Join the Movement to Finish this Epic Underdog Documentary about Climate Justice Activists in Colorado
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Fundraising Update
Our Final Push!
Our crowdfunding campaign has raised over $15,000 so far and we need to reach $20,000 to distribute the film in 2024.
We have stretched every dollar and accomplished a lot with the funds we have raised so far. With the remaining money we will license music and get the final touches on the graphics and the color before we premiere the film.
In 2024, we will be taking the film on tour around Colorado and the country in support of the 2024 ballot initiative to ban fracking in Colorado, led by Safe and Healthy Colorado.
Join our campaign today with a tax-deductible donation to help us get this film into the world and you will be invited to be one of the first people to watch the film online.
Fracking the System is a fiscally sponsored project under Denver Film Society and Creative Visions.
Distribution Plan
This story will be a catalyst for change. Through our strategic approach to distribution, outreach and engagement Fracking the System will reach a national audience of politically and environmentally conscious citizens and activate a new generation of climate defenders. Our film will generate awareness and impact through the following campaigns:
Showings at top tier and environmental film festivals around the world
A nationwide film screening tour
Distribution of educational materials
Presentations at top conferences
A national PBS broadcast
International release on iTunes, Google, and Amazon
Synopsis
When Trisha Nelson learns about the fracking site going in behind her son's school, she is in disbelief. She is even more shocked to learn it was moved to her BIPOC community from a predominantly White neighborhood after those parents protested. She joins the fight to stop the well and gets connected to the state-wide movement to push new oil and gas wells further away from all communities. The conflict erupts in 2018 when the activists’ state-wide ballot initiative prompts a $50 million response from the oil and gas industry, complete with dirty tricks, harassment, and sabotage. Finally, an oil and gas overhaul bill in the 2019 Colorado State Legislature fundamentally shifts the playing field. But, the Colorado Oil and Gas wars are just a small microcosm of the climate justice movement at large and a harbinger of climate battles to come.
Fracking the System: Colorado’s Oil and Gas Wars reveals shocking and powerful lessons from the front lines of environmental activism that leaves the audience aghast and ready to join the fight.
The film is nearly complete, but we need your help to get it across the finish line and ready to distribute and inspire the next waves of climate justice activism.
Letter from the Director
I began filming Fracking the System on a gut impulse and sense of duty, after I met a Lakota elder who explained the harms of fracking and encouraged me to make a film about it. Driven by my devotion to the Earth and those who strive to protect her, I began filming city council meetings and some activists’ events. On the eight day of filming, at a non-violent protest where a student-activist locked himself to a bulldozer, I was charged by the police, at the behest of the oil and gas company, with the same alleged crimes as the activist - criminal trespass and tampering with oil and gas equipment. Weeks later, I was served a lawsuit from the same oil company, which they offered to drop in exchange for my signed agreement never to show my footage of the event. Instead of taking their offer, I contacted the ACLU and we negotiated a settlement in which I successfully retained the rights to my footage. Despite those legal battles, and, indeed, because of them, I continued to film the activists’ controversial 2018 statewide ballot campaign and to create this documentary chronicling their 10-year struggle against neighborhood fracking and the political system that protects it.
Watching this film initiates viewers into the experience of frontline environmental activism. It tells the story of ordinary citizens heeding the call to protect their most fundamental rights to self-determination and a livable climate. Initially, they appeal to their lawmakers to regulate drilling near their homes, but they soon discover that the political system is designed to protect the rights of industry to extract profits rather than the rights of the people to determine what happens in their towns. Defeated there, the activists make an attempt at direct democracy by petitioning for a ballot initiative to change the laws at the state level, prompting a $50 million counter-campaign by the oil and gas industry to undermine their efforts. Fracking the System leaves no room for ignorance about the need to protect ourselves, our water and air from the reckless greed of an industry that buys the compliance of its own supposed regulators. If we want a livable world for our children and their children, it’s time to frack the system.
Brian Hedden
Producer/Director
www.brianhedden.com