Notable Films Watched in 2020: February, March, and April (all streaming)

 

I Am Not Your Negro (2016):

In Raoul Peck's powerful documentary, Peck brings to life the book writer James Baldwin never finished, Remember this House, providing an opportunity for Baldwin to tell the story of race in modern America. 

Horse Girl (2020):

Horse Girl illuminates the inner world of socially isolated and PTSD sufferer Sarah (Alison Brie), a craft store assistant with a love for horses and supernatural crime shows and increasingly lucid dreams that begin trickling into her waking life.

The Farewell (2019):

Lulu Wang's amazing comedy drama The Farewell centers on Chinese family members who discover their grandmother (Shuzhen Zhao) has only a short while left to live. With Awkwafini leading the cast as Americanized Billi, emotions run deep when the family decides to keep their grandmother in the dark, scheduling a wedding so everyone can gather for a final secret farewell before she dies.  

Crip Camp (2020):

In Crip Camp, directors James Lebrecht (a former camper) and Nicole Newnham reveals the joy and activism that sprung from summers spent at Camp Jened, a ramshackle camp in the Catskills specifically for teenagers with disabilities. At Camp Jened, teens with disabilities enjoyed activities typically reserved for "the able bodied" in the 1970s and built bonds with one another that endured as they migrated to Berkeley, California, a promised land for a growing and diverse disability community. With our own Joseph Heumann's sister Judy at the helm, these friends from Camp Jened spearheaded the disability rights movement that helped secure life-changing accessibility. 

The Death of Stalin (2017):

A comic drama set in 1953 Moscow, The Death of Stalin highlights what happens after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) takes ill and dies--the members of his Council of Ministers scramble for power. 

The Juniper Tree (1990):

Writer director Nietchka Keene turns fable into art film in The Juniper Tree, landscape sets the mood for story of two sisters, Margit (Bjork) and Katia (Bryndis Petra Bragadottir) fleeing persecution after their mother is killed for practicing witchcraft. More than the complicated love story, Iceland takes center stage in this atmospheric film. 

Notable Films Watched in 2020: January

The Laundryman (Dir. Chung Lee, 2015): A-Gu (Tang Su) enlists a group of contract killers while disguised as the owner of a laundry service. One of them, code-named "No. 1, Greenfield Lane" (Hsiao-chuan Chang), is haunted by the ghosts of his victims. He seeks help from Lin Hsiang (Regina Wan), a psychic. Lin helps him get rid of the ghosts, but the laundry hides secrets more than she bargains for. What "No. 1, Greenfield Lane" runs away from turns out to be the ghosts from his past. 

Yomeddine (Dir. Abu Bakr Shawky, 2018): Coptic leper Beshay (Rady Gamal) and his orphaned apprentice Obama (Ahmed Abdelhafiz) leave the confines of their leper colony for the first time and embark on a journey across Egypt to search for what is left of their families. 

 Whisky (Dir. Juan Pablo Rebella, Pablo Stoll, 2005): When his long-lost brother Herman (Jorge Bolani) resurfaces, Jacobo (Andrés Pazos), desperate to prove his life has added up to something, looks to scrounge up a wife. He turns to Marta (Mirella Pascual), an employee at his sock factory, with whom he has a prickly relationship.

 In the Theatre: 

1917 (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2019): During World War I, two British soldiers -- Lance Cpl. Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance Cpl. Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) -- receive seemingly impossible orders. In a race against time, they must cross over into enemy territory to deliver a message that could potentially save 1,600 of their fellow comrades -- including Blake's own brother. Stylistic elements make this derivative war drama worth watching.

Conclusion: from Blue Vinyl to environmental justice at home?

 

Conclusion: from Blue Vinyl to environmental justice at home?

Films like Blue Vinyl and Libby, Montana demonstrate the drive for a better home, a shelter and a place where environmental justice is the norm, and environmental racism is minimized. This would be a place where

“no population, especially the elderly and children, are forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden of the negative human health and environmental impacts of pollution or other environmental hazard.”

