- when the crowd-funding campaign goal was only $150,000 -- making it one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns for a documentary ever.

With “FrackNation” opening Tuesday, he offers this view from the ground.) I saw the documentary GasLand and that is about the first time that I learned about fracking. Inspiration. “Gasland” is Josh Fox’s reaction to a proposal made by a gas company to lease his land in Pennsylvania. Where FrackNation makes its strongest and most interesting case against Gasland, however, is not so much with refute of its claims as with address of its impact and what this says about modern journalism. In subsequent years, EPA began to develop theory, tools, and practices that enabled it to move from controlling pollution to preventing it.

She has already given presentations in Minot and Bismarck, ND before heading home for Hollywood and back with her husband Phelim Mcaleer, who is the co-producer of their latest documentary. It’s one thing for a journalist to seek to debunk claims made by Gasland, but it’s another thing entirely to turn that into a piece fully promoting the thing being investigated -- in this case fracking. Most of the people she met on her tour have given her great encouragement to go through with her project in order to straighten out the misinformation being published by the environmentalist groups who are against any kind of fossil fuel production. At the end of the surprisingly engaging new documentary FrackNation, a title card states that “this is their film,” meaning the “thousands of ordinary people from 26 countries” who contributed to its budget through the crowd-funding website Kickstarter. Ann McElhinney saved her real harsh words about Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) current dealings with sustainability. The anti-fracking ruling and threat or huge potential fines are costing the oil and gas exploration millions of dollars in legal costs. Yet mention is made of a plan by HBO to produce a Gasland sequel produced by Fox. Through the media coverage, Academy recognition and HBO’s airing of that film, it became a phenomenal influence on an issue that many of us weren’t even conscious of until Fox made it his raison d’etre (he continues to lead activists and document the cause with short films and an upcoming sequel).

“Competing documentaries are made from different viewpoints,” is how Ann McElhinney describes the film she and her husband are in the middle of making. FrackNation is often critical of how much Gasland depends on theatrics, both in terms of its first-person style, with Fox the most captivating novice investigator in nonfiction cinema since Michael Moore in Roger and Me, and with regards to its famous footage of running tap water being lit on fire.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Doc Talk is a biweekly column devoted to documentary cinema, typically featuring an essay concentrated on a currently relevant topic for discussion followed by critic picks for new theatrical and home video releases. The last 20 minutes of FrackNation involves two sequences that are so impishly Moore-ish in their technique (though we should probably give credit to Nick Broomfield, too, since McAleer is from the U.K.), including a climactic ambush on Fox at a public event, that it feels like it’s an actual backwards Moore film that has escaped from bizarro world. What a contrast, for example, when compared to the funding behind Matt Damon’s recently released – and very fictional – anti-fracking “Promised Land”, which has been reported to receive some funding from the United Arab Emirates. Betty Sutliff Wayne County Landowner Member of Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance Betty Sutliff, retired school teacher and landowner contrasts Gasland Part II with FrackNation, finding the former brought out the usual suspects, while the latter brought a more serious mix of individuals simply interested in the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. © MAKE DESIGNS CREATIVE inc dba BAKKEN OIL BUSINESS JOURNAL. The latter created fear in people about climate change having an immediate affect on our lives if we continue to depend on fossil fuels as our mainstay. Unlike that short film, though, FrackNation has avowedly been made independently of those who’d profit from fracking, as the filmmakers stressed on their Kickstarter page that they would not accept money from any oil or gas company or its senior executives. She told her very attentive Glendive crowd how the water in Dimock, PA has been flammable for hundreds of years. Sustainability has emerged as a result of significant concerns about the unintended social, environmental, and economic consequences of rapid population growth, economic growth and consumption of our natural resources. Who will win the FrackNation vs GasLand battle? In the other corner: “FrackNation” – a recently release documentary which disproves many of “GasLand’s” claims. And this very well could be the future for conservative-cause documentaries from filmmakers who believe both the mainstream and public means for the production and financing and distribution of nonfiction works are too liberal-leaning.

