#uccpa

Divide In Concord was a very interesting film. The film is based around an older lady named Jean. Her mission is to try and make Concord, Massachusetts a water bottle free town. She begins her mission by going door to door trying to get people to sign her petition. This has very very little success. But the positive of this is that people begin to be aware of her mission and start to talk about it. Some store owners become very angry with Jean because they feel that she does not understand the fact that people need bottled water and if the ban happens then they will loose sales. At the first town meeting jean gets very disrespected and the vote was one sided. She won’t quit though, she continues her quest by getting the information out there! She goes to the radio and puts fliers up around town. She gets help from two gentlemen who make a statue using 1500 water bottles to represent how many are used every second in the U.S. The next year another town meeting come around and once again poor Jean is heart broken. The vote is once again negative but was much closer this time so there is hope! Jean keeps pushing she goes into the local school and talks to the children and keeps getting more information out there for people to see. When the third town meeting comes around the water bottle debate is the first thing on the list and the whole town in at the school or the town hall to vote. After many discussions the vote takes place and to her delight Jeans petition passes! Water bottle are banned from the town of Concord. 

The film “Divide in Concord”  follows Concord resident, Jean Hill, on her crusade to ban the sale of single-serve plastic water bottles in her hometown.  The film’s call to action manifests itself as both a civil rights campaign, and an environmental movement. Jean exercises her rights as a citizen of Concord to the fullest extent, and uses all her resources to finally get the ban pushed through at a town meeting. I found this inspiring in its own right, whether she was pushing for a ban on water bottles, carrots, or whatever else. It was refreshing to me to see a citizen using her rights as an American to revolutionize a city. Ironic it happened in Concord, the heart of the American Revolution from the British. It was inspiring from an environmental perspective as well. The single-serve plastic water bottle is a perfect example of capitalist American, need it right now culture. We support local businesses by purchasing these bottles, and dispose of them as we please once finished with the contents. Where the bottle ends up isn’t our problem, as long as it’s no longer right in front of us. Well, as an environmentalist, I am aware of the disgusting and seemingly irreversible damage plastics are doing to our ecosystems. Jean used the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a mascot for environmental wrong-doing. She was able to sway the minds of Concord to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way of thinking. It goes to show that people of all walks of life are fighting for our Earth, not just college students with strong opinions and no money.  

Photos courtesy of http://divideinconcord.com/

The film opens with a scene of Jean speaking at a town conference, trying to advocate for the plastic water-bottle ban. As a viewer I was left inspired by her actions, as feeble as they may have seemed. Next, the filmmakers showed Jean listening to a radio broadcast in which the hosts were essentially mocking this woman’s efforts. The film would circle back to these same hosts a few more times, and they continue to undermine and ridicule Jean’s battle. The incorporation of radio broadcast isn’t an approach that I commonly see in documentaries, but it worked in this case as it summarized the opinions of the opposing side of the issue, and manifested them into an antagonist like character that made it easy to hate them for thinking differently than you.

“This is profit. These companies couldn’t sell more coke so they decided to sell water”- quote from a resident in Concord who supported the plastic bottle ban. He was referencing the power that companies like Nestle have over the American public.

Sometimes all it takes is one crazy person to change everyone’s opinion of the environment. That crazy person is an 84 year old woman named Jean Hill.  She has a dream that someday the world will ban the sale of bottled water and therefor begin reversing the damage that the human race has done on this planet.  She fought for three years trying to get the ban passed, and when she was about to give up, the ban was passed.  

One thing that really stuck out to me in this documentary was when they said there needs to be a balance between nature and human needs, but we have become used to just satisfying our needs.  

The film divided and concord really hit me because recently the town of Telluride CO, the town I went to highschool in did something similar with plastic bags at the local stores.This film was based on the story about  how one “little old lady” made a big difference by being the mind behind the plastic water bottle ban in Concord MA.Jean Hill is the mind behind this so-called madness, she was inspired after her grandson had told her about all the microplastics in the ocean, and it only took her so long before she had found her next project in life. Ms.Hill along with the help of many others fought for three years to have this ban implemented, but in the end she came out victorious. Hill had a rather difficult time in the first two years when it came to trying to get followers for her cause especially when she had to fight against well know public figures who were  and are still very against the plastic water ban, but after many more strategic methods of getting her idea out  she was able to come out and defeat her enemies.

Seeds of Time is an inspirational film about seed banks.  Climate change is killing our crops, and to prevent the extinction of many plants we have to protect their seeds.  To do this the seeds are hidden inside a vault that is inside a mountain and is a constant 3-4 degrees Celsius.  The vault has 860,000 different seed samples.

I enjoyed the film a lot, I was not aware that these vaults and seed banks ever existed.  So learning that was shocking to me.  If I were the director I would have maybe put a few scene in that show what the world might become if we run out of crops.  

http://www.seedsoftimemovie.com/aboutthefilm

The documentary “Seeds of Time” (2013) focuses on a facet of climate change that many people do not take into account: the preservation and engineering of food crops. The film follows the life of Cary Fowler, an agricultural scientist who is essentially pioneering this movement toward a sustainable future by way of seed banks. Cary is influenced and inspired by his diagnosis of cancer to be ambitious and tenacious when it comes to pushing policy makers to support these seed banks. The film also focuses on indigenous peoples who are witnessing their ancient and productive ways of farming slowly fail due to climate change.

I could not help but relate this issue to the tendency of our world to be partial to charismatic megafauna in the face of a changing climate. By this, I mean that people want to save polar bears, whales, elephants, and big cats. Sure, these species are important for their ecosystems, and therefore important to humans. However, the disparity in funding for these animals versus that for the continuity of farm able crops on earth is astounding to me. People just don’t care about plants.

The film had a strong call to action: to pull for attention, and thereby funding, for projects supporting worldwide seed banks that can be used by farmers today, and for the expansion of the Norway vault’s inventory of species from around the world. In expressing this invitation it does more than just make the viewers aware of problem. The filmmakers showed this project from an optimistic perspective, showing success stories, interviewing people who are passionate about it, and presenting it in a way that encourages others to want to get involved. I know I was inspired by the thoughts and images presented in this film. Not only did the film present this project in an optimistic way, it did it in a beautiful way. The filmmakers used beautiful footage of Salvbard Global Seed Bank in its artic desert landscape to convey the desolation of the place. It was quite the juxtaposition in my opinion. How could a place so barren of life be housing the future of life on Earth?! Well the film explained just that in an artistic way, utilizing creative CGI technology to explain the inner workings of the vault.

If I were the director I would have pretty much followed the same plan, almost to a T. I thought this film was put together beautifully, and I found its content interesting as well. I think the director was extremely successful and I would not have done much differently.