What is missing from these films, however, is a larger story connected to the underfunding of the whole Superfund site cleanup program. On a human level, both Mossville and Libby are tragedies, maybe even crimes, but given the numerous Superfund site contenders, and the underfunding of the whole program, perhaps under triage, sites such as the Hanford, Washington Nuclear Reservation or the Picher, Oklahoma lead mining eco-disaster documented in PBS’s The Creek Runs Red (2007) may in fact be more dangerous and warrant a higher priority.

Ultimately, however, Blue Vinyl and Libby, Montana underpin well the search for a better home, one we all can take, but one that also makes transparent the injustices hidden that may lie behind vinyl production and home construction. By choosing to maintain a clear rhetorical position that is infused with an engaging personal narrative, Blue Vinyl more effectively advances efforts for an environmentally sound home than does Libby, Montana, yet the goal for both films’ journeys is a better home for us all, one based on the idea that “human rights, an ecologically sound environment, sustainability development and peace are interdependent and indivisible,” one that is “secure, healthy, and ecologically sound,” and one that is

“free from any form of discrimination in regard to actions and decisions that affect the environment” (Cifuentes and Frumkin 1-2). 

 

Go to Notes page

Libby, Montana Rhetorical Analysis Conclusion

Ultimately, Libby, Montana does document the connection between vermiculite-asbestos and Libby’s health concerns while also revealing the corporate cover-up and the heroic attempts by EPA on-sight emergency coordinator Peronard to implement cleanup efforts for the town. Yet the balanced approach taken by the filmmakers draws our sympathy away from the poisoned townspeople to Peronard’s own struggles to appease conflicted townspeople and encourages audiences to empathize with Governor Judith Martz’s reservations to support the extensive cleanup. By beginning the film’s historical background in the twentieth century instead of the 19th, the film also misses the chance to interrogate policies that allowed such mining to occur.

The good news is that Libby, Montana’s situation was dire enough to satisfy the EPA’s risk assessment study. The EPA began collecting samples in December 1999, collecting nearly 700 “from air, soil, dust and insulation at homes and businesses.” They released the first indoor air sample results in January 2000 to both property owners and the media and general public and located “areas in and near Libby that were likely to have high levels of contamination such as two former vermiculite processing facilities.” To determine the extent of the contamination, the EPA “also looked at general asbestos exposures in the community and at health effects seen in people who had little or no association with the vermiculite mine in Libby,” working

“closely with local, state and federal agencies to understand how people might come into contact with asbestos-contaminated vermiculite and what can be done to prevent future exposures” (“Libby Site Background”).

After three years of research, Libby was added to the EPA’s National Priorities List in October 2002, providing Libby with a Superfund Designation and the assurance of extensive cleanup. In September 2011, too, a Montana judge approved a $43 million settlement for the “more than one thousand asbestos victims in the town of Libby, Montana” (Mesothelioma News). The cleanup continues as of October 2011, with the addition of contaminated woodchips to exacerbate Libby’s problems (New York Daily News), problems that affect us all, according to Patricia A. Sullivan. Her study of Libby vermiculite workers revealed

“significant excess mortality from nonmalignant respiratory disease…even among workers with cumulative exposure” (584).

Her study’s conclusions, however, demonstrated how far-reaching Libby’s asbestos problem might be:

“Since vermiculite from the Libby mine was used to make loose-fill attic insulation that remains in millions of homes, these findings highlight the need for better understanding and control of exposures that currently occur when homeowners and construction renovation workers (including plumbers, cable installers, electricians, telephone repair personnel, and insulators) disturb loose-fill attic insulation made with asbestos-contaminated vermiculite from Libby, Montana.” (584)

Since approximately 80 percent of all vermiculite was produced in Libby, Montana until its mine and factories closed in 1990, the possibility that insulation is made with asbestos-contaminated vermiculite from Libby is high and reinforces the need to consider the production content of a home as well as its location.

According to the film, 218 crosses were displayed in memory of the known Libby asbestos victims.	Libby, Montana also shows some of the consequences that arose after the film’s context. By July 2004, for example, more than 1200 other Libby residents had been diagnosed with lung abnormalities.