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Environmental Film LibGuide: Your Librarians' Top 10

 

Mrs. FB's Top 10

  180 Degrees South - Jeff Johnson retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Choulnard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia. A powerful, multigenerational environmental documentary.
Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain (My top to be viewed title) - Interwoven stories of people in India and US as they face dilemmas of life time in the months leading to the biggest Industrial disaster in human history that claimed 10,000 innocent lives within a few hours. Inspired by real events.
Chasing Ice - acclaimed National Geographic photographer James Balog, once a skeptic about climate change, deploys revolutionary time-lapse cameras to capture a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers. 
 Erin Brockovich (All the cool kids are named Erin!) - An unemployed single mother becomes a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city's water supply.
Hoot - From the best-selling children's novel by Carl Hiaasen comes the story of three kids who answer the call of the wild by protecting a family of endangered miniature owls in Florida.
An Inconvenient Truth -  Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with Al Gore's personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change
 March of the Penguins (Tied for my #1 #birdnerd) - an incredible story about the life of Emperor Penguins who for thousands of generations endured life's demanding cycles of mating and survival in the harshest of environments.
Soylent Green - In a densely overpopulated, starving New York City of the future, NYPD detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) investigates the murder of an executive at rations manufacturer Soylent Corporation. With the help of elderly academic Solomon "Sol" Roth (Edward G. Robinson), Thorn begins to make real progress -- until the governor mysteriously pulls the plug. Obsessed with the mystery, Thorn steps out from behind the badge and launches his own investigation into the murder. A cult classic.

Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill -The inspiring story of how one man found his life's work and true love among a gang of wild parrots roosting in one of America's most picturesque urban settings.

 

 Winged Migration (Tied for my #1 #birdnerd) - A critically acclaimed and award-winning unique, exquisitely beautiful and jaw-dropping documentary about birds in flight in their natural world. AH-mazing

Mr. Lum's Top 10

A Civil Action (This is my #1 choice!) - Jan Schlichtmann is a cynical, high-priced personal injury attorney who only takes big-money cases he can safely settle out of court. Though his latest case at first appears straightforward, Schlichtmann soon becomes entangled in an epic legal battle ... one where he's willing to put his career, reputation, and all that he owns on the line for the rights of his clients! 
Erin Brockovich -  Julia Roberts stars as Erin Brockovich, a feisty young mother who fought for justice any way she knew how. Desperate for a job to support herself and her three children, she convinces attorney Ed Masry (Albert Finney) to hire her, and promptly stumbles upon a monumental law case against a giant corporation
Food, Inc. - Food, Inc. lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing how our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the
livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. 
Free Willy (I grew up in Astoria, so this has to be in my top 10!) - A 12-year-old street kid. A 3-ton killer whale. A magical friendship they could never imagine. An adventure they'll never forget. Wayward preteen Jesse is ordered by the court to clean up the faded Northwest Adventure Park, where he befriends Willy, the park's notoriously difficult orca. As the two misfits bond, Willy joyfully responds to Jesse's commands with a spectacular display of flips, rolls, leaps and dives. But Jesse discovers the park's owners plan to kill Willy. Now both Jesse and his whale friend must learn how to trust in order to accomplish a nearly impossible feat--to Free Willy.
The Ivory Game - Ivory is a prized status symbol for middle-class Chinese, and poachers in pursuit of white gold are slaughtering African elephants in record numbers. Filmmakers went under cover for 16 months, infiltrating and documenting the deep-rooted corruption at the heart of the global ivory trafficking crisis.
Planet Earth - Planet Earth allows us to experience the world from the viewpoint of the animals themselves. Travelling through jungles, deserts, mountains, islands, grasslands and cities, this series explores the unique characteristics of Earth’s most iconic habitats and the extraordinary ways animals survive within them.
Plastic China  (My top to be viewed title) -  Explores how this work of recycling plastic waste with their bare hands takes a toll not only on their health, but also their own dilemma of poverty, disease, pollution and death. All of this to eek out a daily living. ​
A Plastic Ocean - Journalist Craig Leeson teams up with diver Tanya Streeter and an international team of scientists and researchers, and they travel to twenty locations around the world over the next four years to explore the fragile state of our oceans.
Virunga - A powerful combination of investigative journalism and nature documentary, VIRUNGA is the incredible true story of a group of courageous people risking their lives to build a better future in a part of Africa the world’s forgotten, and a gripping exposé of the realities of life in the Congo.
Wasted: The Story of Food Waste - An informative and entertaining documentary produced by celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, "Wasted!" takes you around the world, showing the 1.3 billion tons of food that gets thrown out each year and the people fighting hardest to prevent it
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