Friday, November 6

9:00-11:30pm

The Friday night documentary film festival has become an Institute tradition. This year we've got a phenomenal lineup of independent documentary films that capture inspiring stories of justice and community. Film topics range from community organizing against prison expansion to indigenous peoples reclaiming environmental and human rights to peak oil and urban agriculture.

This Black Soil: A Story of Resistance and Rebirth

Working Hands Productions, 2004

This inspiring and provocative new film chronicles the successful struggle of Bayview, Virginia, a small and severely impoverished rural African-American community, to pursue a new vision of prosperity.

Catalyzed by the defeat of a state plan to build a maximum-security prison in their backyard, the powerful women leaders and residents created the Bayview Citizens for Social Justice, a non-profit organization, secured $10 million in grants, purchased the proposed prison site land and are now building a new community from the ground up.

Under the leadership of visionary women, this new rural village challenges all conventional ideas of community development and includes not only improved and affordable housing, but a sustainable economic base to earn a living wage, a community center for educating its residents, a daycare center, laundromat, and a community farm, which not only provides jobs and income for the organization, but returns them to their roots, working on the land.

Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action

Katahdin Productions, 2005

Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, a ninety-minute documentary, is the first film to take a hard look at these realities. It tells the stories of five remarkable Native American activists in four communities who are fighting these "new Indian Wars" - each in his own way passionately dedicated to protecting Indian lands against disastrous environmental hazards, preserving their sovereignty and ensuring the cultural survival of their peoples. With the support of their communities, these leaders are actively rejecting the devastating affronts of multi-national energy companies and the current dismantling of 30 years of environmental laws.

There are internal struggles to be overcome as well. For many who live in extreme poverty on reservations lacking any sort of infrastructure, there is little hope for jobs, few prospects for a better life. The lure of fast cash from big companies outweighs the long-range promise of environmental and cultural preservation.

From Alaska to Maine, Montana to New Mexico and against some of America's most spectacular backdrops, these first-person journeys unfold as our characters demand change, not sympathy, and rally grassroots support against the corporate and government behemoths who are exploiting and befouling tribal lands. The vision that sustains them from one battle to the next is of a future where U.S. energy consumption and waste production will not be at the expense of indigenous people.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

The Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, 2006

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call "The Special Period." The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.