L’or du golfe

Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack's nonfiction treatise Crude Awakening joins Maxed Out, An Inconvenient Truth, and other recent documentaries devoted to unearthing and exploring forces that are untying the connective threads of contemporary society. The subject at hand is crude oil - specifically, the depletion of petroleum from the Earth, in an era when consumption threatens to exceed supply.

In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.

What kind of world power is Iran becoming, and how will Western countries deal with it?

A documentary about the psychological costs of working in Alberta's oil sands and the mental health crisis that's been ignored for a decade.

Documentary telling the story of the shale oil industry and its lasting impact on the community of West Lothian. Presented by geologist Professor Iain Stewart.

An oil boom has drawn thousands to America’s Northern Plains in search of work. Against the backdrop of a cruel North Dakota winter, the stories of three children and an immigrant mother intertwine among themes of innocence, home, and the American Dream.

CRUDE IMPACT is a powerful and timely story that explores the interconnection between human domination of the planet and the discovery and use of oil. This documentary film exposes our deep rooted dependency on the availability of fossil fuel energy and examines the future implications of peak oil the point in time when the amount of petroleum worldwide begins a steady, inexorable decline.

The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.

Stand-up comedian Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years, from WWI through to the 2003 invasion of Iraq; but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, this show places oil centre stage as the cause of all commotion. This innovative history programme is based around Robert Newman's stand-up act and supported by resourceful archive sequences and stills with satirical impersonations of historical figures from Mayan priests to Archduke Ferdinand.