Environmental Call-to-Action Film Previewing in Petaluma

It’s not easy being green – every battle is against the odds.

Such is one lesson from A Fierce Green Fire, a film narrated by Robert Redford, that will be screening in Petaluma on Wednesday, May 30, at the Sunflower Center (Lydia's Organics).

Directed by Mark Kitchell (Oscar nominated for Best Documentary, "Berkeley in the Sixties"), A Fierce Green Fire premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2012, and a wide release is planned for the fall.

"There were five sold out screenings at Sundance," said Kitchell when reached by phone this week. "Then we went to Washington for the Environmental Film Festival, and we got a standing ovation when it closed the festival. It's been doing fabulously."

A Fierce Green Fire explores how the issues of conservation, saving whales and stopping dams built into an international movement, from grassroots to global activism. It chronicles the growth of the environmentalism over five decades, including the Love Canal pollution scandals, the proposed dams in the Grand Canyon, Chico Mendes fighting the deforestation in the Amazon, the Greenpeace movement and other signature moments and movements in environmental activism.

But it also considers whether the issues themselves are too big for the environmental movement to deal with.  "Do we have to have a hurricane take out Miami and Shanghai to have everybody wake up?" says Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider, in an interview recorded before his death in 2010. "If that happens in 2025, by then it's going to be too late to prevent the melting of [Greenland's ice cap]. If it happened next year it might be possible to still do that.

"What a hell of a way to run a planet."

Kitchell pointed out that the film is not quite ready for general release. "There are three main tasks to do," he said. "We have to finish licensing the archival footage and music, which can be quite expensive. We plan on having five narrators, from Robert Redford to Meryl Streep. And we're working on an ending that's a call to action for today's activists."

He and his post-production team plan to go into the editing room to complete these tasks after the Fourth of July, and are looking for a general release in September.

A Fierce Green Fire is being screened by the Visionary Edge production company through Cinema Connect California, at 7 p.m. Director Kitchell plans to be present to answer questions following the film, which starts at 7 p.m. Advance tickets available online are $12, at the door price is $16.  An optional dinner at Lydia's Organics is sold out.