I wrote about a couple of this year's Sundance docs earlier on the blog: Josh Tickell's Audience Award-winning
Fields of Fuel, and Patrick Creadon's
IOUSA. I was positive about the first, enjoying Tickell's breathless narration and ability to cram a huge amount of info on biodiesel, the alternative fuel source, into his feature. And I was less positive about
IOUSA, finding its arguments limited by its focus on one particular contingent of deficit hawks. Another thing:
Fields of Fuel is quite direct about what its advocating, coming up with an explicit multi-point plan to harness the power of biodiesel to help resolve our energy crisis, while IOUSA ended with a more generic "write your Congressman!" kind of message.
Both topics are even more now in the news than they were in January, and with the increased news presence comes the need for more complicated discussions about these issues. So, to provide a bit of balance to my largely positive take on
Fields of Fuel, I'll note
the current discussion over world hunger and poverty and whether or not the developed nations' various bio-fuel mandates are driving up the cost of food. Here's a
link to a blog, Gas. 2.0, which is pro-biodiesel but does acknowledge that increased use of the alternative energy may be playing a factor.
Comments (2)
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your comments. I agree... the major shortcoming of our film at this point is that we haven't yet provided solutions at the end of the film. Ironically, The Fiscal Wake Up Tour -- which is featured prominently in "I.O.U.S.A." -- is also reluctant to discuss solutions when they are traveling around the country for fear that they will be pigeon-holed by critics as either "tax-raising commies" or "cold-hearted Medicare slashers".
That said, we've heard from many -- including yourself -- that solutions must be presented in the film. This is what we are working on now in preparation for our theatrical release later this year.
Thanks for your comments.
Best wishes,
Patrick Creadon, Director, "I.O.U.S.A." and
Doug Blush, Editor, "I.O.U.S.A."
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posted by @ 4/15/2008 3:19 PM
Hi Patrick,
Thanks as well for your posting. As you can tell, the debt crisis is a subject I'm interested in, and I'm glad to hear that you will be expanding the ending of the film for the theatrical release. I'll look forward to seeing it again.
Best,
Scott
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posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/15/2008 11:56 PM
