Tag Archives: documentary

Georgia could have put an end to nuclear plant construction in the U.S., but it didn’t.

by JanelleCuller6 Posted on December 21, 2017

Growing up in the ’90s, some of my favorite people in the world were Bill Nye, Cookie Monster, and Wishbone. That definitely did NOT make me one of the cooler kids at school, who got to chat about cable TV shows I knew nothing about.

But hey, my buddy Bill gave me the crazy idea that science was fun. Wishbone instilled in me a love of reading. And Sesame Street legit taught me, a new immigrant kid from the Philippines, how to speak English.

Now I write about the environment, with a special focus on all the nerdy, science-y, but supremely important environmental stuff that impacts kids in marginalized communities. Those are the kids who might rely on things like public broadcasting to close educational gaps — just like I did. It helped me get to where I am today.

So when Bill Nye resurfaced in 2017 in a big way — with a new series on Netflix and in a new documentary about the man behind the bow tie, I was obsessed. In the film, he meets YouTubers taking the torch when it comes to making fun, open-to-anyone educational videos. It’s all part of his quest to protect science education and keep it accessible to kids. And what makes the documentary even cooler for me? It’s on PBS.

Justine Calma is a Grist fellow.

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Georgia could have put an end to nuclear plant construction in the U.S., but it didn’t.

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A Portrait of Colombia in 26 Gorgeous Polaroids

by CharisWttxtlvq Posted on May 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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Bay Area photographer Matthew O’Brien documented Colombia from his unique vantage as a long-time visitor, straddling the line between traveler and insider while living in the country off and on from 2003 through 2013. Using a Polaroid camera, O’Brien photographed Colombia in a way that contradicted the stereotype of the country as a war-ravaged narco-state and more closely reflected reality for most who live there, as well as for the tourists who visit. Having a foot in both worlds brings together a body of work that shows many of Colombia’s contours, outside the wars we here in America have heard so much about.

O’Brien collected his Colombian Polaroids in a new book called No Dar Papaya: Fotografías de Colombia 2003-2013 (Icono Editorial/Placer Press). The book’s title comes from a common Colombian expression that has nothing to do with tropical fruit, but instead roughly translates to “show no vulnerabilities and present no easy target.”

As a longtime documentary photographer—O’Brien won the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography in 1998—he first went to Colombia to work on a project about beauty pageants called Royal Colombia. He later wound up teaching at different schools throughout the country and eventually got a Fulbright to continue working on the project that would eventually become No Dar Papaya.

The book’s 190 images show a depth of appreciation for a country not seen enough in photography, especially by an outsider looking in. Portraits, landscapes and more photojournalistic images work together to given a well-rounded sense of the country.

First shown in Colombia in 2013 and 2014, 24 large prints from the book are now on exhibition at the Colombian Consulate in San Francisco from May 4 to August 3, with a talk and signing on July 19.

Left: Carmen de Viboral, 2010; Right: Santa Marta, 2011

Left: Cartagena, 2003; Right: Bogotá, 2005

Left: Punta Gallinas, 2011; Right: Salento, 2010

Left: Bogotá, 2013; Right: Cali, 2010

Left: Medellín, 2010; Right: Cabo de la Vela, 2011

Left: Cali, 2010; Right: Cartagena, 2010

Left: San Andrés, 2005; Right: Urabá Antioqueño, 2011

Left: Acandí, 2011; Right: Acandí, 2011

Left: Playa Salguero, 2013; Right: San Andrés, 2005

Left: Pereira, 2005; Right: Cartagena, 2010

Left: Capurnagá, 2011; Right: Manizales, 2010

Left: Cartagena, 2010; Right: Medellín, 2004

Left: San Andrés, 2005; Right: Salento, 2010

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A Portrait of Colombia in 26 Gorgeous Polaroids

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You’ve geeked out over “An Inconvenient Truth.” Watch these next.

by GeraldPalafox01 Posted on May 24, 2016

You’ve geeked out over “An Inconvenient Truth.” Watch these next.

