Edward Abbey

Activist/author Edward Abbey's legacy lives on in his best-selling books and now in director ML Lincoln's lively documentary. Lincoln pays tribute to Abbey and the environmental movement he inspired, reenacting his "monkeywrenching," and interviewing notable eco-warriors and present-day activists.

소위 ‘뉴딜 정책’이라고 불렸던 1930년대 미국의 대규모 토목사업들. 당시 건설된 거대한 댐들은 기술에 대한 경이로움까지 더해지며 미국인들의 자부심이 되었다. 하지만 강이 인간의 삶과 건강에 치명적 영향을 끼친다는 인식이 확산되면서, 댐의 철거를 둘러싼 미국인들의 생각에도 변화가 일어난다. 은 댐이 사라진 이후 되살아난 강의 생명력을 웅장하게 담아낸 작품이다. 루스벨트 대통령의 연설문으로 시작되는 영화는 이후 과거의 뉴스릴 등을 통해 댐의 역사를 좇는다. 또한 댐으로 파괴된 강과 철거 후 복원된 강의 모습을 보여주며, 자연이란 정복의 대상이 아니라 오히려 우리가 그 일부로 존재할 수밖에 없음을 깨닫게 한다. (2014년 제11회 서울환경영화제)

When Edward Abbey died in 1989 at the age of sixty-two, the American West lost one of its most eloquent and passionate advocates. Through his novels, essays, letters and speeches, Edward Abbey consistently voiced the belief that the West was in danger of being developed to death, and that the only solution lay in the preservation of wilderness. Abbey authored twenty-one books in his lifetime, including Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Brave Cowboy, and The Fool's Progress. His comic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang helped inspire a whole generation of environmental activism. A writer in the mold of Twain and Thoreau, Abbey was a larger-than-life figure as big as the West itself.

"Earth First! - The Politics of Radical Environmentalism" documents the rise of the controversial eco-activist group, Earth First!, as told by its founders, its admirers and its opponents, including rare interviews with its founders, Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle and Howie Wolke. Earth First! burst onto the environmental scene in the 1980s, engaging not only in civil disobedience to protect America's wilderness from exploitation, but ecotage - the destruction of heavy equipment, roads, and mills involved in deforestation. The movement become heroic to some, infamous to others, by scaling and occupying 200-foot tall old-growth trees to frustrate the plans of timber companies; and for "tree-spiking," hammering iron spikes into standing trees as a threat to the machinery of any mill that dared to process it. Earth First! includes rare footage of ecoteurs engaging in their exploits on camera.

A young real estate developer returns to his hometown to make a land killing but soon takes up the cause of a crusty old-timer in his struggles with the government which wants his ranch for an Army missile base.

감옥에 갇힌 친구를 구하려다 오히려 쫓기게 되는 카우보이를 소재로 만든 영화. 결국은 추격자의 총탄에 쓰러지는 한 카우보이의 이야기가 사라져가는 서부 시대의 희생자로 그려지고 있다. 서부 영화 치고는 자동차와 헬리콥터가 등장하는 이색적인 화면이 쫓기는 외로운 한 카우보이의 뒷모습에 쓸쓸하게 투영이 되어 저물어가는 서부 시대의 애환을 더 더욱 애처롭게 묘사하고 있는 수작이다.