CRUDE

Just saw another amazing documentary: CRUDE.
Films like these are the reason why I want to work in documentary filmmaking. To bring light to social injustices, give a voice to the voiceless, raise people's awareness about issues and hopefully enable CHANGE to happen.





Crude, by Joe Berlinger, explores the lawsuit - now in its 16th year- being fought by a true hero, lawyer Pablo Fajardo against ChevronTexaco on behalf of 30,000 inhabitants of Ecuador’s rainforest. Since Texaco's first arrival in Ecuador's Amazonian jungle in the 1960s, its indigenous populations have been suffering from serious environmental damages, fatal health issues, and the disintegration of their community, as a result of the oil magnate's lack of safe practices and lack of caring and respect for the indigenous population.

As expected now the multi-billion corporation just doesn't want to pay for the damages it has caused.

A good article on the whole case was featured in Vanity Fair in 2007.

Chevron's technique is to have the trial spread over years, even decades, knowing that sooner or later the plaintiffs will run out of money for the lawyers. This is the same technique used by food giant Monsanto against small farmers, as highlighted in Food Inc. One by one farmers go bankrupt, as they cannot sustain the legal fees to battle the giant.


Just 5 days ago, the judge in charge of the Chevron trial had to step down after attacks from the corporation. The trial which was only months away to being concluded will now go on indefinitely as a new judge comes in.


While many characters in the film were inspirational, others came out as the face of the "evil" corporation and all that is wrong with it. Chevron's environmental scientist (find the oxymoron!) interviewed in the film claims to see no relation between the oil leaks and toxic wastes all over the region and the cancers and skin diseases that have since plagued the locals and their young children. According to the filmmaker himself, the woman interviewed not only seemed sincere but, he thinks, actually really believes every word she said. Another case of the banality of evil? No matter what excuse we may find her, I don't know how some people sleep at night.