Environmental Justice

Environmental Justice

Much like popular movements to dismantle the scourge of racism, the fight for environmental justice is one centered on overcoming systems that accrue privilege, supremacy and economic gain to the powerful while disenfranchising, dehumanizing and externalizing true costs to people of color and the poor. Films from OVID tell these stories: of people on the frontlines of environmental injustice and those fighting back against powerful interests.

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Environmental Justice
  • Oil and Water

    Directed by Francine Strickwerda and Laurel Spellman Smith • Documentary • 2014 • 78 minutes

    OIL & WATER is the coming of age story of two boys as they each confront one of the world's worst toxic disasters, the prolonged contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon by Texaco and other oil companies. ...

  • Profit and Loss

    Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2014 • 57 minutes

    From New Guinean rainforests to Canada's tar sands, PROFIT AND LOSS exposes industrial threats to native peoples' health, livelihood and cultural survival. In Papua New Guinea, a Chinese-government owned nickel mine has violently r...

  • River of Gold

    Directed by Reuben Aaronson & Sarah DuPont • Documentary • With Herbie Hancock, Sissy Spacek • 2016 • 63 minutes

    Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, RIVER OF GOLD is the disturbing account of a clandestine journey into Peru’s Amazon rainforest to uncover the savage...

  • School's Out

    Directed by Lisa Molomot • Documentary • 2014 • 36 minutes

    No classroom for these kindergarteners. In Switzerland's Langnau am Albis, a suburb of Zurich, children 4 to 7 years of age go to kindergarten in the woods every day, no matter what the weather. This eye-opening film follows the forest k...

  • The Seer and the Unseen

    Directed by Sara Dosa • Documentary • With Ragnhildur Jonsdottir • 2019 • 89 minutes

    THE SEER & THE UNSEEN is a magic realist fable about invisible elves, financial collapse and the surprising power of belief, told through the story of an Icelandic grandmother who speaks on behalf of nature unde...

  • Spears From All Sides

    Directed by Christopher Walker • Documentary • 2019 • 90 minutes

    Since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, Ecuador’s Waorani tribe, have defended their Amazon rainforest with spears. In the 1950’s American missionaries cleared the way for oil companies to enter Waorani lands. Now 70% of Ec...

  • Split Estate

    Directed by Debra Anderson • Documentary • 2009 • 76 minutes

    Imagine discovering that you don't own the mineral rights under your land, and that an energy company plans to drill for natural gas two hundred feet from your front door using the controversial technology known as fracking. Imagine an...

  • Taming The Garden

    Directed by Salomé Jashi • Documentary • 2021 • 92 minutes

    A powerful and anonymous man has developed an unusual hobby. He buys century-old trees, some as tall as 15-story buildings, from communities along the Georgian coast and has them excavated to collect them for his private garden. In order...

  • Tar Creek

    Directed by Matt Myers • Documentary • 2012 • 54 minutes

    TAR CREEK is the story of the worst environmental disaster you've never heard of: the Tar Creek Superfund site. Once one of the largest lead and zinc mines on the planet, Tar Creek is now home to more than 40 square miles of environmental ...

  • Thank You for the Rain

    Directed by Julia Dahr and Kisilu Musya • Documentary • 2017 • 87 minutes

    Five years ago Kisilu, a Kenyan farmer, started to use his camera to capture the life of his family, his village and the damages of climate change. When a violent storm throws him and a Norwegian filmmaker together we see ...

  • Trinkets and Beads

    Directed by Christopher Walker • Documentary • 1996 • 52 minutes

    After twenty years of devastating pollution produced by oil companies in the Amazon basin of Ecuador, a new kind of oil company - Dallas based MAXUS - promises to be the first company to protect the rainforest, and respect the peop...

  • Triple Divide [REDACTED]

    Directed by Joshua Pribanic, Melissa Troutman • Documentary • 2017 • 53 minutes

    This award-winning "bombshell" documentary covers the impact of fracking in one of the country's most pristine watersheds. With exclusive interviews from oil and gas industry leaders, independent experts and impacted...

  • The True Cost

    Directed by Andrew Morgan • Documentary • 2015 • 92 minutes

    This is a story about clothing. It's about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs...

  • Walking On Water Wasn't Built in a Day

    Directed by John Abrahall, Christopher Bamford, Robert Feldman, Michael Katz, Peter Wiesner • Documentary • 1971 • 17 minutes

    In April 1970 the first Earth Day in Philadelphia was actually a week of celebrations for Mother Earth. This film was shot in and around the city, with cameo appearances ...

  • The Water Front

    Directed by Liz Miller • Documentary • 2008 • 53 minutes

    What if you lived by the largest body of fresh water in the world but could no longer afford to use it?

    With a shrinking population, the post-industrial city of Highland Park, Michigan is on the verge of financial collapse. The state of M...

  • Weather The Storm

    Directed by Charles Menzies and Jennifer Rashleigh • Documentary • 2008 • 36 minutes

    In today's global economy, the world's ocean resources are being hit hard. Enormous industrial 'floating factories' follow the fish wherever they are abundant, and move on when they have plundered the fish stock...

  • When Two Worlds Collide

    Directed by Heidi Brandenburg & Mathew Orzel • Documentary • 2016 • 103 minutes

    In this tense and immersive Sundance award-winner, audiences are taken directly into the line of fire between powerful, opposing Peruvian leaders who will stop at nothing to keep their respective goals intact. On the...