By Jerilynn Tucker, Sustainability Film Series Planning Team
A free film series is bringing to Holland some of the best documentaries and movies that explore issues of creation care, sustainability and clean energy.
The series, which began in October, has award-winning films scheduled for this Tuesday, Jan. 14, as well as Feb. 25 and March 31.
On Tuesday, the series will present “The Game Changers,” a 2018 documentary about the benefits of plant-based eating. The film showcases elite athletes, special ops soldiers, and scientists from around the world.
The movie’s producers include James Cameron, Jackie Chan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film is hosted by James Wilks, a retired English mixed martial artist, and was featured on CNN with the heading: “Macho Vegans: The documentary that’s changing the script on plant-based diets.”
This film, and the others coming up, will be shown at Hope College’s Graves Hall. Each movie night begins at 6:30 to provide for networking and collaboration among citizens interested in promoting a sustainable approach to our environment. Film screening is at 7 p.m. There is time for questions and discussion afterwards.
The film series is offered through a collaboration of the Hope College Green Team, Hope Student Activities Committee, Macatawa Creation Care, Citizens Climate Lobby, and the League of Women Voters of the Holland Area.
The series began with the movie “Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution” in October, followed by “The Sequel” in November and “A Plastic Ocean” in December.
Coming up on Tuesday, Feb. 25, will be “Merchants of Doubt,” a film based on the book of the same name by historians Naomi Orestes and Erik Conway. The film traces the use of public relations tactics that were originally developed by the tobacco industry to protect their business from research revealing health risks from smoking.
The most prominent of these tactics is the cultivation of scientists and others who successfully cast doubt on scientific results. The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern said, “ ‘Merchants of Doubt,’ a provocative and improbably entertaining documentary by Robert Kenner, means to make people angry, and to make them think.”
The final movie for the 2019-20 year, on March 31, will be “WALL-E” a PIXAR and Disney film that topped Time’s list of the Best Movies of the Decade in 2008. The movie, great for children and adults, follows a solitary trash compactor robot left to clean up garbage on a future, uninhabitable Earth.
Humanity is nowhere to be found, having been evacuated seven centuries earlier by the megacorporation Buy-N-Large (BnL) on giant starliners. Of the robotic trash compactors left by BnL to clean up, only one remains operational: A Waste Allocation Load-Lifter (Earth Class), or WALL-E.
One day, WALL-E’s routine is broken by the arrival of an unmanned probe carrying an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator or EVE, sent to scan the planet for plant life, and the story proceeds from there.
Jerilynn Tucker is a member of the Holland Area Chapter of the League of Women Voters, the Citizens Climate Lobby, and the film series planning committee. The retired school psychologist at Holland Public School has had a long-time interest in social and environmental justice.
If You Go: Sustainability Film Series
What: The film “The Game Changers”
When: 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 14
Where: Hope College Graves Hall, 263 College Ave., Holland
Cost: Free
Future Films: “Merchants of Doubt” Feb. 25 and “WALL-E” on March 31
This Week’s Sustainability Framework Theme
Community Knowledge: The collective knowledge and energy of the community is an incredible
resource that must be channeled to where it is needed.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
Living Sustainably is a collection of community voices sharing updates about local sustainability initiatives. It is presented by the Holland-Hope College Sustainability Institute, a joint project of Hope College, the City of Holland and Holland Board of Public Works. Go to www.hope.edu/sustainability-institute for more information.
