For 19 years, the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital has demonstrated the breadth of its worldview. Yet moviegoers who haven’t been paying close attention may still think the fest is all cuddly cubs and ecological outrages.
In fact, this year’s 150-film lineup, which begins Tuesday, encompasses dramas and comedies, studies of the built environment and at least a few documentaries with dispositions that are more sly than angry. These include three of the highlights: “Into Eternity,’’ “Plastic Planet” and “Nostalgia for the Light.’’
“Into Eternity’’ considers the world’s first permanent underground vault for nuclear waste, dubbed Onkalo (“hiding place’’) by its Finnish builders. Director Michael Madsen (a Danish artist, not the Hollywood actor) looks at the practical problems of building such a large subterranean complex and the long-term dilemma of preventing clueless future earthlings from digging up the toxic trash. And that dilemma is seriously long-term: 100,000 years, far greater than all human civilization to date. The staggering time frame and the experts’ theoretical discussions of Onkalo — which sometimes suggest a conceptual art project — inspire Madsen to turn philosophical. “Into Eternity’’ doesn’t condemn nuclear power. But it does quietly wonder at the wisdom of leaving an underground radioactive dump that’s meant to last more than 20 times longer than Egypt’s pyramids have.
If not as potentially lethal as radioactive waste, plastic is another human creation in which longevity has become an issue. Filmmaker Werner Boote doesn’t hate the stuff; he has fond memories of his grandfather, who worked for a plastics firm. But “Plastic Planet’’ justifies its title, locating synthetic polymers everywhere from the Moroccan desert to the director’s own bloodstream. Along the way, Boote asks people to empty their homes of all the plastic items, an exercise that yields almost as big a pile of synthetics in the Third World as in the industrialized one. “Plastic Planet’’ is ultimately a collection of anecdotes, all linked by a substance that’s become nearly ubiquitous — not just on supermarket shelves, but throughout the biosphere.
Set in Chile’s remote Atacama Desert, “Nostalgia for the Light’’ begins by looking at the heavens. Because the region boasts near-pristine darkness, it’s a center for observatories. But starlight isn’t the region’s only ancient attraction: Its dry, salty soil preserves the artifacts of prehistoric inhabitants. Much more recently, Pinochet’s government built its largest concentration camp in the desert and buried many of its victims there. Kin of the “disappeared’’ still dig for remnants of their loved ones. Director Patricio Guzman skillfully knits these three strands, linking the effects of Pinochet’s rule to the search for knowledge.
One documentary that offers a full ration of indignation is “The Pipe.’’ It recounts a battle between the residents of Rossport, a small fishing village in western Ireland, and a Shell Oil subsidiary that planned to route a natural-gas pipeline through productive fishing grounds and a local land reserve. Shell, which declined to participate in the movie, had the full support of the Irish government. Yet the project’s most adamant opponents didn’t stand down. Even now, the issue may not be settled, but this film could arouse enough passion to fuel Rossport’s resistance for generations.
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