SFFS Investigatie Documentary Week Presents: Crude September 26, 2009

The San Francisco Film Society will present its second annual Investigative Documentary Week featuring the free SFFS Focus: Investigative Documentary program Slippery Slopes: A Forum About Crude and the Investigative Functions of Film, 2:00 pm Saturday, September 26 at Landmark’s Lumiere Theatre in conjunction with a screening of Crude (SFIFF 2009), directed by Joe Berlinger. Tickets to the screening must be purchased separately.

SFFS Investigative Documentary Week is copresenting Crude, which opens for a one week run at the Lumiere and Shattuck (Berkeley) theaters on Friday, September 25. Berlinger will be on hand for audience Q & A following the first evening screening Friday at the Lumiere and the first evening screening Saturday at the Shattuck.

Crude, a lively and gripping documentary, chronicles the shifting course of a lawsuit brought by 30,000 Ecuadoreans against Chevron over its responsibility for the country’s contaminated waters and streams. Alternately inspiring, funny, disturbing and infuriating, Crude offers a thoughtful and complex look at the issues surrounding human rights and corporate behavior in Latin America.

Following the 12:00 noon Saturday screening of the film at the Lumiere, the forum will address the functions, roles and processes of documentary film as a form of investigative journalism. Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large at the San Francisco Chronicle, will moderate a discussion with Crude director Joe Berlinger and Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center of Investigative Reporting. Other panelists are yet to be confirmed.