10 must-see documentary films: Important, powerful, and inspiring

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Boy oh boy, great documentaries are rolling off the presses faster than you can blink! Just in the past few years, some of the most important films ever made have arrived. Many of them took years to produce and tell fascinating and critical stories of human courage and environmental threats. Unfortunately, documentaries have limited distribution (i.e., they rarely get a theatrical release), which can make finding these films challenging.

For this reason, I am working on a unique distribution program called The Imagination Film Festival to inspire people to not only see important and powerful films, but to use their imaginations and passion to do something about the issues the films address.

What’s so wonderful about documentaries is that you can get in depth information, which would take a scholar or journalist years to uncover. And in little more than an hour you can be enlightened and entertained. I have chosen films that are critical to both our education about what’s happening to the earth and human health, as well as films that are vastly entertaining.

Here is my latest list of the top 10 documentaries.

1. The Cove
   
   When The Cove won the Academy Award back in March this year; I was literally standing on my chair cheering. The film marries ecological espionage with a real life quest to save dolphins. Ric O’Barry is the hero of film. Ric is the man who trained the first dolphin in history for the TV series Flipper. This James Bond like adventure exposes the most egregious secret imaginable, in a small village in Japan. Despite the films dark subject — you are carried along with intrigue and grace while sitting on the edge of your seat. Ric’s team of deep sea divers, eco-warriors and special effects geniuses try and penetrate this forbidden cove. I will keep the rest of the film secret. Click to watch the trailer.
2. Food Inc.
   
   There are only a handful of films that address this critical topic, namely how we produce our food in the US and more importantly what’s in it. If you were going to only see one documentary this year and you wanted to get a speed course in what’s going on with our food and the impacts on our health, this is the film to see. This enlightening documentary takes aim at the US food industry and lays bare the realities of something so important and vital, that having this information could literally save your life. Click to watch the trailer.
3. Crude
   
   Do you want to know why Big Oil is literally getting away with murder? Then see this film. Joe Berlinger is known for his cinema verite approach to making documentaries and Crude is one of the best examples of his provocative style. Crude is an exquisite film that combines human drama and edifying storytelling, while exposing the Texaco/Chevron contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

   Toxic chemicals have turned thousands of square miles of rain forest into a wasteland where nothing will grow, and several tribes of indigenous people have been brought close to extinction, along with the regions unique flora and fauna. Crude looks at the extent of the damage and follows the 27-billion dollar lawsuit that the local people and international environmental and humanitarian groups have brought against Chevron. What’s so great about this film is we are thrown into the middle of a historic battle between “good” lawyers and bad lawyers who represent one of the richest corporations in the world. This corporation and their representative use everything they have to lie, cover-up and conceal the truth. The film brings home the facts while delivering a story that is thrilling and intimate. Click to watch the trailer.

4. Fuel
   
   Joshua Tickell, the Director/Producer of Fuel was one of the people who set me on my road to documentary filmmaking. We are both biodiesel freaks, running our cars on 100% vegetable oil, so we met through that network. Joshua mentored me at the very beginning of my entry into the documentary filmmaking world. I do not say this lightly: Fuel is Joshua’s magnum opus. This informative, entertaining, and illuminating movie is like getting a super size me history lesson. He weaves in the insidious connections between the auto industry, the oil industry and the government, while ripping the veil on all aspects of our dependence on crude and what the real alternatives are in the coming renewable energy revolution. What’s so great about this film and Joshua is that it is truly fun him as he takes us round the world in his biodiesel van. Joshua is such a genius at telling a story and keeping us in our seats. Click to watch the trailer.
5. No Impact Man
   
   It’s not easy being green and it sure ain’t easy being No Impact Man. Colin Beven is the hero of this wonderfully humorous and critically acclaimed doc that delivers a timely message about how we should live on this little planet of ours. Imagine no modern convenience, transportation, no garbage, coffee, no elevators, no electric lights and no toilet paper — it’s not easy being No Impact Man, the guy who experiments for one year living a lifestyle that has no impact on the earth and he does this in the heart of Manhattan! Colin’s reluctant wife is forced to go on this journey of abstinence and going without (especially without her Starbucks fix) with their three-year-old daughter. It is their relationship that makes this film warm, funny and entertaining. Colin’s book of the same title is a must read, but more important, introduce your friends, neighbors and children to his living curriculum. Click to watch the trailer.
6. Living Downstream
   
   Like the number #1 documentary on this list, The Cove, Living Downstream uncovers a terrible secret — a secret so sinister and pervasive, it literally impacts every single human being on the planet. While woman march in the streets with pink ribbons to raise money for cancer research. The real mystery behind the epidemic of cancer is standing right in front of us. Raised in small-town Illinois, cancer seems to run in Sandra Steingraber’s family. Sandra was diagnosed with bladder cancer when she was just twenty years old. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when Sandra was in high school. Many of her aunts and uncles have struggled with the disease. One aunt even died from the same form of bladder cancer that Sandra had. But while cancer runs in her family, she cannot say that it runs in her genes. Sandra is adopted. This unusual twist led Sandra to ask what else families have in common besides their DNA.

