EARTH 101: What You Don’t Know Can Kill You!
–This year’s curatorial theme–

OPENING THURSDAY, JULY 22, 8:00PM
AT THE 103RD STREET COMMUNITY GARDEN
Music by Grupo Coco Rico

This summer the PRdream Summer Film Fest presents “Earth 101”, a primer on global warming, fossil fuels, industrial farming, genetically modified food, and water. According to Judith Escalona, Director of PRdream.com: “We’ve always had an environment and health component to the screenings, but this year we decided to devote the entire festival to it—given the Gulf Coast Disaster.”

Increasingly unsustainable, the American way of life of fast foods and gas guzzling cars is harmful not only to one’s health but to the planet. The current crisis in the Gulf Coast, where British Petroleum (BP), a major oil supplier to the U.S., has irreparably destroyed our wild life and contaminated part of our coastline with toxic crude oil and chemical dispersants should sound the alarm. The wife of a Louisiana fisherman astutely commented on the situation: “Don’t sh*t where you eat. It will kill you. Even shrimp know that!”

Earth 101 is a departure from PRdream’s usual summer film program of Puerto Rican/Latino films and other international independent cinemas. These films are scheduled for late Fall.

The documentary screenings are free and take place every Thursday night at sunset, approximately 8:30pm, at the 103rd Street Community Garden, between Park and Lexington Avenues.

This year’s exclusive focus on environmental documentaries coincides with a new exhibition at MediaNoche, PRdream’s digital art gallery. MediaNoche is located on the corner of 102nd Street and Park Avenue, just one block south of the community garden where the films will screen. The exhibition “SPILL>>Forward” is scheduled to open July 29 at 6pm. As the title suggests, the works displayed are a response to the Gulf Coast oil disaster. SPILL>>Forward is a collaboration between MediaNoche and Transnational Temps, an international new media arts collective devoted to increasing awareness about the environment.

Opening the PRdream Summer Film Fest is Grupo Coco Rico, featuring Joe Falcon on bass, Luis Rodriguez on guitar, and sonero mayor Ismael Rosado. The trio will play traditional Puerto Rican music and Latin Jazz before the first film screens on Thursday, July 22. Not to be missed! Music begins at 8:00PM. The schedule and description of the films follow:

ALL FILMS SCREEN AT SUNSET (Approximately 8:30PM)
IN THE 103rd Street Community Garden
(East 103rd Street between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue)

Thursday, July 22 An Inconvenient Truth – Redux
Thursday, July 29 A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash
Thursday, August 5 Crude
Thursday, August 12 Food Inc.
Thursday, August 19 The World According to Monsanto
Thursday, August 26 Flow

An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim
Redux. PRdream brings back the sobering classic on climate change. Former Vice-President Al Gore explains the present and future effects of global warming. “Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive.”

Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, directed by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack
What happens when the earth runs out of oil? This is your wake up call. At a time of unprecedented and ever-growing demand, the available oil worldwide is fast approaching peaked oil depletion.

Crude, directed by Joe Berlinger
It’s déjà vu all over again! Instead of British Petroleum, its Chevron; and instead of our Gulf Coast, it’s the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador, South America. The film follows the crusade of an Ecuadorian lawsuit against Chevron for 2 of its 14 years! We see the tragic pollution of a once pristine rainforest and the devastation of the people who inhabit it.

Food Inc., directed by Robert Kenner
And you thought Aunt Em and Uncle Henry were still running the farm! Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers, and our own environment. The highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer is exposed.

The World According to Monsanto, directed by Marie-Monique Robin
From Iowa to Paraguay, from England to India, Monsanto is uprooting our food supply and replacing it with their patented genetically engineered seeds. Along the way, farmers, communities, and nature become collateral damage.

Flow, directed by Irena Salina
The most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century — the World Water Crisis. Here is the case against the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water. Politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering international water cartel that wants to control our water supply–and our future as a species.