Living Downstream: New Zealand Premiere, May 31

What: New Zealand Premiere of feature documentary film, Living Downstream
Where: Downtown Cinemas, Palmerston North, Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival
When: May 31, 2010, 8pm
Tickets: Available at the cinema. Adults: $14.50, Students: $13.00, Senior Citizens: $10.00, Children: $9.00, Family Concession - 2 adults/2 children: $42.00

Living Downstream is now a feature documentary film
New Zealand Premiere at Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival

(04/12/10) Thanks to a Canadian production team, Living Downstream, one of the most influential books of the modern environmental health movement, is now the basis of a feature documentary film of the same name. The film was made possible by Canadian director, Chanda Chevannes and produced by Toronto-based The People’s Picture Company (The PPC).

Living Downstream is an eloquent feature-length documentary that charts the life and work of Sandra Steingraber: a biologist, author, cancer survivor and cancer prevention advocate. Like the book on which it is based, Living Downstream documents the growing body of scientific evidence that links human health with the health of our environment.

On May 31, the film will premiere in Palmerston North, New Zealand as part of the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival. It is the first public screening of the film outside of North America. After its screening in the 6th festival season at Reel Earth, the film is scheduled to have its worldwide television premiere on TVNZ7 in two parts, on Wednesday July 21 and Wednesday July 28. The film will also soon be available for wider theatrical release and purchase on DVD.

The New Zealand Premiere is open to the general public. The screening will take place at Downtown Cinemas in Palmerston North on May 31 at 8pm. Tickets for this one night only screening can be purchased at the cinema.

Part scientific exploration, part personal journey, Living Downstream follows Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. during a pivotal year in her life: as a biologist and author, speaking to groups across North America about cancer prevention; and as a cancer survivor, when she receives ambiguous results from a cancer screening test. The film captures this movement between the scientific and the personal, which is also a hallmark of Sandra’s work.

The film closely follows the trajectory of Sandra’s life and work, but it also tracks the important progress of scientific investigation on environmental links to cancer and other health ailments. Several experts in the fields of toxicology and cancer research make important cameo appearances in the film, highlighting their own findings on two pervasive chemicals: atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, and the industrial compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Their work further illuminates the significant connection between a healthy environment and human health.

The People’s Picture Company is an award-winning independent production company based in Toronto, Canada. The PPC aims to entertain, educate and inspire audiences with documentary films and believes in the power of media and art to create positive change in our world.

“The film follows Sandra who is on a journey,” says Chanda, “but the chemicals against which she is fighting are also on the move. We follow these invisible toxins as they migrate to some of the most beautiful places in North America. We see how these chemicals enter out bodies, and how, once inside, scientists believe they may be working to cause cancer.”

While the film itself is set in North America, the story it tells has global relevance and holds important significance for audiences in New Zealand. Atrazine and PCBs are two of the many chemicals that are present in New Zealand’s environment. Atrazine is often found in the country’s drinking water and PCBs are regularly found in the nation’s food supplies.

To coincide with the documentary adaptation of Living Downstream, Da Capo Press has published an updated second edition of the book (released April 2010).

Certainly, the original book inspired Chanda’s documentary, but as Sandra says, the making of the documentary also influenced her recasting of the second edition: "In a wonderful and unexpected way, Chanda's creative decisions as a filmmaker gave me new ideas for organizing the story and scientific argument of the book as I updated its various chapters for the second edition. There was a lot of reciprocity between us. Chanda inspires me."

The Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival is the southern hemisphere’s leading international environmental film festival. Reel Earth offers a remarkable opportunity for film lovers to see stunningly beautiful films about our environment and to connect with the challenges in preserving it. For more information on the festival, visit: http://www.reelearth.org.nz/

Advanced public screenings of Living Downstream are currently being held in select cities worldwide. The educational DVD of the film (for educators, activists and professionals) is now available for preorder.

