Let the Fire Burn & Last Ocean Films To Screen

Let the Fire Burn, winner of the Best Editing award at the International Documentary Association’s 2013 annual awards, will screen at 3 p.m., while The Last Ocean – winner of the Best Feature Award at the 2013 Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival – will screen at 5.15 p.m on Sunday January 19.

The astonishingly gripping Let the Fire Burn, rated by many as one of the top documentaries of 2013, is a documentary that unfurls with the tension of a great thriller.

On May 13, 1985, a long-simmering feud between the city of Philadelphia and the controversial urban group MOVE came to a deadly climax.

By order of local authorities, police dropped military-grade explosives onto a MOVE-occupied rowhouse. TV cameras captured the fire that quickly escalated, leaving 11 people [including five children] dead and destroying 61 homes.

Let The Fire Burn trailer

It was only later discovered that authorities had given the order to “let the fire burn”. Using only archival news footage and interviews, filmmaker Jason Osder has brought to life one of the most tumultuous and largely forgotten clashes between government and citizens in American history.

The Last Ocean focuses on The Ross Sea, Antarctica – one of the most pristine stretches of ocean on Earth — a vast, frozen landscape that teems with life – whales, seals and penguins carving out a place on the very edge of existence. Largely untouched by humans, it is one of the last places where the delicate balance of nature prevails.

But an international fishing fleet has recently found its way to the Ross Sea. It is targeting Antarctic toothfish, sold as Chilean sea bass in up-market restaurants around the world. The catch is so lucrative it is known as white gold.

Marine experts say that unless fishing is stopped the natural balance of the Ross Sea will be lost forever. Rallying together, they form a non-profit organisation and begin a campaign taking on the commercial fishers and governments in a race to protect Earth’s last untouched ocean from our insatiable appetite for fish.

The Last Ocean trailer:

Chris Flook, Director of the Blue Halo Initiative – which is seeking to create a marine reserve that will encompass much of Bermuda’s Exclusive Economic Zone within the Sargasso Sea — will provide an update on his organisation’s progress, and take part in an audience question and answer period, after the film.

“There are similarities between the Blue Halo project, and the efforts being made to protect The Ross Sea, and so this is the perfect storm of a great film as well as an opportunity to find out what is being done locally,” said Duncan Hall, programming director for the Weekend Film Series. “We are most grateful to Chris for agreeing to attend the film and provide an update.”

The ‘Weekend Film Series’, sponsored by Gosling’s, is a joint production of Bermuda Documentary Film Festival director Duncan Hall and the BUEI. Tickets are on sale now at the Oceans Gift Shop at the BUEI, or by calling 294-0204.

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