Tom, Laguna Hills, CA

LINK TV ran a fundraising special during the month of February which included excerpts from Crude Impact, along with interviews of James Jandak Wood, the Director of Crude Impact, and Antonia Juhasz, the author of The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.

The filmmakers behind “Crude Impact” certainly know how to make a crude impact themselves; first-time writer-director James Jandak Wood opens with author Matthew Simmons proclaiming “If peak oil happens, and people don’t understand what’s going on, it could very easily be a global tipping point. It is basically every bit as serious as global thermonuclear war.” It’s an arresting beginning, but also a risky one, guaranteed to make viewers brace for scare-mongering, hyperbole and sweeping generalizations.

“Crude Impact” does periodically threaten to take those low roads. Much like the similar documentary “The 11th Hour” earlier this year, it’s a collection of talking-head interviews enlivened by stock footage and quick cutting meant to keep viewers receptively dazed and glued to the screen in spite of the frightening message about environmental decay.

But where “11th Hour” shallowly addressed a wide variety of topics, “Crude Impact” goes deep and expansive on the political, environmental, and cultural costs of American dependence on oil. Arguing that we’ve reached the point of “peak oil,” where the amount of petroleum that can be drawn from the Earth will inevitably start to decline, a handful of authors and activists illustrate the negative impact American oil drilling has had domestically and overseas. As oil becomes harder to find, they explain, the oil companies will become even more ruthless and profit-driven, and their track records of economic and political exploitation offer no hope of moral restraint.

Some of “Crude Impact’s” message comes via the inevitable animated charts and graphs, plus broad, simple statements like Simmons’, and some of it feels like pandering, with its cutesy use of vintage cartoons and jokey visual juxtapositions. But the message is earnest and sincere, and Wood argues it well, with chilling case studies of Texaco’s wholesale pollution in Ecuador and Shell’s fatal interference with politics and protests in the Niger Delta. Using an unsettling clip of an indulgent TV “news” piece about Ronald McDonald that could double as a corporate commercial, he illustrates how news and entertainment have merged, and shows how viewers need to be involved in their world if they want real information about the damage being done in their name and how to fight back. Accessible, focused documentaries like “Crude Impact”– available on DVD and ready for the classroom–are a decent start.

Written and directed by James Jandak Wood; photographed by Sharon Anderson; edited by Wood, Anderson, and Pamela Spitzer; music by John DeBorde; produced by Wood, Jennifer Jandak Wood and Joanne Shen. A Vista Clara release; plays Nov. 2-4 at Facets Cinematheque.

That road trip you were planning for 2057 might look a tad less likely after viewing “Crude Impact,” which sees disaster looming all too soon in the growing global demand for a shrinking oil supply — especially in the U.S., where consumption and native supply levels are most out of whack. James Jandak Wood’s docu is playing scattered theatrical dates, but will probably prove most effective as a spur for education and activism on DVD.

Pic links the enormous world population growth in recent decades to the seemingly endless use and supply of oil, which is involved one way or another in “nearly every product we consume,” particularly food production. President Bush the First famously said this “American way of life is non-negotiable,” but Mother Nature may nullify the contract.

One striking graphic illustrates that while there’s a car for every 1.7 Americans, there’s one for every 117 Chinese. This extravagant use of energy was cemented in the 1950s, when the U.S. was indeed the world’s largest producer of petroleum. Shell geologist M. King Hubbert’s warning then that production would peak in the early ’70s and decline steadily thereafter was laughed off as hysterical doom-saying.

But in fact, Hubbert was on the money. While little has changed in terms of U.S. energy conservation or wasteful usage, the vast majority of oil is now imported from Third World countries. Rather than elevating their citizens’ general well-being, these nations too often enrich a ruling elite while the majority endure poverty, starvation, disease and political oppression. A military massacre protecting Shell Oil interests from protestors in Nigeria and environmental devastation wrought by Texaco in Ecuador are among examples cited.

First World nations are now starting to look seriously at climate change. But such attempts at rollback are not welcome by such rapidly expanding nations as China and India, which have arrived at their own industrial booms.

Other topics touched on in this chapter-organized feature include the virtual mainstream media blackout on discussion of long-term oil issues and the prospects of widespread species extinction due to pollution and global warming.

Various scientists, analysts, politicos and others add talking-head commentary in a smooth package that makes good use of archival materials, especially some campy old educational cartoons that add fleeting levity to a grim message.

A Porchlight Entertainment release of a Vista Clara Films production. Produced by James Jandak Wood. Executive producer, Steve Michelson. Co-producers, Jennifer Jandak Wood, Joanne Shen. Directed by James Jandak Wood.

With: Tundi Agardy, Guy Caruso, Cindy Cohn, Kenneth Deffeyes, Steve Donziger, Emeka Duruigbo, Michael Economides, Christopher Flavin, Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann, Richard Heinberg, Santiago Kawarim, Terry Lynne Karl, Michael Klare, Kavita Ramdas, William Rees, Matthew Simmons, Lynne Twist. Narrator: Natalia Bortolotti.

