No Fracking Way

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More About

• Josh Fox
• Fossil Fuel Energy Production
• Energy Sector
• Science and Technology
• Nature and the Environment

With its jolting images of flammable tap waterand chemically burned pets, New York theater director–turned-documentarian Josh Fox's Sundance-feted shocker makes an irrefutable case against U.S. corporate "fracking," the Halliburton-hatched scheme of natural gas drilling in and around the nation's shale basins. Narrating in the first person, the filmmaker begins by describing a gas company's six-figure offer to drill on his rural Pennsylvania land, which sits atop what the company trumpets as the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas." Refusing the deal, banjo-strumming Fox takes his show on the road, inviting citizens who did take big-energy cash to prove the contamination of their groundwater and recount its ill effects on their health. Describing himself as "not a pessimist," Fox nonchalantly exposes EPA conflicts of interest and fingers the "Halliburton loophole" — a curious exemption to the 2005 Energy Act as cooked up by ex-Halliburton exec Dick Cheney. No mere collection of talking heads, the documentary expertly juxtaposes instances of natural beauty with those of mechanized incursion, practically making us feel the toxic chemicals spilling off the screen and into our laps. Alas, Fox pushes his luck on the sound track by coming on like Marty Sheen in Apocalypse Now, his ultimately numbing voiceover delivered in halting rhythms and hushed tones. Still, there's only one conclusion to draw here: No fracking way.  (Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre, Thurs., Dec. 9, 8 p.m.)