By on May 24, 2016Share

Along with a good chunk of the environmental space, Grist is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the release of An Inconvenient Truth, the Oscar-winning documentary that dragged climate change in front of the eyeballs of millions. (Check out our complete oral history of the film and interviews with the activists, politicians, and artists it influenced.)

Perhaps you’re in celebration mode, too, and have re-watched the documentary in all its early-2000s Keynote glory. (If not, you can for free today!) Perhaps you’re feeling inspired. Stand tall! Sub out that incandescent sack of filaments for a lovely compact fluorescent lamp! You’re an environmentalist!

Now wipe your brow with a recyclable, grab an armload of in-season fruit, and binge watch these classic environmental docs next.

Food, Inc.

From Participant Media (the same folks that produced An Inconvenient Truth), Food, Inc. tells the story of our utterly zany industrial food system. After watching, this author stopped eating fast food for good (though, to be honest, not for lack of desire). Watch: Netflix.

Gasland

Josh Fox’s documentary on hydraulic fracturing helped launch the anti-fracking movement. A true conversation about climate change isn’t “possible without the awareness An Inconvenient Truth brought,” he told Grist, but here’s a conversation-starter, by way of the energy system. Watch: Netflix.

Chasing Ice

Photographer James Balog traveled to the Arctic to capture photos of dramatically receding — and in some cases, disappearing — ice. If you weren’t already convinced climate change is serious, these glaciers beg to differ. Watch: Netflix.

This Changes Everything

When Naomi Klein published This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate in 2014, she pointed to climate change as an opportunity to rework our entire economic system. But what about the people in that system? The film project of the same name is, according to director Avi Lewis, “a portrait of community struggle around the world on the front lines of fossil fuel extraction and the climate crisis.”

For the optimal dose of anger and action, don’t sub the book out for the movie: Soak ’em both in back-to-back. Watch: iTunes, Amazon.

Under the Dome

China has an air pollution problem. In Under the Dome, that problem is laid out with pressing slideshow wizardry. Remind you of another environmental movie? Deborah Seligsohn, former principal adviser to the World Resources Institute’s China energy and climate program, points to the documentary as An Inconvenient Truth’s most immediate descendent. “In four days, it had 250 million views on the web. That’s the influence,” she told Grist. Watch: YouTube (below!).

Catching the Sun

Catching the Sun confronts the big questions imposed by a burgeoning global solar industry. Is a 100-percent solar-powered world achievable? And if so, who stands to benefit? Director Shalini Kantayya has called mainstream environmentalism “a thing for the privileged.” As she told Grist, “If you have extra money, you can put solar panels on your home or pay for organic food.”

The documentary is Kantayya’s take on where environmentalism should be heading. Spoiler alert: It’s a story of hope, not doom. Watch: Netflix.

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You’ve geeked out over “An Inconvenient Truth.” Watch these next.

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The Return of the Warblogs

by EverettUHF Posted on November 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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We’re in a war of civilizations. If you won’t say radical Islam, you aren’t serious. We need to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here. They hate us for our freedoms.

I really hoped I’d heard the last of this nonsense around 2003, but I guess not. The sensibility of the post-9/11 warblogs is back, along with all the overweening confidence in amateurish geo-religious belligerence that fueled them the first time around. But at least this time, in the midst of the panic, we have a president who says this when he’s asked about committing more ground troops to the fight against ISIS:

We would see a repetition of what we’ve see before: If you do not have local populations that are committed to inclusive governance and who are pushing back against ideological extremists, that they resurface unless you’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries.

The war against ISIS will be won when Iraq gains the political maturity to provide a working army that’s not merely a tool of the endless Sunni-Shia civil war in the Middle East. We could turn Anbar into a glassy plain, and all that would happen is that something worse than ISIS would crop up.

There’s a lot we can do to defeat ISIS, and most of it we’re already doing. Airstrikes? Check. Broad coalition? Check. Working with Arab allies? Check. Engage with Sunni tribal leaders? Check. Embed with the Iraqi military? Check. There’s more we could do, but often it’s contradictory. You want to arm the Kurds and create a partnership with the Iraqi government? Good luck. You want to defeat Assad and ISIS? You better pick one. You want to avoid a large American ground force and you want to win the war fast? Not gonna happen. Everyone needs to face reality: This is going to be a long effort, and there are no magic slogans that are going to win it. Unfortunately, they can make things worse.