Camera (color, DV), Sharon Anderson; editors, Pamela Spitzer, Anderon, Wood; motion graphics, Yussef Cole; sound, Spitzer. Reviewed at Roxie Cinema, San Francisco, March 24, 2007. Running time: 98 MIN.

World preems dominated the awards for the 22nd edition of the Santa Barbara film festival, announced Sunday.

Fest’s American Spirit award went to “Man In The Chair,” headlining Christopher Plummer and Michael Angarano. Logan Smalley’s doc on wheelchair-bound teen Darius West, “Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life,” received aud laurels.

Top international feature prize-winner was Jan Hrebejk’s latest wide-ranging comedy-drama, “Beauty in Trouble,” while Gold Vision Award was handed to a pair of pics, Adam Green’s and Joel David Moore’s world-preem debut, “Spiral,” and Alante Alfandari’s French mystery, “Fissures.”

Repping fest’s growing Ibero-American selection was Nueva Vision winner, “DarkBlueAlmostBlack,” by Spanish helmer Daniel Sanchez Arevalo.

Direct from its smash Sundance preem, Dan Klores’ “Crazy Love” nabbed best doc, while a pair of docs–Petricia Foulkrod’s “The Ground Truth” and James Wood’s “Crude Impact”–shared in Fund for Santa Barbara’s social justice award.

A few weeks ago at the Cleveland International Film Festival, I had the opportunity to serve on a discussion panel for a recently-released documentary entitled Crude Impact.

Crude Impact aims to portray all of the various social ills — political instability in the Middle East, corruption and poverty in the developing world, air pollution and environmental degradation, sprawl and traffic — associated with modern society’s reliance on oil. After establishing all of the disturbing challenges associated with oil, Crude Impact closes with a somewhat perversely optimistic punchline: “peak oil” — the maximum rate of extraction from our planet for the finite stock of oil that was left from pre-history — is surely coming, and no matter what economic or geopolitical crises that phenomenon will precipitate, at least the decline of oil will put an end to all of the miseries that oil underlies.

On balance, I give Crude Impact a “thumbs-up”. Without falling into despair, it clearly tells a number of stories related to petroleum through various lenses, and weaves these stories together to paint an overall damning picture of oil in a compelling manner.

I might suggest double-billing Crude Impact with An Inconvenient Truth, which focuses on the planetary impacts of global climate change without spending much time on the primary culprit: our seemingly insatiable desire to consume fossil fuels. Crude Impact seizes unflinchingly on this root cause, and is effective in reinforcing a sense of urgency to further commit to reducing our use of energy generally, and oil in particular.

The one criticism I have of the film is that it places a lot of blame for propagating oil demand on a variety of social segments — governments in the U.S. and worldwide, oil companies, auto manufacturers, the media — without fingering the ultimate precipitator: the consumers who have been completely complicit all along the way in creating our energy and environmental crises. The makers of Crude Impact tend to shun ascribing responsibility to the viewer, the average citizen, for any of the planetary woes we face due to society’s oil addiction.

If we are to have impact in changing the world for the better, we can’t fall prey to the passive negativity of laying all of the fault on other bigger parties that are supposedly more powerful than the individual. We have to own up to our role in causing our current problems, by being undemanding and unquestioning consumers. Once we see vividly our integral part in the drama, we lose the sense of being hopeless victims, and can act with much deeper resolve towards changing our path forward to a more hopeful future.

For the eighth consecutive year, the Fund for Santa Barbara has partnered with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival to offer the Social Justice Award for Documentary Film. The award is given annually to a film that makes a particular contribution to advancing social justice.

The screening of Crude Impact at the ASPO-USA conference in Boston (Oct06) almost didn’t happen with Director James Wood only flying into Boston that afternoon with the film. In introducing the film Wood was humble, admitting some nerves screening the film to what he considered a home crowd.

Crude Impact isn’t just a film about peak oil, it’s far broader. In fact peak oil isn’t even specifically mentioned until two-thirds through. This is to the film’s credit allowing the relationship between oil and humanity to be developed before thinking about the future.

The cinematography, iconic images, symbolism, soundtrack and the overall production quality are absolutely top notch. This professional look and feel adds credibility to the message and I believe makes the film all the more watchable for someone to whom this subject matter is new. On the subject matter, the film is well structured covering importance of oil in human development, foreign policy impacts, human impact, uses of oil, environmental impacts, the role of the media, before moving on the peak oil itself and the impacts of peak oil for the future.

I was particularly impressed with the early linking of fossil fuels with population expansion, equating a species’ evolutionary successes with its ability to extract energy from the environment. This is one of the first points the film makes, establishing the historic importance of fossil fuels and oil in particular. Food is highlighted as a critical use of oil, repeating the 10:1 energy ratio often quoted and that fossil fuels allow more energy to be used in the production of food than the food itself contains adding that for any other organism this spells extinction.

