October 18 at 2 pm
Regal Theater, LA Live (1000 W. Olympic Blvd, LA, CA 90001)
Fifty years ago an oil spill united a community and changed the world
Christopher Lloyd narrates Better Together, a feature documentary about how a small beach community learned to keep coming together through oil spills, fires, mudslides and the future challenges of a changing climate.
Watch the Trailer
LA Femme International Film Festival celebrates films directed, produced and brought to life by women, including female-produced Better Together
screening on October 18 at 2 pm
at the Regal Theater, LA Live, 1000 W Olympic Blvd, LA, CA 90047
The catastrophic effects of four million gallons of oil spilling on the ecologically rich Santa Barbara Channel for most of 1969 changed Santa Barbara forever, and ignited a global shift that resulted in new laws and protections for environmental health. Through the years, the community has continued to come together in the face of disasters.
The 47-minute documentary covers community response from that 1969 oil spill all the way to the devastating 2018 Montecito debris flow, and on to community-generated response to climate change. The effects of the 1969 oil blowout were felt across the world, inspiring Earth Day, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.
Better Together features an array of local activists, including Direct Relief’s President and CEO Thomas Tighe, as well as California thinkers and scientists like oceanographer Sylvia Earle, Paul Ehrlich (author of The Population Bomb) and Solution Project’s founder Mark Jacobson.
Santa Barbara is rich with community organizations, several of them like the Community Environmental Council, the Environmental Defense Center, and the Environmental Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, were born directly out of the 1969 oil spill. They are featured in Better Together alongside the Gaviota Coast Conservancy, Santa Barbara Channelkeeper and many others. The newest of these organizations is the Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade, which has gathered over 3,000 volunteers to dig homes and trees out of the mud. It was born, coincidentally, on the 49th anniversary of the oil blowout.
Director Isaac Hernández (Madrid, Spain) offers a poetic and hopeful look at what’s possible at a global level through local action, featuring many solutions generated in Santa Barbara, from the birth of curbside recycling to the first microgrid in the continental United States at Direct Relief’s headquarters.
Funding provided in part by Bobbie and Gerry Rubin.
Executive Producers: Lynda Weinman (Diving Deep, 2019; The Tale, 2018; Unrest, 2017), Leslie Bhutani (Lutah, 2014) and Linda & Frederick Gluck.
“Better Together” will screen at LA Femme International Film Festival on Oct 18 at 2pm, and at the Santa Barbara Surf Festival on November 9. It won the Best Documentary Feature at the Santiago Independent Film Awards, August 2019, and is a finalist for the Best Doc of the Year. It was also a finalist for the Ted Turner Prize for the film that best expresses environmental stewardship, and official selection for the 2019 Bozeman International Film Celebration. The film celebrated a hometown premiere in the 2019 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
About the director
Isaac Hernández came to America from Madrid, Spain to study film at Brooks Institute of Photography. His career took him into photography, journalism, painting and writing plays, before returning to produce short films for nonprofits, and finally directing his first feature. He’s working on a memoir about the impact of censored American films during his childhood in Franco’s Spain, and a film honoring the 50th anniversary of UCSB’s Environmental Studies Program.
About the producer
Nancy Black writes a daily horoscopes column syndicated by Chicago Tribune. She produces films and books with Mercury Press International and serves on the board of The Israel Palestine Project, Committees for Land, Air Water and Species (CLAWS), and Gaviota Coast Conservancy. She was president of the Pesticide Awareness and Alternatives Coalition that successfully campaigned to dramatically reduce the use of pesticides in Santa Barbara’s public parks and schools.
About Mercury Press International
When co-founders Nancy Black and Isaac Hernández met in 1991, they had a dream to make films together. They founded an animation company, Animagica, which evolved into Mercury Press International, and went on to publish stories and photographs in over 300 publications in 27 countries, including Wall Street Journal, National Geographic Traveler, ESPN, Focus, Stern and USA Today. Now they also produce books (including In Love With Earth by environmental elder Marc McGinnes, which chronicles some of the stories in the film “Better Together”) as well as journalistic videos for nonprofit clients including United Way, Direct Relief, Santa Barbara Scholarship Foundation, Tri-Counties Regional Center, CALM, and UCSB Arts & Lectures. Nancy and Isaac are married with two sons, and reside in Santa Barbara and Madrid.
Twitter @B2getherFilm
Facebook https://facebook.com/BetterTogether
Instagram: https://instagram.com/BetterTogetherFilm
Trailer https://vimeo.com/301311332
http://bettertogethermovie.com
Credits:
Directed by
Isaac Hernandez
Produced by
Nancy Black
Executive Producers
Leslie Sweem Bhutani
Lynda Weinman
Linda and Frederick Gluck
Director of Photography
Isaac Hernandez
Editor
Isaac Hernandez
Associate Producer
Zegar Family Fund
Music by
Sheena Birrittella
Funded in part by
Bobbie and Gerry Rubin
Featuring (in order of appearance)
Thomas Tighe
Kathi King
Miguel Zepeda-Rosales
Lynn Kirst
Rick Stein
MacGyver
Linda Eckerbom Cole
Abe Powell
Linda MacNeil
Janna Molder
Liz Beebe
Sofia Arabella Martin
Ashlee Mayfield
Robert H. Sollen
James "Bud" Bottoms
Linda Krop
Paul Relis
Marc McGinnes
Barry Capello
Sylvia Earle
Roderick Frazier Nash
President Richard Nixon
Selma Rubin
Francis Sarguis
Michael Lunsford
Lee Heller
Lee Moldaver
Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson
Kira Redmond
Glenn Russell
Elaine Ibarra
Mia Lopez
Paul Ehrlich
Michelle Sevilla
David Pellow
Marc Chytilo
Katie Davis
Mark Jacobson
Michael Chiacos
Amanda Pantoja
Sigrid Wright
Writer
Isaac Hernández
Co-Writers
Heather Smith Wennergren
Jon Zuber
Nancy Black
First Camera Operator
Isaac Hernández
Second Camera Operator
Jon Zuber
Selma Interview
Susan Epstein
Jon Zuber
David Cowan
First Assistant Editor
Heather Smith Wennergren
Assistant Editor
Jon Zuber
Sound Engineer
Nicholas Dobbie
Assistant Sound Engineer
Aishwarya Raju
Songs
"Better Together" © Jack Johnson/Brushfire Records/Universal Music
"O" © Emiliano Campobello
"Elk Prayer" © Emiliano Campobello and Kevin Donoho