Educational Media Reviews Online

The personal stories of David Poritz and Hugo Lucitante are centerpieces in this “epic tale.” Despite the fact that David and Hugo have vastly different cultural backgrounds, they have one thing in common: their drive to find a solution to the global problem of oil contaminations. Throughout a detailed chronicle of their lives and actions, the filmmakers bring awareness to the environmental disasters in the Amazon region of Ecuador due to irresponsible oil drilling and spills. Many rivers, streams, and forests have been so systematically polluted that the region has become known as a “Rainforest Chernobyl.” To bring the magnitude of this into context, “from 1972 to 1992 oil companies dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater and crude oil into Ecuador’s Amazon River basin … an amount 85 times more than the crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico during Deepwater Horizon tragedy.” Despite these powerful statistics, since the film was produced in 2014, it would be interesting to see more up-to-date figures.

The filmmakers also investigate the impact of the ecological damage on the health and everyday lives of the residents living in the affected areas. Since the traditional lifestyle of Ecuadorians directly depends on fishing, hunting, and using freshwater sources for drinking, cooking, and bathing, the polluted ecosystem causes a multitude of health problems. Many people in those areas suffer from stomach, liver, skin, larynx, and bile duct cancer, birth defects, organ failure, and many other problems. Ecuadorians try to do their best to protect their land, people, lifestyle, and culture, but lack of information from and communication with oil industry officials, authorized investigations, and government support make their battle ineffective. Knowing those problems, David and Hugo have devoted their lives to help Ecuadorians and other people around the world suffering from oil spills and to fight for their rights and justice using different approaches. It is not my intention to retell the stories of David and Hugo. Interested audiences are recommended to follow their journeys first hand through the camera lens and to learn more about the major environmental insults of the oil contaminations, the voices of peoples living in the highly polluted areas, and the effectiveness of the potential solutions that David and Hugo have tried to find.

Oil & Water is appropriate for public and academic library collections. The documentary offers additional features, which include 78-minute theatrical and 55-minute classroom versions with English, Spanish, and Cofán language options and English SDH captions. Also, it contains a great short animation Oil & Water: Hugo’s First Flight by Drew Christie. To get additional information regarding the film and current news about Hugo and David, please visit the official web site for the documentary.

Awards:
• Audience Award & Jury Award for Best Documentary, Northampton International Film Festival
• Green Planet Award and Audience Award for Best Documentary, Rhode Island International Film Festival