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Crude

CRUDE (Joe Berlinger) Rating: NNNN


Fresh from its debut at the M.U.C.K. Festival, Joe Berlinger’s quietly outraged eco doc settles into the Bloor for a week’s commercial run.

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Crude tracks the progress of a class-action lawsuit by the indigenous peoples of Ecuador against Chevron Corporation, which inherited the suit when it acquired Texaco in 2000.

Representing tens of thousands of Amazon tribespeople whose lands were contaminated by Texaco’s oil ventures, attorneys Pablo Fajardo and Steven Donzinger are the Davids to Chevron’s faceless Goliath, which is dragging its massive feet every step of the way, hoping to bankrupt its accusers and thus derail the legal action. (The strategy appears to be working the suit has been ongoing since the early 1990s.)

Berlinger chronicles Fajardo and Donzinger’s work between 2006 and 09. The indefatigable lawyers tour the devastated sites, interviewing dozens of sick and dying villagers, and prepare witnesses to give legal testimony – and appear at Chevron shareholder meetings intended to raise the average American’s awareness.

The cause gets a boost when Fajardo makes it into Vanity Fair’s green issue, bringing him to the attention of Trudie Styler’s Rainforest Foundation. The movie climaxes with Fajardo appearing at 2007’s Live Earth event in New York alongside Sting and the Police. The suit is still ongoing.

Opens Friday (October 9) at the Bloor.

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