Forest for the Trees on TV today

Didn’t catch this eco bio earlier this year when it was screened here in Montreal by the Cinema Politica crew? Well then, maybe tune into yer TV tonight, and if you’ve coughed up for the independent films on the Sundance channel you can enjoy the story of Judi Bari’s resilliance and spirit in her fight to protect the California Redwoods. Sure to contain heart breaking footage of the trees.

If you’ve ever seen them stalking the mountains in California, then they’re burned in a special place in your brain - like the place that holds the memory of cathedrals only more breathing and deeply rooted. How the protection of lovely living things, let alone such tall and old ones (these trees saw year “0″ everything between,) can elicit car bombings and the like I’ll never understand… but maybe watching the film will help…

Tuesday, May 22nd
9:30pm e/p

Forest For The Trees (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Bernadine Mellis. Mellis follows her father, civil rights lawyer Dennis Cunningham, as he goes to federal court in 2002 on behalf of his client, the late environmental activist Judi Bari. A leader of EarthFirst!, Bari was injured in a car bombing as she prepared for 1990’s “Redwood Summer,” a peaceful action protesting the logging of old-growth redwoods in Northern California. Arrested for the crime but never charged, Bari believed she was targeted in order to discredit her organization and sued the FBI and the Oakland Police. A suspenseful chronicle of an important trial, Forest for the Trees is also a profile of a dynamic and funny woman, who earned the respect of loggers as well as environmentalists.