Sunday, January 18, 2009

Chevron’s Amazon Disaster Lands at Sundance; "Crude" - Press Kit Attached

Apparently a new documentary – appropriately entitled "Crude" - from Emmy-award winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger highlighting the legal battle to hold Chevron accountable is premiering at the famous Sundance film festival today. The film has generated some significant buzz – I saw articles mentioning it in the New York Times and the Boston Globe, among other news outlets. From the film's Sundance page:

Filmmaker Joe Berlinger's latest documentary picks up the thread of the infamous ""Amazon Chernobyl"" case, a 13-year-old battle between communities nearly destroyed by oil drilling and development and one of the biggest companies on earth. In a sophisticated take on the classic David and Goliath story, Berlinger took three years to craft a cinema vérité portrait centering on the charismatic lawyers in the U.S. and Ecuador who have doggedly pursued the case against all of the forces a corporation can bring into courts of law.

We managed to get our hands on one of the press kits about this "David and Goliath" story that are floating around the festival. The press kit has some good stuff about the subject matter of the film – including a press release from which I borrowed the title for this post. The press packet is attached below - take a look.

Press Kit Cover Page
Sundance/Crude Press Release
Q&A about the Case
Letter from Congressman Jim McGovern
Associated Press story on the Case
Bios of the Lawyers featured in "Crude"
Entire Press Kit - .rar file