Documentaries Creating Action

“FiRe Films: A New Program Uniting Technology, Finance, and Documentaries”: Introduced by Sharon Anderson-Morris

FiRe Feature Films will be on our website, with information about about how to fund them, how to support them and spread the word. 

With James Balog, Photographer, Chasing Ice, and Director, Extreme Ice Survey; Chris Paine, Writer/Director, Revenge of the Electric Car, and Co-Founder, Counterspill.org; Peter Byck, Director/Producer, Carbon Nation; and Louie Psihoyos, Director, The Cove, and Executive Director, Oceanic Preservation Society; hosted by Geralyn Dreyfous, Co-Founder/Director-at-Large, Impact Partners, and Founder/Board Chair, Utah Film Center

Chris Paine: Made film about how electric car system messes up sometimes.

(Revenge of the Electric Car trailer)

After you raise the money and make these films, it’s all about the audience. As storytellers, you begin to realize that what propels this forward are characters. They’ll tell the story.

Peter Byck:

(Carbon Nation trailer)

Bernie (Alaskan geothermal plant engineer) is the hook to how we’re going to move forward. A lot of people aren’t buying that humans are causing climate change, but we’re not a polarized country. We all agree on a lot of this. I’ve been on the road for two years, climate skeptics get dragged to every screening. Afterwards they all want us to show it at schools in their communities.

JB: Scientists writing white papers are showing up, thanking him for showing them what they’ve all been writing about. Oil and gas representatives are thanking him for helping to understand. Been traveling around and speaking in front of government bodies.

Earth Vision Trust: goal to reach 1 billion people in the next few years.

GD: Film premiered at Sundance, got an award, bought by National Geographic, will be doing theatrical distribution through Oscilloscope. Impact Partners is doing a P&A raise to publicize it. It will most likely be nominated for an Academy Award. Need to find imaginative bold new partners.

LP: Down to less than half of dolphin/ whale slaughter across Japan. The impact of a film is highly impactful. The only way to get at it is to move people’s heartstrings.  Everything is connected to plankton, but it’s hard to make a movie about plankton.