Environmental Documentary Spotlights ‘Change’ at Tribeca Film Festival Updated April 28, 2010 8:06am

Indian workers called Rag Pickers, sort through garbage and pick out recyclable materials to sell from the 70 acre Ghazipur Landfill Site in east Delhi, India. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

By Michael Avila

Special to DNAinfo

“What does it mean to live off the land? To feed from its palm without biting its hand?”

That is the question at the heart of “Climate of Change,” an informed and empowering documentary that is a clarion call in the battle to save our environment. The message? Don’t wait for the government to take action. Do it yourself.

One of the high-profile documentaries screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, “Climate of Change” offers compelling proof that change can begin and happen with just one person. It manages to sidestep the heavy-handed, eco-apocalyptic tenor of such recent documentaries as “The 11^th Hour” and “Flow: For Love of Water” while providing hope that eco-awareness is not a lost cause. As a result, it stands a good chance of being the latest documentary to use Tribeca as a launching pad to greater mainstream U.S. exposure.

Actress Jessica Alba (L) and director Brian Hill attend the premiere of 'Climate Of Change' during the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival at the School of Visual Arts Theater on April 22, 2010. (Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)

Director Brian Hill went around the world to find several people of varying ages and ethnicity, who are taking small but extraordinary steps to preserve our planet. Like the handful of impossibly clear-headed 13-year-olds in India, who have formed a group to protest the country’s reliance on plastic. One child, who has trouble breathing from all the noxious fumes from nearby factories, talks about wanting to convince companies to use something called an electro-static precipitator to filter factory smoke.

Listening to the kids say “we are just the renters of this world, not its owners," it’s clear these children are much more aware of our planet’s environmental peril than many blissfully ignorant adults.

The hypnotic narration by Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton – from British poet Simon Armitage’s writing – provides a sobering framework for the various storylines. A visit to the Global Seed Vault in Norway, basically a time-capsuled Garden of Eden, signals that the worst-case scenario for Earth may be inevitable.

“Climate of Change” puts a hyper-local perspective on the eco-crisis. But while Hill does illustrate how high the stakes are at this stage of the game, he wisely turns down the gloom and doom, and spotlights the progress being made.

In the small African nation of Togo, where trees are being chopped down and charcoal burned at alarming rates, one man is introducing the people of his native village to the benefits of solar powered cooking.

The working-class folks of the depressed coal-mining town of Whitesville, West Virginia, have banded together to take on the strip mining companies. The process of mountaintop removal, where explosives and heavy machines are used to level mountain ranges, has decimated the landscape of the Appalachian Mountains, led to thousands of lost jobs and resulted in a river of pollution some feel will linger for generations. One man, a self-described ‘hillbilly’ named Larry Gibson, had enough and stood his ground and refused to sell his 50 acres.

Actress Tilda Swinton narrates director Brian Hill's documentary "Climate of Change." (Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)