Mine Your Own Business, MPI's incendiary film about how radical environmentalists are trying to prevent the world's poorest people from improving their economic circumstances, continues to ride a long, strong wave. It's been making headlines for months, with coverage in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and a host of other print and television venues. Most recently, Kevin Vance of the Washington Times has turned his attention to the film:
"Mine Your Own Business," a film produced by New Bera Media in association with the New York-based Moving Picture Institute, exposes what it calls "the dark side of environmentalism."In impoverished villages in Romania, Madagascar and Chile, filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, both fellows of the MPI, encounter environmentalists who want to stop proposed mining projects. Many villagers who appear in the documentary say the mining projects would bring much-needed financial resources into their economically deprived regions.
Left-wing groups have called the film propaganda, noting that it received significant funding from Gabriel Resources, the company trying to begin mining operations in Rosia Montana. The filmmakers acknowledge the funding at the beginning of the film, saying they agreed to produce the film on the condition of complete editorial independence.
Rob Pfaltzgraff, executive director of the MPI, called it a "sign of transparency" that the film included information pertaining to its relationship with Gabriel Resources. "There was no editorial control whatsoever, and everyone who has met these filmmakers knows how stubbornly independent they are."
The documentary portrays environmental organizations as opponents of economic development that want to preserve what they call a quaint way of life where people drive horses rather than cars.
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The MPI has dubbed the film into Spanish and is distributing it worldwide. Mr. Pfaltzgraff said the film exposes the hypocrisy of environmentalists.
"They want people with no cars, no indoor heating, no plumbing, while they themselves live in the creature comforts," he said. "These are people who think poor people are a cancer. Their thinking is responsible for keeping millions of people in Africa, Latin America and Asia mired in poverty and misery."
Critics of the film have tried to suppress it (last winter, Greenpeace led a group of 80 environmental NGOs in an attempt to prevent the National Geographic theater from screening the film). And, as noted above, they act as though the film's funding history is a dirty secret that they have themselves exposed. But the truth is that the film foregrounds Gabriel Resources' role in commissioning the film, and notes up front that a condition of the funding was that the filmmakers would have complete editorial control. It notes, as well, that the filmmakers brought to the issue a staunchly green outlook that was tempered by the facts they uncovered in Romania, Madagascar, and Chile. This film is hardly a propaganda piece; the fact that so many groups continue to want to portray it that way simply shows how little they have to say for themselves in the face of the facts it unveils.