For more information on Living Downstream, visit: http://www.livingdownstream.com
For more information on The People’s Picture Company, visit: http://www.theppcinc.com

ENDS

There once was a village overlooking a beautiful river.
The people who lived there were very kind.
These residents, according to parable, began noticing increasing numbers of drowning people caught in the river’s swift current. And so they went to work devising ever more elaborate technologies to resuscitate them.

So preoccupied were these heroic villagers with rescue and treatment that they never thought to look upstream to see who was pushing the victims in.

Living Downstream is a walk up that river. The river of human cancer.

Film Reviews

Handsomely photographed and powerfully argued… Steingraber's scientific cool and unflagging sense of mission make for an arresting portrait of a self-styled modern-day Rachel Carson.

– Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post (04/23/10)

…an absolute must-see. Excuse my clichés, but Living Downstream is powerful, it is inspiring, it is moving, it is – quietly, like our hero – a tear-jerker. And, upon seeing it yourself, you are likely to make similar exhortations to your friends and family.

– Don Schwartz, CineSource Magazine (05/07/10)

Director Chanda Chevannes’s Living Downstream is a convincing and necessary documentary. It’s also, despite its daunting subject matter, a movie you’ll want to watch.…A few pitch-perfect moments provide all the emotional force you would expect from a “cancer movie,” minus the unpleasant tang of emotional manipulation.

Living Downstream does an excellent job of engaging the viewer’s curiosity and telling an inconvenient truth through the lens of interesting science and one fascinating woman.

– Ali Gadbow, Missoula Independent (03/04/10)

Directed by Chanda Chevannes, the film is at times intimate, at other times shocking, and occasionally tragically humorous.

– Jamie Kelly, The Missoulian (03/05/10)

…a visually elegant, feature-length documentary…The film, as Steingraber describes it, is ‘hopeful, funny, ennobling.’

– Dori Gilels, Mamalode magazine (Missoula) (Spring 2010)

[Sandra Steingraber] wages an impassioned fight against carcinogens…Living Downstream [is] part-memoir/part-scientific treatise about Steingraber’s battles with cancer, and the environmental roots of many cancers.

– Krisy Gashler, Ithaca Journal (04/02/10)

Screenings of Living Downstream:

October 16-20 – Illinois
5-City (Chicago, Bloomington, Springfield, Peoria & Champaign) Screening Tour

October 15-17 – San Rafael CA
Time TBD, Moving Image Festival, Bioneers Conference

May 31 – Palmerston North, New Zealand
8pm, Official Selection of the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival

May 26 – Ithaca NY
8pm, Finger Lakes Project Workshop

May 18 – Toronto ON (Canadian Premiere)
7:30pm, Bloor Cinema
Co-presentation of Planet in Focus & Women’s Healthy Environments Network

May 14 – San Francisco CA
Private screening organized by two leading San Francisco based organizations that are committed to protecting human health and the environment: Breast Cancer Fund and Pesticide Action Network North America

May 11, 2010 – Baltimore MD
9pm, CleanMed Conference, Hyatt Regency
Health Care Without Harm

May 7 & 8, 2010 – Auburn NY
May 7 - 1pm & 8pm, May 8 - 8pm, Auburn Public Theater
Screenings will be followed by a Q&A session via Skype with Chanda Chevannes.
May 8 evening screening will also include a Q&A session with Sandra Steingraber and a book signing of the second edition of Living Downstream

April 25 – Washington DC
7pm, Elihu Root Auditorium, Carnegie Institution for Science
Bonus Screening Day of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital

April 28 – Boston MA
Private Screening organized by leading Massachusetts-based environmental health organizations.

April 17 – East Peoria IL
7 pm, Performing Arts Center, ICC’s East Peoria Campus
Student Association for the Environment, Illinois Central College

April 13 – Greencastle IN
7pm Watson Forum in the Center for Contemporary Media
Science Research Fellows Program, DePauw University

April 3 – Ithaca NY (World Premiere)
7pm Cinemapolis
Special Presentation of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
* Event was sold out

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