Mine Your Own Business, a film about the impact of the environmental movement, will premiere tonight at the National Geographic Auditorium in Washington, D.C., despite protests, condemnations, and a call for censorship from environmental activists. The film's directors, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, fellows of the Moving Picture Institute, have called the activists' response "totalitarian" and "intolerant."
Greenpeace executive director John Passacantando was invited to be a special guest at the screening. Instead, he sent a letter to National Geographic Society expressing outrage at their showing the film. "I'm appalled by their demand to shut down the film," said MPI president Frayda Levy. "We invited them, but instead of joining us for a discussion, they display breathtaking narrow-mindedness. Regardless of whether you love or hate Mine Your Own Business, it deserves to be seen. What makes them so afraid of this film?"
The film reveals how the campaigns of global environmental activists are often exaggerated, misleading, and motivated by a desire to preserve poverty-stricken villages they view as "quaint." The focus of the film is Rosia Montana, a mining village in Romania. Mine Your Own Business takes a hard look at a controversial issue, and poses hard questions to experts and activists on both sides of the debate. However, environmental activists have compared the film to Nazi propaganda and to pornography.
Yesterday, Greenpeace's Passacantando and dozens of other officials from environmental NGOs issued a letter condemning the film and the screening at National Geographic. The letter voiced support for the people of Rosia Montana who oppose the mine. However, other residents signed a petition that condemned the continued interference of Greenpeace and other environmental groups, and invited foreign media to visit the village.
Filmmakers McAleer and McElhinney responded with their own statement that points out bitter ironies in the Greenpeace letter:
Seventeen years after the Romanian people overthrew communism in a revolution that cost over 1,000 lives, Romanians are once again being ordered how to live and work by Greenpeace and other environmental organizations. And just like the communists of old, Greenpeace now wants to control what the Romanian people see in the cinema, and are even trying to stop our documentary being shown in Washington.
McAleer and McElhinney have challenged environmental groups' leaders to a public debate in the village of Rosia Montana. "We are confident that such a debate, free from the censorship that Greenpeace and its allies wish to impose, would show the truth about the lives of the people of Rosia Montana," they write.