True/False Films

GasLand

In person: director Josh Fox

America is on the verge of energy independence through "natural" gas exploration, thanks to Halliburton and a host of other brave entrepreneurs. So why is Josh Fox not grateful? Fearful that his beloved backyard river is in peril of being polluted, Fox sets out on a fact-finding mission across the country. What he finds is that "fracking," the practice of using a chemical stew to assist in the drilling process, is laying waste to our groundwater and land. The director/crusader on a mission has become a familiar sight in contemporary documentary. But somehow Fox breaks through this cliché with an astonishing mix of shoe-leather journalism and the idiosyncratic experimentalism of his theater background. A modern Paul Revere hell-bent on saving us from ourselves, Fox's achievement promises a hip new era of urgent advocacy films. (PS)

print | close