You’ve probably noticed that Documentary Channel is devoting the entire month of April to the Earth. Every night at 8pm we’re airing nonfiction films devoted to the planet. For instance, tonight we’ve got Test Site, which is on just about everything pertaining to the North American desert (love, death, music, ritual, people and more), and Gathering Remnants, which deals with cowboys’ love for the land (also tonight: we premiere the second part of our Doc Talk devotion to Oscar shorts). On top of all this we’ve got a whole day filled with “Celebrate Earth” programming this Monday in honor of Earth Day.
The marathon begins at 10am ET on April 22nd and continues through the evening in the usual prime time slot. Here is a rundown of the films you’ll be seeing when you spend this special occasion with us:
10:00am - Save the Farm
An award winning short about the nation’s largest urban farm, which is in South Central Los Angeles. Featuring celebrity activists Daryl Hannah, Martin Sheen, Laura Dern, Amy Smart and Alicia Silverstone, it’s a documentary on local growing, organic food, community and urban development.
11:00am – Ingredients: Who’s Your Farmer?
Continuing on the topic of local food, this film explores the growing movement towards eating healthier and more sustainably in our own backyards (literally and figuratively). Narrated by actress Bebe Neuwirth.
12:30pm – Cafeteria Man
Keeping with similar subject matter, this film follows the story of Chef Tony Geraci and his crusade to reform the Baltimore public school meal system. He aims to provide thousands of children with more nutritious food while also teaching them how to grow their own vegetables.
2:00pm – Bag It
Find out why you should decrease your dependency on plastic, especially if you have or are going to have children. Emmy Award-winning Colorado TV personality Jeb Berrier hosts this film as a sort of goofy cross between Morgan Spurlock and Alton Brown. He starts out concerned about plastic bags and winds up investigating plastics more broadly after finding out he’s about to be a father. He even performs a little health experiment on himself, a la Super Size-Me. Berrier is sort of dopey at times and makes a lot of funny faces at the camera to emphasize ridiculousness about the otherwise serious issue, and it helps that he’s such an average joe character, too, since it allows everyday Americans to identify with him and his pursuit.
3:30pm – Water Wars
Martin Sheen narrates this important film on the multiple global water crises, including droughts and disasters in the U.S., climate change and water management issues and developments around the world. The primary focus, though, is on flooding and other problems in Bangladesh caused by dams in neighboring India.
5:00pm – Into the Deep
The evening part of our Earth Day celebration consists of a few IMAX documentaries, starting with this undersea exploration. Howard Hall‘s 1994 film was the first of its kind, shot with then-newly developed IMAX 3D cameras for underwater shooting. Hall is one of the most renowned underwater cinematographers and has worked on a number of other IMAX films since, including his own recent directorial effort, Under the Sea 3D, and films by the great Greg MacGillivray including Oscar nominee The Living Sea and Coral Reef Adventure.
6:00pm – The Secret of Life on Earth
Narrated by Patrick Stewart, this IMAX film is a look at the Earth’s ecosystems, concentrated on showing how life began billions of years ago with gorgeous micro- and macroscopic and time-lapse cinematography. As you can see below, there’s also some underwater cinematography in this one, too.
7:00pm – Blue Planet
This 1990 IMAX film was shot over the course of many NASA missions and focuses on Earth rather than the astronauts and the cosmos. It’s more of a shuttle’s-eye-view environmental film than space exploration doc. It also has footage shot down on the ground, as well. The doc was directed by Ben Burtt, best known as an editor and sound editor for Lucasfilm — he won Oscars for Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark).
8:00pm – Tapped
Kind of combining some of the issues from earlier in the day tackled in Bag It and Water Wars, this doc concentrates on the bottled water industry and how it uses up oil, pollutes the environment and might be bad for our health.
9:30pm – Ingredients: Who’s Your Farmer
Repeat from earlier. See the listing above.