'FrackNation' vs. 'Gasland' - A Tale of Two Propaganda Documentaries.

FrackNation vs GasLand Fracking is big in Texas. Controversy has been brewing between the eleven families suing the oil companies and the other 1500 families not willing to join the class action lawsuit and the negative publicity brought on by all the media attention from the GasLand film. Copyright © 2020 Movies.com.

Frack Nation is worth seeing because it is a good film. We could eventually do with some conservative docs that aren’t so reactionary, particularly as counterpoints to other films (we tend to see films like the multiple titles responding to Fahrenheit 9/11 and An Inconvenient Truth -- the latter pile of which includes McAleer and McElhinney’s own Not Evil Just Wrong). “Environmentalists are terrifying average people with well made movies and making documentaries presenting untrue facts, which are easily debunked with the truth.”. On the facts, the science, the conflicts of interest of its protagonists. And fracking is actually good for the environment, too, according to the film, in the way that it keeps the farmland natural and free of suburban sprawl, which requires more energy to be produced and ruins the beautiful bucolic landscape. Of course, it would be even better if we could have non-entertainment-based media providing more trustworthy discourse for those of us who would like to know what to believe, as well as for those who are buying or buying into (literally, now) documentaries like FrackNation and Gasland. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the BAKKEN OIL BUSINESS JOURNAL with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. We first need someone to teach us in layman’s terms how to Tweet and FaceBook on a computer or smart phone.”. "I disagree with people who think you learn more from getting beat up than you do from winning.". It eviscerates Gasland's credibility and makes clear that its director knowingly lied again and again.

This week we look at the new film FrackNation. But it would also be fascinating to see Gasland 2 directly respond to FrackNation and then a FrackNation sequel volley the debate back, and so forth. And what a contrast, indeed, to the misleading claims put forth in “Gasland”, which fail to prove that combustible tap water isn’t related to fracking – but, in fact, was around long before fracking took place. While it’s true that this isn’t the first time propaganda has been paid for by the people, unlike the tax-funded wartime documentaries of 70 years ago, it is a very new breed. She shared her current passion explaining hydraulic fracturing or shale oil and gas by showing a sneak peak of her film “FrackNation” to a crowd of over 50 people.

Matt Damon, the actor, and Gus Van Sant, a prominent director, are making an anti-fossil propaganda film this summer which will likely become another Oscar nominee like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Movies.com, the ultimate source for everything movies, is your destination for new movie trailers, reviews, photos, times, tickets + more! It will also respond to “Gasland,” a film made by Josh Fox, which raised concerns about the safety of hydraulic fracturing. 'FrackNation' vs. 'Gasland' - A Tale of Two Propaganda Documentaries. In the most brilliantly manipulative section of FrackNation, the film features a number of these small business farmers crying over the potential of losing land that their ancestors built over a century ago.

A product that has an odd quality of being self-affirming propaganda, made by the people for the people, who buy a ticket for a destination they’re already at. It’s socially supported, rather than nationalistically. All Rights Reserved.

Read more…, Designed by Fracking Jobs | Powered by Your Oilfield Jobs Source. McElhinney and her husband produced several other documentaries debunking environmentalists’ cases against different issues, such as mining in Romania.
The lessons learned are simple; the anti-fossil fuels crowd is winning the propaganda battle as most of the pro- side is busy making a living and most important we can win IF we can maximize our involvement in social networking, i.e. That claim may seem ludicrous given that their side is also that of the natural gas industry and lobby, which has already responded to Fox’s film with tons of money spent on PR as well as its own documentary, TruthLand: Dispatches from the Real Gasland (produced through a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America). And it’s important to realize that, especially with adequate budgets and talents, they’re not necessarily any different from those promoting left-wing causes. The event was held Thursday night, April 12th at the MidRivers community meeting room in Glendive, MT, which was hosted by “The Eastern Montana Patriots Organization” (TEMPO) and sponsored by the “Montana Policy Institute” (MPI). It’s easier on the eyes than Gasland is, and it’s often craftier, going beyond mere dispute to offer itself as an issue film in its own right on matters of the economy and environment.