A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: The Battle for a Living Planet
- 2013, 101 minutes
- Narrated by: Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende & Meryl Streep
Purchase for individual use:
You can purchase a digital stream or a DVD of A Fierce Green Fire at our online Square store. Please note that this is for personal use only – see below for educational and public use.
Link: https://mark-kitchell.square.site
- A digital stream via Vimeo is $20
- A DVD is $35 plus $5 shipping = $40
For public use, please contact the film’s educational distributor:
- Bullfrog Films
- (800) 543-3764
- http://bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/fgf.html
Links to streaming channels:
Google: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details?id=xw62HS_NWs.P&sticky_source_country=US&gl=US&hl=en
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/a-fierce-green-fire-the-battle-for-a-living-planet/id1549660777?ls=1
A Fierce Green Fire is a big-picture exploration of the environmental movement, grassroots and global activism spanning five decades from conservation to climate change. Inspired by the book by Philip Shabecoff, the title comes from pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold — who saw a fierce green fire in the eyes of a wolf he’d just shot and awakened to an ecological perspective.
The film unfolds in five acts, each with a central story and character:
- David Brower and the Sierra Club’s battle to halt dams in the Grand Canyon,
- Lois Gibbs and Love Canal residents’ struggle against 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals,
- Paul Watson and Greenpeace’s campaigns to save whales and baby harp seals,
- Chico Mendes and Brazilian rubbertappers’ fight to save the Amazon rainforest,
- Bill McKibben and the 25-year effort to address the impossible issue – climate change.
Surrounding these stories are strands like environmental justice, going back to the land, and movements of the global south such as Chipko in India and Wangari Maathai in Kenya. Vivid archival film brings it all back and insightful interviews shed light on the events and what they mean. The film offers a deeper view of environmentalism as civilizational change, bringing our industrial society into sustainable balance with nature. It’s the battle for a living planet.
Awards & Screenings:
Sundance Film Festival, Documentary Masters section
Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital, Washington DC
Sheffield Doc Fest, Sheffield, UK
Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York NY
Hot Docs Forum, Toronto
Mendocino Film Festival, Mendocino & Willits CA
Wild & Scenic Film Festival, Nevada City CA
Festival do Rio, Rio de Janeiro
DOXA, Vancouver BC
… plus more than three hundred grassroots screenings
Credits:
Director/Producer/Writer: Mark Kitchell
Executive Producer: Marc N. Weiss
Editors: Ken Schneider, Veronica Selver, Jon Beckhardt and Gary Weimberg
Cinematographer: Vicente Franco
Original Music: George Michalski and David Denny; Garth Stevenson; Randall Wallace; and Todd Boekelheide.
Narrators -- one per act, in order of appearance: Robert Redford; Ashley Judd; Van Jones; Isabel Allende; and Meryl Streep.
Press:
"Rarely do environmental-themed films come with the ambitious scope of ‘A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet’…which aims at nothing less than the history of environmentalism itself.” – Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times
“The most ambitious environmental documentary since “An Inconvenient Truth” tries to make the case that we just might win.” – Michael Roberts, Outside Magazine
“The film left me emotionally drained and profoundly hopeful.” -- Bruce Barcott, On Earth Magazine
