>>PREVIEW
BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND THE ROOSTER’S CROW
DIRECTED BY Nadja Drost
Thursday, November 3
Uptown Screen
Between Midnight and the Rooster’s Crow is possibly one of the most explosive, maddening and important films ever to screen in Calgary. The visual exposé takes a pointed look at the impact of EnCana Corporation’s operations in Ecuador, where it was active for more than five years, before selling. The picture isn’t at all flattering towards one of North America’s largest energy companies.
"I think that EnCana advertised itself as a good force in (Ecuador), but most locals with whom I spoke did not feel favourably towards the company," says Ottawa activist and first-time documentary filmmaker Nadja Drost. "They felt… that the company did not address the community’s concerns, especially when it came to environmental problems."
In the first part of the film, Drost goes to EnCana’s operating area in and around the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, where the company detonated an estimated 6,000 dynamite explosions. She finds a multitude of problems in the area. Crude oil has leaked into the groundwater and rivers, and people complain that fish in the rivers taste like oil. There are high rates of cancer, skin disease and miscarriage. People talk about the military using EnCana’s airstrips and vehicles to bully and shoot people who oppose the company’s operations.
The president of the Siona indigenous tribe tells Drost why their elders decided to give EnCana the green light to operate on their land, and his reason is echoed by other landowners – "If we denied (EnCana) entry, the military would enter."
Drost’s presence in Ecuador seems to deeply disturb the company, as the company’s security personnel follow her around and repeatedly deny tours of company facilities. She’s even denounced on a local radio station, where the mayor of Cuyabeno urges people not to talk to her or her Ecuadorian guide.
To get some of the footage she needs, Drost goes undercover into one of EnCana’s sites, hiding in the back of a truck driven by a local landowner who wants to show her the extent of the site’s contamination. (It was contaminated by a company that operated there before EnCana bought it.) Inside, she finds goopy, oily muck all over the place.
The second part of the film focuses on the Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados, or OCP (in English, heavy crude pipeline), a 500 kilometre-long pipeline built by a consortium of companies of which EnCana was the largest shareholder. The pipeline stretches from the Eastern Ecuador city of Lago Agrio to the Pacific Coast, bisecting protected areas, passing close to active volcanoes and crossing 94 seismic fault lines. An environmental impact assessment for the pipeline was completed a year after the pipeline’s route had already been set, more or less rendering the assessment meaningless.
At the time, EnCana CEO Gwyn Morgan assured shareholders that "97 per cent of people along the pipeline route came to voluntary agreement to have (the pipeline) across their land." But Drost interviews the national police and discovers that the OCP paid them to make sure the pipeline project moved forward unobstructed.
"The only people that I ever met who wanted the pipeline were people who did not live along the pipeline’s route and lived in cities," says Drost. "But people who live in the cities don’t have to live with the impacts of oil operations."
Drost’s interviews and footage brilliantly capture the creative resistance of the people. She talks to a group of environmentalists that bought a piece of land along the pipeline’s route in a protected forest and perched themselves in the trees to protest – they stayed on the land for three months until being jailed. Drost also talks to several other landowners along the pipeline route who were beaten and jailed for standing up for their rights.
Most of the people Drost speaks to are articulate and passionate. "We’re not fighting against people, just these big companies," explains one activist who helped block and deflate the tires of OCP trucks, and then gave the drivers food and shelter.
The film ends with Drost and other activists taking their concerns to EnCana’s annual general meeting in Calgary, where Morgan gives vague answers to their pointed questions. Drost’s microphone is eventually cut off, and no one walks away with answers.
Even though EnCana sold its Ecuador operations to a consortium of Chinese companies in September, Drost says her film is still relevant – especially in a city that’s home to many transnational companies operating abroad.
"I think it really points to a need for Canadian legislation… so companies like EnCana can’t simply go into a country, make a mess and leave without actually taking responsibility for everything that they’ve done," she says. "The case of EnCana is unfortunately not isolated whatsoever."
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Drost, Liberal MLA and environment critic David Swann, and other activists. EnCana has also been invited to send a representative. |
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