In her latest feature documentary Dirty Oil, director LESLIE IWERKS goes behind the scenes of Canada’s oil sands industry to uncover the impact of Alberta’s ‘black gold rush’ on its residents.
Narrated by Canadian actress Neve Campbell, Dirty Oil premieres in the UK on 15th March, before opening throughout the UK on the 19th March.
The Oil Sands of Alberta, Canada
MMM: How did you get involved with Dirty Oil?
Iwerks: First of all, it’s a story that hasn’t really been told that well or at all in some cases in the US, so I thought it was intriguing. And being an American, I felt sort or responsible as we’re the number one consumer of Canadian oil, so I thought it was a unique perspective. Then you’ve got the issues of people getting cancer, of whole migrations of animals dying off or being moved to new territories. There’s a lot to it, and it’s a powerful story.
MMM: Before you made Dirty Oil, you put together a short film on the same subject called Downstream. Why was that?
Iwerks: We were funded as a 90-minute feature documentary to do Dirty Oil, but then when I met John O’Connor [a Fort Chipewyan doctor concerned about the number of rare cancer cases in the area] and saw the story that was unfolding there, I convinced Babelgum [an online and mobile TV platform] to allow me to cut a short that we would submit to the Academy Awards as I felt it had the right elements to it.
So the short came out a little earlier and made some waves. It got shortlisted for an Oscar last year and created all sorts of controversy in the press and in the Canadian government, so we were glad that it put us on the map a bit before Dirty Oil. It wasn’t easy to tell the entire story in 30 minutes, but it paved the way for the feature and made that easier to make.
MMM: You mentioned Babelgum. This is the first original feature production they’ve commissioned…
Iwerks: Yes, it was their idea to do a feature film that would hopefully be one of a series of films about global warming, tackling various issues around the world.
The feature we made is the main piece, but I’m also making some webisodes, maybe five minutes each, little documentaries that are going to be on-going part of the show and will follow up on the oil-sand issues.
MMM: How easy or difficult was it to get access to the information and people you needed to interview to make the documentary?
Iwerks: It was hard. I think CAPP, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, will tell you it’s an open door up there and that anyone will talk to you, they welcome media, there are no secrets, but the reality is that we had a very difficult time.
We spent over a year trying to access people in Alberta oil; we tried Alberta Health, Health Canada, the Minister of the Environment. We knocked on a lot of doors and didn’t really get anybody who’d talk to us.
So we took that as a red flag that they’re either really tired of the media or, in their mind, they don’t want their words getting skewed. But the reality is that it was Mel Knight, Alberta’s Minister of Energy, who came out and talked. What he says is what I put in the film, and people can take it for what it is.
When you go and you drive along Highway 63 [which passes through the oil sands area], it’s very hard to pull over to the side of the road and get any photographs. There are certain spots you can shoot from, like a park that they’ve created, but it’s not like you can just get out and walk around and shoot stuff. They pick you up really quickly; they take your name and your licence, they give you the inquisition. So it’s not the easiest place to shoot.
MMM: You start the film by asking a number of American men and women on the street where they think their oil comes from. All of them say the Middle East. Then you reveal that Canada is actually the number one provider of oil for the US today…
Iwerks: I would never have known that myself because it [the oil sands process] is just this little quiet process that’s going on up there, but it’s a huge pollutant.
The reason most people think our oil’s from the Middle East is because we’re in battle there and we’ve just seen eight years of the Bush administration which was pretty much all about oil. It’s more of a dramatic story, and it’s where we have gotten our oil for so many years.
And the oil there is the conventional crude that’s easy to get to and cheapest. It’s basically a dollar a barrel to get out of the ground, whereas it’s taken decades for any company to make a profit in the oil sands. They are making a profit now, but it took a while, and it’s something like $18 to $20 to excavate a barrel of Canadian oil.
MMM: The film talks about a seemingly high number of cases of cancer found among people living in the oil sands area…
Iwerks: It’s a microcosm of a larger issue and these issues are going on all over the world. The people [in Alberta] that I’ve met have lived and breathed it. They see it on a daily basis, how the government downplays so much stuff. They see the headlines in newspapers, and see these things constantly denied.
Even the government officials when they come into Fort McMurray or Fort Chipewyan will not drink the water. You see them getting off the planes and bringing in cases of bottled water for their meetings, and it’s a kind of funny visual when they’re saying “the water’s fine, the water’s fine”. So why don’t they drink it?
The people who live there are showering in this water, they’re drinking this water, and the government’s saying there’s no viable proof that this water’s polluted.
MMM: Have you noticed any change in American attitudes to the situation since Obama became President?
Iwerks: Absolutely. I think Obama’s been the number one advocate for clean energy that we’ve had in a long time. So far his regulations on trying to get climate control back on track in the US, trying to get our automobile emissions curtailed, and trying to enact legislation towards those goals has been a huge help. None of this is an easy overnight fix, but at least there’s been discussion in congress about changing these things.
MMM: How has the film been received in America and Canada?
Iwerks: We had a premiere at the Hamptons Film Festival late last year and it did really well. People had no idea about the subject. Once it gets its US and Canadian distribution deal, it will be touring around, so we’re hoping it sparks some questions.
MMM: What do you hope audiences will take from the film?
Iwerks: I hope that it will be important news to them, that they would like to get involved in the Toxic Fuels campaign with the Co-op, and to help support the moratorium on further rapid expansion of oil sands development right now. It’s not just a Canadian issue, it affects the entire planet, and this is just one story out of many.
I’m really in admiration of the Co-op’s big initiative with their Toxic Fuels campaign, a consortium of companies getting around clean energy and trying to fight dirty oil. They’ve supported the release of my film in the UK, and two other films called H2Oil and Petropolis. They’re not even in Canada but they’re fighting for this, as we’re all affected by it even though it seems like a micro-story.
The amount of toxic chemicals that are allowed to go into the Athabasca River every single day is pretty shocking. This same thing is happening in the US in the Great Lakes where British Petroleum has tried to evade certain Environmental Protection Agency restrictions and laws in order to dump more greenhouse gases into the air and more toxic chemicals into the Great Lakes.
When they tried to bypass a certain law it was spotted by several people who went to the Chicago Tribune. It became a major story, and finally BP was caught red-handed trying to get around this thing.
When you look at these major corporations around the world, the list goes on of those who try to take advantage of populations.
Interview by film journalist Jan Gilbert