The Paris attacks were barbaric and tragic. Let’s try not to turn our response to them into a tragedy as well.

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The Return of the Warblogs

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Friday Cat Blogging – 13 November 2015

by tadeusz444 Posted on November 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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According to Marian, the second Friday the 13th of the year isn’t unlucky. Is this really a thing? Or is she just yanking my chain?

Beats me. But why take chances? This week our (mostly) black cat gets a rest, and our lovely gray-and-white cat takes center stage. She does not look like she expects any kind of bad luck at all. And she was right! By rolling over and looking adorable she got an immediate tummy rub. Life is good.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 13 November 2015

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Donald Trump and Bill Clinton Collide in Best Conspiracy Story Ever

by AndreCulbertson Posted on August 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Oh man, this is the best Clinton conspiracy story ever. Except apparently it’s true:

Former president Bill Clinton had a private telephone conversation in late spring with Donald Trump at the same time that the billionaire investor and reality-television star was nearing a decision to run for the White House, according to associates of both men. Four Trump allies and one Clinton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton encouraged Trump’s efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party and offered his own views of the political landscape.

….The tone of the call was informal, and Clinton never urged Trump to run, the four people said. Rather, they said, Clinton sounded curious about Trump’s moves toward a presidential bid and told Trump that he was striking a chord with frustrated conservatives and was a rising force on the right.

One person with knowledge of Clinton’s end of the call said the former president was upbeat and encouraging during the conversation, which occurred as Trump was speaking out about GOP politics and his prescriptions for the nation.

Conservative heads must be exploding right about now. Is the Trump candidacy just a devious Clinton scheme to screw up the Republican primaries? It’s just the kind of thing a Clinton would do, after all. Did Bill know that Trump would confirm every horrible stereotype of conservative intolerance that moderates have of the GOP, thus ensuring a Hillary win in November? Or was it really just a casual call and Trump is still the real deal? Or…or…maybe the whole thing is yet another Trump PR stunt? Or maybe Bill has a mole inside the Trump campaign? OMG, OMG, OMG.

Anyway, the most fascinating thing about this is not the fact of the phone call itself, but the fact that four Trump allies spilled the beans to the Post reporters. That’s not just one loose-lipped nitwit. It’s as if Trump wanted this to get out. But why? And why the timing right before the first debate? Does Trump want to make sure he gets asked about this?

And how does this affect Trump’s candidacy? Does it make him less attractive to tea partiers, since he was consorting with the devil a few months ago? Or is it a net positive, because it makes him more attractive to moderates, who figure maybe Trump is OK if Bill Clinton encouraged him to “play a larger role”?

I dunno. I just want to know what conservative Trump supporters are thinking about this. I don’t see anything yet at Red State or The Corner or Hot Air or Power Line or Breitbart. Maybe they just haven’t caught up. Or maybe they don’t trust the reporting of the hated mainstream media in the first place. Stay tuned.

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Donald Trump and Bill Clinton Collide in Best Conspiracy Story Ever

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Abortion Is Not Murder

by LizzieAppel Posted on August 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ramesh Ponnuru comments on Planned Parenthood’s sale of fetal tissue from the abortions it performs:

A recent Sarah Silverman tweet distilled one argument many liberals are making about the Planned Parenthood videos into a few characters: ”Abortion is still legal in the great U.S of A. It would be insane not to use fetal tissue 4 science & education in such cases. #StandwithPP.”

The death penalty is also still legal in our great country. Should we employ methods of execution so as to yield the highest number of usable organs?….

Whenever I write about abortion, I usually get a bunch of tweets or emails asking if I even understand the conservative position. Answer: of course I do. Most conservatives say that abortion is murder. Given that premise, their opposition to funding abortion, legalizing abortion, using some day-after pills, selling fetal tissue, and so forth, makes sense.

