Gasland

Synopsis

Fox narrates his reception of a letter in May, 2008, from a natural gas company offering to lease his familys land in Milanville, Pennsylvania for $100,000 to drill for gas. Fox then set out to see how communities are being affected in the west where a natural gas drilling boom has been underway for the last decade. He spent time with citizens in their homes and on their land as they relayed their stories of natural gas drilling in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Texas, among others. He spoke with residents who have experienced a variety of chronic health problems directly traceable to contamination of their air, of their water wells or of surface water. In some instances, the residents are reporting that they obtained a court injunction or settlement money from gas companies to replace the affected water supplies with potable water or water purification kits.

Throughout the documentary, Fox reached out to scientists, politicians, and gas industry executives and ultimately found himself in the halls of Congress as a subcommittee was discussing the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, "a bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to repeal a certain exemption for hydraulic fracturing." Hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Production

Gasland was conceived, directed, primarily filmed and narrated by Fox. This is his first documentary and second film; his first was a narrative feature entitled Memorial Day. The executive producers of Gasland are Debra Winger and Hunter Gray; producers are Trish Adlesic, Fox and Molly Gandour; co-produced by David Roma; cinematographers are Fox and Matthew Sanchez; editor is Matthew Sanchez; supervising sound editor is Brian Scibinico; animators are Juan Cardarelli and Alex Tyson; consultants are Morgan Jenness and Henry Chalfant and researchers are Molly Gandour, Barbara Arindell, Fox and Joe Levine.

The documentary was made in about eighteen months. Fox began the project as a one-man crew, but was joined by three other cameras at different points. Matt Sanchez is credited with the structure of the film and together with Fox edited roughly 200 hours of footage to about 100 minutes.

Positive

Robert Koehler of Variety referred to it as "one of the most effective and expressive environmental films of recent years… Gasland may become to the dangers of natural gas drilling what Silent Spring was to DDT.”

Eric Kohn of IndieWire wrote, "Gasland is the paragon of first person activist filmmaking done right… By grounding a massive environmental issue in its personal ramifications, Fox turns Gasland into a remarkably urgent diary of national concerns."

Stewart Nusbaumer of the Huffington Post wrote "Gasland... just might take you from outrage right into the fire of action."

Gasland currently holds a 97% rating on the film site Rotten Tomatoes based on 37 reviews. Mark Kermode of BBC Radio 5 Live gave it a generally positive review, criticizing its similarity to other recent oil documentaries, yet praising its "extraordinary visual kick". He said "it is a very interesting story which is made better by the fact that the visuals of it are very poetic, very lyrical", and felt that its themes and ideas were relevant and well presented.

The Denton Record Chronicle said “Fox decides that his own backyard in Pennsylvania isn’t his exclusive property... Set to his own banjo music and clever footage, Gasland is both sad and scary... if your soul isn’t moved by the documentary, yours is a heart of shale."

Bloomberg News critic Dave Shiflett wrote that Fox "may go down in history as the Paul Revere of fracking."

Chicago TimeOut gave Gasland four out of five stars.

In Australia, film critic Julie Riggs called the documentary a "horror movie, and a wake-up call."

Fort Worth Business Press writer John-Laurent Tronche talks about the growing number of documentaries “that aim to shed a light on what they call a dirty, destructive practice: shale gas exploration. And although oil and gas supporters have labeled the motion pictures as radical propaganda, a local drilling activist said they’re part of a larger, critical look into an ever-growing industry."

Negative

Energy in Depth (EiD), launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, has created a web page with a list of factual inaccuracies in the documentary, and produced an associated film titled TruthLand. In response to the EIDs criticisms of the film, the makers of Gasland offered a rebuttal.

In an article for Forbes magazine, Dr. Michael Economides, a professor of engineering at the University of Houston and former consultant for energy companies including Chevron, Shell, and Petrobras, commented on the Gasland scene of "a man lighting his faucet water on fire and making the ridiculous claim that natural gas drilling is responsible for the incident. The clip, though attention-getting, is wildly inaccurate and irresponsible. To begin with, the vertical depth separation between drinking water aquifers and reservoir targets for gas production is several thousand feet of impermeable rock. Any interchange between the two, if it were possible, would have happened already in geologic time, measured in tens of millions of years, not in recent history."

A rebutting documentary FrackNation was successfully funded on Kickstarter. FrackNation has since had TV, DVD, theatrical release as well as viewings in governmental committees and scientific committees world wide. The documentary examines and argues against several of the claims made in Gasland.

Awards

Won

Nominated

Sequel

On February 2, 2012 Gaslands director Josh Fox was handcuffed and arrested as he attempted to film a Congressional hearing on gas drilling by hydraulic fracturing which the Environmental Protection Agency reported caused water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming. Fox said he was arrested after Republicans refused to allow him to film because he did not have the proper credentials.

A sequel to Gasland titled Gasland Part II premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 21, 2013. A group of farmers, who were featured in FrackNation, were barred from attending the premier; the Festival stated that the group had not arrived in time and that the screening was full.