   The answer is all around us: our environment. Living Downstream opens our eyes wide to what industries don’t want you to know and what the cancer research industry is not addressing. Although the subject is all encompassing, it is told through the intimate lens of Sandra Steingraber’s personal battle with the disease. Sandra says, “Like a jury’s verdict or an adoption decree, a cancer diagnosis is an authoritative pronouncement, one with the power to change your identity. It sends you into an unfamiliar country where all the rules of human conduct are alien.” Sarah says, “This film is a walk up the river. The river of human cancer.” In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson wrote, “I do contend we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge.” Click to watch the trailer.

7. Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai
   
   Let me say first off that the hero of this film, Wangari Muta Maathai, is someone I believe should run the planet. I think Wangari should be elected president of the earth. Why? Because she knows that if we are going to survive we have to restore this earth and she is the woman who knows how to do it. Wangari was beaten and imprisoned for planting trees with poor Kenyan women to stop the desert in her native land. She spearheaded the green belt movement which has now planted more than 35 million trees. Taking Root tells the dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy — a movement for which this charismatic woman became an iconic inspiration.
   Click to watch the trailer.
8. Earth
   
   This is a film for the whole family. The cinematography is stunning, gorgeous and jaw dropping. The narrative is profoundly moving and brings us to a place of reverence and enlightenment about our beloved home. Earth enthralled audiences with spectacular images of our world, and the creatures that inhabit it. This is the kind of film that will not only educate people about the ecology and wildlife but more importantly why we must save our planet.
   Click to watch the trailer.
9. Homegrown
   
   Imagine growing enough food for 40 families on a 10th of an acre lot in the city! This homegrown documentary follows the Dervaes family who run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, California. While “living off the grid,” they harvest over 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter of an acre, make their own bio diesel, power their computers with the help of solar panels, and maintain a website that gets 4,000 hits a day. The film is an intimate human portrait of what it’s like to live like “Little House on the Prairie” in the 21st Century.

   Director’s statement

   Many people are becoming aware of the environment. We may have gone to see An Inconvenient Truth, changed our light bulbs, or started to recycle more. But how many of us are really walking the walk? I know I’m not.

   When I heard about the Dervaes family, I sensed that there was a human story behind the headlines about global warming or buying organic produce. I wanted to find out what it takes to live the life of an environmental pioneer. I don’t wish to simply glorify or romanticize their way of life, however. I want to show that along with the positive benefits there are also sacrifices. Truly living by your ideals can have costs. I believe that recognizing the hardships the Dervaes have faced makes their work all the more inspiring.

   Homegrown is ultimately a family story. It’s about what leads them to where they are today, what changed them and what keeps them together. Perhaps by learning of their journey to a sustainable life style, we might be inspired to take our own first steps.

   ~ Robert McFalls

   Click to watch the trailer.

10. Texas Gold
    
    My film again! Earlier this year, my colleague Kelly DeVine (who consults for Reframe Collection, a program of the Tribeca Film Institute) wrote a powerful blog post that brings to light the terrible impact of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the fact that corporations continue to pollute our environment with impunity. Kelly gave me her permission to republish her post here.

    The Tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico

    Dead turtles are beginning to wash up on the shores of Gulfport, Mississippi. Fisheries and the local economies in the gulf region dependent upon them brace for the worst – though no one really knows how bad that may be.

    Carolyn Scott’s Texas Gold a portrait of Diane Wilson’s battle against the petrochemical industry, is compelling and Diane’s tenacity and principle are inspiring and admirable. It is too bad that so few lessons had been learned from her struggle to educate the industry that a healthy gulf is healthy for local economies. It has been reported that up 20% of the seafood in the US is harvested in these threatened waters. Damage done to the wetlands, in part to streamline access for the petrochemical industry, is implicated in the level of damage caused by hurricane Katrina, particularly to the coastal areas in Mississippi that had once enjoyed a substantial barrier of wetlands in Louisiana that would diminish the energy of hurricanes making landfall.

    Perhaps that lesson fails to resonate because the corporations that drill into those waters are multinational giants with no long-term connection to the communities or countries. The Government Accountability Project assembled a list of troubling details emerging in the wake of the explosion here. Among the troubling details is the fact that a safety regulation that might have mitigated the damage resulting from a rig failure required by Norway and Brazil, two other nations with aggressive offshore drilling activities, was not required of BP in US waters. Regulation and regulatory agencies have been weakened over the decades since the creation of the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other landmark laws and agencies enacted in the wake of the negligent oversight by industry. Regulation is cast by its opponents as “anti-business.” Listening to news reporters speculate on the numbers of small businesses that may be disrupted or bankrupted as a result of the explosion along with the effects on businesses indirectly related, one has to wonder how regulation of risky activities can ever be anti-business. This April we celebrated the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and recalled that it was a mammoth oil spill in 1969 spoiling the coast of Santa Barbara that had galvanized the public and the politicians into action. Will we emerge from this tragedy with lessons finally and well and truly learned?

    ~ Kelly DeVine

    Click to watch the trailer.

Okay, friends — let’s go to the movies!