So I’m going to ask the mirror image question here: does Ponnuru understand the liberal position on abortion? Most of us don’t think of fetuses as persons, which means abortion doesn’t involve killing a human being in any meaningful sense. Given that premise, our support of funding abortion, legalizing abortion, promoting day-after pills, selling fetal tissue, and so forth, makes sense.

To us lefties, the death penalty involves killing a human being. Abortion doesn’t. So it’s perfectly reasonable to have different views about how the remains are treated in each case.

POSTSCRIPT: There are, of course, nuances in these positions regarding abortion on both sides. We’re all familiar enough with them that it seems unnecessary to repeat them here. That said, at its most basic, liberals don’t generally consider aborting a fetus to involve killing a human being. Obviously the rest of our views follow from that.

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Abortion Is Not Murder

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Tell Us What You Really Think About Donald Trump

by AOZSilkepxfuwi Posted on August 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’ve sort of promised myself not to write about Donald Trump, but (a) it’s a weekend, and (b) David Fahrenthold has a pretty entertaining piece about Trump in the Washington Post today. Here’s a brief excerpt of some of the reactions Fahrenthold got to a variety of Trump’s blatherings:

Mark Krikorian, a foe of illegal immigration, on Trump’s immigration ideas: “Trump is like your Uncle George at Thanksgiving dinner, saying he knows how to solve all the problems. It’s not that he’s always wrong. It’s just that he’s an auto mechanic, not a policy guy.”

David Goldwyn, a former State Department official in the Obama administration, on Trump’s plan to fight ISIS by simply bombing them and then taking all their oil: “That is sheer lunacy on so many counts, it’s hard to start.”

Some anonymous sources on the same idea: “Oil-industry experts expressed skepticism about this plan. Skepticism, in fact, may not be a strong-enough word.”

Michael Tanner of Cato, on Trump’s endless vision of new building projects combined with his insistence on lowering taxes: “You can’t spend more and collect less. That’s kind of basic math. You can argue about how the math adds up in the other people’s plans. But there’s math there. This, there’s just no math.”

Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute on Trump’s plan to jack up tariffs on countries he doesn’t like: “If you thought this had a ghost of a chance — which it doesn’t — you would sell all your stocks,” because of the damage that a trade war would do to the U.S. economy.

You know, when Mark Krikorian is critical of your anti-immigration ideas; Michael Tanner is skeptical of your tax-cutting ideas; and oil companies want no part of your oil-stealing ideas, you just know there’s something wrong.

Anyway, Fahrenthold’s piece is worth a weekend click. And you might as well do it while you can. We won’t have Trump to kick around forever.

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Tell Us What You Really Think About Donald Trump

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The Clinton Rules, Tax Record Edition

by LanoraMeeson Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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I was sitting in the living room this afternoon and Hopper jumped into my lap. So I told Marian to turn the TV to CNN and I’d watch the news until Hopper released me. The first thing I saw was John Berman teasing a segment about Hillary Clinton releasing a health statement plus eight years of tax records. In other words, pretty routine stuff for any serious presidential candidate. But when Berman tossed to Brianna Keilar, here’s what she said:

KEILAR: When you think of a document dump like this, you normally think of, uh, in a way, sort of having something to hide. But the Clinton campaign trying to make the point that they’re putting out this information and they’re trying to be very transparent.

Talk about the Clinton rules! Hillary Clinton releases nearly a decade’s worth of tax records, and the first thing that pops into Keilar’s mind is that this is probably an effort to hide something. But hey! Let’s be fair. The Clinton campaign says it’s actually so that people can see her tax records. But they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Unbelievable. If any other candidate released eight years of tax records, it would be reported as the candidate releasing eight years of tax records. But when Hillary does it, there’s very likely something nefarious going on. God help us.

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The Clinton Rules, Tax Record Edition

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Friday Cat Blogging – 31 July 2015

by Ewan45J515680712 Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hopper (left) and Hilbert are so entranced by something or other that even my sister wants to know what they’re looking at. My guess: a dust mote in the cat dimension.

Speaking of my sister, she is promising some guest cat blogging for next week. Will she come through? Tune in next Friday to find out!

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Friday Cat Blogging – 31 July 2015

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