The award-winning Global Environmental Justice project was launched three years ago just ahead of the COVID crisis. In the beginning, the collection provided 25 documentaries that examine the question "What is environmental and climate justice?" as seen from many different perspectives.
The project was just beginning to find an audience in undergraduate studies in the United States and Canada in 2020. Project Director Gary Marcuse was on his way to Boston from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia, to receive an award from the Association for Asian Studies for the new collection when the AAS conference was abruptly canceled and visits to colleges and universities were curtailed.
Today the Global Environmental Justice collection has expanded to 48 films and guides and it can be found in 80 college and university libraries in the US and Canada. In celebration of Earth Day, over a three-week period, Video Librarian will be reviewing 12 of the 48 documentaries that make up this collection.
As part of this event, we invited Gary Marcuse, who is also an environmental filmmaker, to talk about this timely project.
Gary Marcuse: Well, it is timely, isn't it. And I think that's why it survived the pandemic. We weren't sure it would. At first, when college campuses emptied out, the idea of having a roomful of students gather to watch and discuss a documentary seemed like a distant memory. It was hard to find anyone to talk to. Faculty were too busy sorting out how to put their courses on Zoom to pay attention to our emails. It seemed possible that several years work by a group of faculty curators selecting films and writing teacher's guides might be shelved.
But I should have had more confidence in the faculty and librarians I met earlier when I was touring one of my own films - Waking the Green Tiger - about the rise of a green movement in China. They told me that students were deeply concerned, sometimes overwhelmed by the environmental crisis.
What they needed now, they said, was a collection of films that examine the intersection of human rights and environmental protection - and not just in environmental studies classes. The collection should be diverse, eclectic, engaging, respectful. It should support environmental literacy and inspire informed advocacy.
Documentaries, they said, would be effective. Their strength is their ability to present complex and nuanced stories. They bring the world into the classroom and they promote discussion. They are versatile. They can be used in a wide range of subject areas including Asian, environmental, African-American and Indigenous studies. And in law, geography, anthropology, global health, filmmaking, creative writing, conservation biology, and many more. First-rate teacher’s guides would be essential, and of course the films should be easily accessible online.
Our goal is to have the support of 100 subscribers. That would make the project self-sustaining and allow us to go on adding more films and guides at no additional cost to current subscribers.
— Gary Marcuse, GEJ Project Director
That was a tall order!
Gary Marcuse: There's more: The website should be easy to navigate and should offer the full suite of academic streaming services like those offered by Docuseek2, our digital platform. These include the ability to make and preserve clips, tagged PDFs, interactive subtitles, lists of clips for use when time is short and the provision of cataloguing information and MARC records.
One further requirement, if we were going to succeed, would be a low subscription cost. In the past I have organized two similar projects in Canada, one supporting media literacy, another supporting Indigenous studies. Both collections were highly affordable thanks to underwriting of the development stages. Both became standard resources in secondary education in Canada for more than 15 years.
The key is to find support for the up-front costs which are otherwise paid by the libraries. When I was talking with librarians at Whittier College, I kept lowering the subscription cost until I saw their eyebrows go up. We then set our sights on a subscription price of $395 USD per year for a three-year contract. Compared to the usual pricing, that's 48 films for the typical cost of only two or three.
Here we were helped by the Henry Luce Foundation They have a mandate to improve student awareness of environmental issues in Asia. Their grant underwrote the cost of commissioning teacher's guides. Consequently, despite doubling in size, the subscription cost has not increased since the original launch.
2 of 3
Recent additions to the GEJ collection include Youth Unstoppable: Another World is Possible, A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet, Cooked: Survival by Zip Code, and If Not Us Then Who?, a collection of seven short films about sustainable forestry by Indigenous peoples from Brazil to Indonesia. Browse the collection of 48 films at GlobalEnvironmentalJustice.com.
3 of 3
How did you select the films for the Global Environmental Justice Project and Collection?
Gary Marcuse: For more than a decade many film festivals have been adding a strand of films that deal with the environment. More recently entire festivals have been launched focusing on environmental stories. Thousands of films now fight for recognition by these fests. But sadly, a great many that would generate great discussions in class are lost to view or disappear behind pay walls. As I attended festivals I identified around 1500 films of interest and narrowed the list to 150. I then offered this shortlist to fifteen faculty (at Whittier, NYU, Yale, Bates, Webster and Brandeis) who each chose one or more films to teach in class and write up in a guide.
"Capturing ecological, social, and public health crises, these documentaries bring the neglected stories of marginalized communities to light... Real, relatable people [are] portrayed within their diverse cultures and everyday lives as they are impacted by pollution, globalization, climate change, civil war, ecosystem loss, and corporate power... the films are insightful and will enhance students’ environmental literacy and inspire advocacy."
— ccAdvisor review by Sue Wiegand, Saint Mary’s College | Download the full review here
What kind of response have you had to the documentary film collection, particularly from academic libraries?
Gary Marcuse: We are making progress. This spring we reached the three-year mark, with the collection available in 80+ colleges and universities. Our goal is to have the support of 100 subscribers. That would make the project self-sustaining and allow us to continue adding more films and guides at no additional cost to subscribers.
The metrics tell part of the story:
- Students have logged over 15,000 screenings
- That adds up to 340,000 minutes of students viewing films about environmental justice
We also received:
- The Buchanan Prize from the Association for Asian Studies: Recognizing excellence and innovation in instructional materials on Asia
- An Outstanding Academic Title award from CHOICE 2020
- A Top 75 Recommendation by CHOICE for Community Colleges
- And the collection was a finalist at the UK Learning on Screen Awards
Please join Video Librarian from April 6 – April 21 as we feature a new review of a different title from this collection every weekday. Each review will feature bonus content including the trailer, a gallery of stills, teacher's guide, and direct links to browse the entire collection and its librarian-tailored database. Best of all - every review will be unlocked from our paywall and available even to readers not yet subscribed to Video Librarian.
Bookmark this page to read all of Video Librarian's reviews of Global Environmental Justice Collection films.
The Global Environmental Justice Documentaries project is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Global Reporting Centre, Face to Face Media, and by subscriptions from colleges like yours. Online academic streaming is provided by Docuseek2. To learn more about the Global Environmental Justice Project and Collection go to https://gej.docuseek2.com/.
Contact: Elena Wayne | sales@docuseek2.com | +1-847-537-0606 • Gary Marcuse | GEJ@globalreportingcentre.org | +1-604-251-0770