Gasland: a thirst for independent documentary

According to outspoken US director Josh Fox, while his country has put itself  in the chopping board deciding to treat itself like a third world country, Australia is treating itself as a developing nation, leasing its own resources to a huge corporation for export. And guess who will get the worst part of that deal?

The man behind Gasland told Cesar Albarran that in a world where corporate interests are taking over, filmmaking is a good way to fight back – and audiences are thirsty for independent long-form documentaries.

Fox has been dealing with the F-word for more than two years. He shakes his head every time he hears it and has embarked in a life-altering journey to vanish it from the face of the planet. But he is far from being a hardcore conservative or member of the League of Decency. The F-word that concerns him is fracking, a drilling technology used by corporations like Halliburton to extract natural gas from the underground of diverse regions in the United States and other parts of the world, like the Chinchilla territory in Queensland. This process (also known as Hydraulic Fracturing) causes the liberation of gases into the water supply and the air, which has derived in diverse ailments for the people whose lands have been drilled, as well as those surrounding them. Legal loopholes created during the Bush-Cheney years have allowed corporations to continue these harmful practices. Industry mongers call these regions a Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Fox, also a playwright and banjo player, is more succinct: he calls them Gasland.