The film does not just focus on the energy and material side of things. The human and sociological impacts of oil are also considered. Rees questions the notion of material growth pointing out how we have far exceeded what is actually needed to be happy. Two examples of the negative impact of the oil industry are covered in detail, Texaco’s activities in Ecuador and Shell’s in the Niger Delta. In Ecuador Texaco took advantage of an inexperienced government and lack of regulation to exploit reserves in the Amazon rain forest employing methods disallowed in other provinces. One statistic presented is that during Texaco’s time in the rain forest (1964-92) they dumped 18 billion gallons of waste water containing 2% crude oil into the environment, the equivalent of 30 times the oil spilt during the Exxon Valdez disaster.

In the Niger Delta the environmental destruction, particularly in Ogoniland is presented through story of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s human rights and environmental activism and subsequent execution in a case backed by Shell. The point here I believe was to stress the direct suffering both human and environmental associated with the production and ultimately consumption of oil.

Crude Impact is critical of mainstream media suggesting that if the true impacts of our current oil polices were widely known they wouldn’t enjoy public support. Modern news coverage is criticised as “infotainment”, regarded as profit centre rather then the public service it should be, telling us what is really happening in the world.

Climate change is covered with mankind’s exploitation of fossil fuels described as the most significant thing humans have ever done, triggering perhaps the 6th great extinction event.

The subject of peak oil is covered very convincingly. Hubbert’s story is presented with added credibility from Deffeyes’ who worked with Hubbert at Shell. Of note are the fantastic graphical animations explaining the concept of peak oil, illustrating how production must follow discovery and how discovery has clearly peaked decades ago.

OPEC’s reserve growth is questioned, the USGS estimates of remaining resources are clamed by Al-Husseini to be exaggerated and Deffeyes even mentions an email he received from the head of the USGS explaining how large estimates were needed to encourage people to search for more oil!

The viewer is left with no doubt we are moving from a time of cheap abundant oil to one of expensive scarce oil. The impacts of peak are presented as resource wars, civil wars within oil exporting countries and a weakened economy subsequently less able to respond to new challenges. As oil becomes more valuable increased human rights and environmental damage is likely. The fundamental problem we face is described as growth, a problem that can’t be solved even if a new energy source is identified. Another limit will present itself, be it water, soil, phosphates etc. Population was mentioned at the start and was returned to at the end. Kavita Ramdas highlights the importance of women with respect to population stating that for every additional three years of education a woman receives reduces the number of children she has by one.

Crude Impact is a terrific film. I have no hesitation in saying it is the best documentary I have seen on the subject and I would feel very happy about recommending it to anyone. Key I think is its accessibility to someone with no prior exposure to the story of oil.

Last week I watched the new peak oil film, Crude Impact, produced by Vista Clara films, which has just emerged on DVD. It describes itself as “a film about how energy use, particularly fossil fuels, has impacted the earth, mankind and other species”, and is one of a couple of new peak oil films coming out over the next few months. I had been looking forward to seeing it for some time, and I found it to be an extremely well-made film which clearly and passionately presents the argument that we are at or near the peak, which will be a transition of historic importance.

Crude Impact is a very useful addition to the peak oil DVD library, exploring areas that previous films have not yet gone into. Having said that, I did feel that the film possibly suffers from being too long. It runs for over 90 minutes, and despite my being avidly keen to watch it, I did catch my eyelids drooping occasionally. Although enjoyable, impactful and informative, I did feel that Crude Impact tries to do too many things. It attempts, within its 90 minutes, to be a film about peak oil, climate change, Third World development issues, solutions, economics and a few other things besides. Unlike the film it will inevitably be compared to, The End of Suburbia which does two things, peak oil and its impacts on the suburban pattern of living, Crude Impact spreads itself too thin and, I felt, suffers a bit as a result.

The film has some great interviews, in particular with Thom Hartmann and Richard Heinberg, and some excellent archive footage. Visually it is very engaging, and the production values are very good. Although a more ruthless editor might have drawn a more focused and concise film out of what is undoubtedly excellent material, Crude Impact is a powerful and thought provoking exploration of the hold that oil has over the world.

It is revealed not as a benign power source, but as the source of most conflict, despotic regimes and of much environmental destruction. It is, the film argues, an addiction with extremely unpleasant and messy side-effects. Little is discussed in terms of what our lives might look like without it, but that is not the film’s purpose. Crude Impact focuses our minds not only on our dependence on oil, but also on all that has been done in order to sustain our habit. As such it is a very powerful tool in our attempts to break our collective addiction.

Complacency is as much a force for bad as dependency, and James Jandak Wood`s concrete, informative “Crude Impact,” a documentary about how oil fuels the contemporary world economy, is a painful reminder.

Peak oil is a phrase that`s just begun to dot coverage of the petrochemical-fueled planet we live on. Is Wood pessimistic? Negative? Frightened? Justifiably so. It`s not a subject of his film, but the fact that ethanol requires petroleum products to ship seeds, fertilize and harvest corn, as well as the finished fluid, is similar to the sorts of facts Wood arrays. You`ll start to ask yourself only a few minutes in, why are you not hearing about it from the media? From politicians? And why did ExxonMobil book record-breaking profits in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars? Oh! That much money can buy an awful lot of silence.

Crude Impact is a tiny, meaningful cry in the silence and should prove to be a useful tool for activists and organizers. 98m.