Film Festival Gags #Fracking Documentary as #Radiation is Discovered in Local Waterway

Update: In an effort by residents in Warren, PA to counter the Boonies Film Festival’s action last week, they will be screening Triple Divide this WED @ 4:00pm @ First Lutheran Church, 109 W. 3rd Ave., Warren, PA. Save Our Streams Pa will be in attendance on our behalf to co-host the event and talk about issues happening on the Allegheny River. What an awesome gesture by these fine people in Warren. Thank you! (Clean Water Action Public is holding a public meeting at 6:30pm to discuss their lawsuit against WTC.)

Why is Boonies Film Festival Censoring #Fracking Documentary, Triple Divide?

“I can take you where they’re pulling up their trucks, and dumping that shit right into the river,” said a former natural gas worker to Public Herald about frack wastewater dumping at the Allegheny River in Warren, PA. One day later, the story broke.

Turns out that gas worker was right. And the shit is piling up in Warren.

On July, 18 Clean Water Action filed suit against Waste Treatment Corp. (WTC), for illegal discharge of waste into the Allegheny River in Warren:

“[C]hloride, bromide, lithium, strontium, radium-226, and radium-228 were all found downstream of WTC’s discharge at levels over 100 times the levels upstream of the plant.

“Not only was there water contamination, but pollutants were building up in the river bed sediment, where DEP found radioactivity and oily deposits,” Arnowitt relayed. “The plant’s discharge of 200,000 gallons of wastewater a day is putting over 125,000 pounds of salt into the Allegheny River every day.” (Amanda Nichols, Bradford Era)

Warren is also home to the newly formed Boonies International Film Festival (BIFF), who recently rejected Public Herald’s fracking documentary, Triple Divide . As it happens, BIFF is in the heart of the Triple Divide watershed, where the Allegheny River flows through downtown Warren.

On BIFF’s website, executive director Jeff Clark proclaims the “wild” nature behind the “Boonies.”

Public Herald submitted Triple Divide to BIFF, along w/ a $60 check, but never heard anything back. So, last night before the 2013 opening, we called Executive Director Jeff Clark on the phone. He apologized for not responding, saying his email accidentally got lost in a draft box, then explained why Triple Divide was rejected.

Clark: “We couldn’t show that this particular season. It’s nothing against the film. It’s just timing for us.”

Triple Divide DP Joshua Pribanic: “Why is that?”

Clark: “Well… Josh… Josh Fox is one of our Jurists…do you know Josh?”

[We do, in fact we met Fox at the BIFF in 2011 while in production for Triple Divide. It’s also when we met Clark.]

Clark: “There’s just some life going on around it, and it’s not the best time to deal with that situation right now.”

Pribanic: “It’s just not the best time…”

Clark: “It’s just business that we have. Our town, our industry, everything here… the whole town was built on lumber and oil, and it’s still all here. We’re a new organization trying to find funding and support for this in a small town.”

Pribanic: “So, the subject matter–”

Clark: “–Yeah. it’s hard to even explain it. It’s kind of contrary to film festivals and such… It’s got nothing to do with the quality of your film.”

Pribanic: “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope we can make a film in the future that would be acceptable into the festival. It just feels like I’m being censored.”

Clark: “Listen. The film is acceptable. It’s just not acceptable this year, at this particular month and time for what we’re doing and what’s happening for us as a festival.

“We want to be involved with what you’re doing. You just can’t show it at the festival at this time.”

In real life, there is no better time to show Triple Divide in Warren, PA than right now. But like the gas industry investigated in the film, BIFF’s top concern is making money. Nevermind that the film’s findings highlight negligent endangerment of the PA Wilds and people in the ‘boonies.’

Clark: “The bottom line is, business is business, and it’s just not a smart business choice right now. I don’t feel I really need to answer it in much more than what I’ve said.”

The film’s co-director/producer, Melissa Troutman, was born an hour away from the festival’s doorsteps. She’s not just a local filmmaker, but a local journalist, serving as a reporter covering Marcellus shale gas issues for the headwaters of the Allegheny River before meeting Pribanic in 2011 to team up for Triple Divide.

That year, BIFF had no problem bringing Gasland to the screen. Yet, Jeff Clark told us Josh Fox would not be showing at this year’s festival. However, their website says different.

Josh Fox did tell Public Herald that Clark wouldn’t show Gasland II this year. (But, with HBO in the mix it’s murky waters.)

The fact is, I think Clark’s statements are censoring information, important information, about a film made in the backyard of the ‘boonies.’ But, it’s more egregious than that. It’s censoring art, a crime I feel is equal to any of those committed by the oil and gas industry. How do you build a culture, a society, a democracy by censoring art? According to Clark, “It’s totally business.”

Not-so-surprisingly, this isn’t the only time Triple Divide has been censored. RDA, a nonprofit organization in another fracking industry hub, Williamsport, PA, had a date to screen Triple Divide at the Creative Arts Center (CAC) a couple months after the group showed Gasland II. But when, according to a CAC spokesperson, two big donors threatened to pull their funding if CAC showed fracking documentary, RDA was banned from using the venue any further. Once again, along with RDA, Triple Divide was censored.

Yet again this month in Salem, OH, a Kent State University Branch told a representative from the Ohio Organizing Collaborative:

“We have decided not to go forward with your request to use our facility. If you do find a place to do your presentation in Columbiana County, please let me know.  I would like to attend the showing and also tell others about this event.”

In Warren, PA it’s business as usual.

Arnold said WTC is just trying to run a legitimate business.

“We’re a wastewater treatment facility for the oil and gas industry, and we’re going to keep operating,” he stated. “I’m not surprised to be a target for environmental groups because this is what they do. They find companies of interest where there seems to be a concern and go after them.

Word of advice: If you’re showing at BIFF this year, you might want to go Back to the Future and suit up.

Co-written w/ Melissa Troutman, “The Dragon”