I just completed my first full season of Community Cinema — that’s 18 screenings, with more than 30 community partners, 40 panelists, and more than 1,000 audience members.

A DJ spins at the Copyright Criminals screening in Oakland

Copyright Criminals brought out some of our most energetic and diverse viewers. People flooded into the theater and almost immediately lost themselves in the music.  Maybe it’s because I’m a hip hop fan, but having youth DJs mixing Lauryn Hill and Tribe Called Quest started my night off right. Law students, hip hop enthusiasts, teenagers, established authors, and DJs all contributed to conversations about artistic expression, creative ownership, and the overall impact on hip hop.

Last Christmas brought out some of the Bay Area’s finest musical gifts for Young@Heart, in the form of two legendary jazz and blues artists, Margie Baker and Craig Horton. The film gave us a chance to re-introduce our audiences to musical talents in the Bay Area with more than 40 years in the game; performers who at 70 years young still sparkle onstage and have first person accounts of what the “Harlem of the West” was like in its heyday.

Artist, biologist, and origami aficionado — Bernie Peyton — at a Between the Folds screening

Between the Folds brought out some of the world’s premiere paper folders, renowned in the origami community. It is always interesting to stumble into a thriving community that you had no idea existed. Watching Oakland audience members learn to fold panda bears with origami experts Bernie Peyton and Robert Lang was truly heartwarming.  One of our strongest partnerships in Oakland is with DEAF Media, and many of the audience members who stayed to learn folding were students who are hearing impaired. We usually have a discussion component that is translated, but for the first time this was a visual demonstration and the students lit up.

Garbage Dreams brought out massive crowds, including one ambitious teacher in Oakland who summoned her elementary school students to the event in order to reinforce lessons on recycling. In San Francisco, the Department of the Environment was able to provide pictures of the city’s waste removal program in the early 1900’s … pictures that looked like modern-day Egypt.  And so as is often the case at Community Cinema screenings, audiences arrive expecting to watch stories from far and away places only to find themselves rooted in the pictures before them.

And it’s the final highlight of the season which builds on that idea — our community partners, panelists, and audience all participate on a volunteer basis.  They share their time, resources, questions and knowledge with each other graciously.  A most sincere thanks to all of you!  It’s been a great year full of music, art, and wonderful dialogue here in the Bay Area.

Garbage Dreams Game

Filmed over four years, director Mai Iskander’s documentary Garbage Dreams goes inside the world of Egypt’s Zaballeen (Arabic for “garbage people”) to reveal the lives of three teenage boys born into the trash trade.

Premiering on Independent Lens on April 27th (check local listings), the broadcast of Garbage Dreams is accompanied by the Garbage Dreams Game, in which players assume the role of the Zaballeen. The game demonstrates that recycling is not just good for the environment; it’s also sound economic practice.

Players start with cash and expenses, one very hungry goat, one neighborhood, and one paper recycling factory. To grow their business and build efficiency, players can make investments in new equipment to recycle other materials, buy extra trucks, hire workers, or expand into wealthier neighborhoods.

Players sort through trash and recycle what can be recycled in Cairo — paper, organics, aluminum, tin, plastic, and glass — all against a ticking clock, sorting through trash piles with the speed, strategy, and efficiency required to match the 80 percent recycling rate of the Zaballeen within 12 rounds of play.

Corresponding lesson plans for grades 9-12 and middle school complement the game and the film, and further explore the issue of recycling and the globalized economy.

Goats, trucks, and territories; organics, paper, and tin. Learn how Egypt’s Zaballeen turn trash into cash. Play the recycling game.

www.pbs.org/independentlens/garbage-dreams/game.html

First up on Independent Lens is Dirt! The Movie, airing April 20 at 10:00 PM, by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow. Narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, Dirt! takes viewers inside the wonders of the soil and looks at how industrial farming, mining, and urban development have led us toward cataclysmic droughts, starvation, floods, and climate change. Inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, the film deftly combines science and humor as it digs into the history and current state of the living organic matter from which we come from and where we will one day return. Dirt is a part of everything we eat, drink and breathe, which is why we should stop treating it like, well … dirt. Community Cinema just finished up a month with over 45 free “dirty” preview screening events around the country.

Then on April 27 at 10:00 PM, watch Garbage Dreams. Filmed over four years, director Mai Iskander goes inside the world of Egypt’s Zaballeen (Arabic for “garbage people”) to reveal the lives of two teenage boys born into the trash trade. The film reveals how –– for generations –– the residents of Cairo have depended on the Zaballeen to collect their trash, paying them only a minimal amount for their garbage collection services. These entrepreneurial garbage workers survive by recycling 80 percent of all the garbage they collect, creating what is arguably the world’s most efficient waste disposal system. Recycling to lift themselves out of poverty, the Zaballeen have, through necessity, devised ingenious solutions to one of the world’s most pressing problems. Community Cinema presented  over 45 free preview screening events for Garbage Dreams around the country in January.

The broadcast of Garbage Dreams will also be accompanied by an interactive game in which players assume the role of the Zaballeen. Players will sort through trash and recycle everyday items found in Cairo –– all against a ticking clock! So put on your eco-savvy hats because you’ll have to quickly sort everything to match the 80 percent recycling rate of the Zaballeen within 12 rounds of play.

Corresponding lesson plans for grades 9-12, complement the game and the film, and further explore the issue of recycling and the globalized economy.

Learn more about Independent Lens Earth Day >>

This screening was also followed by a very interesting discussion. Panelists, Kevin Drew, Residential Zero Waste Coordinator at the San Francisco Department of the Environment, Neil Tangri, Climate Change Campaign Director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), and Bradley Angel, Executive Director at GreenAction, had some very eye-opening things to say about recycling:

“When you burn this stuff (trash), no matter how state-of-the-art, no matter how conscientious the company, you are getting emissions of the most toxic substances known to science- that are having a profound effect on our population worldwide.”
-Neil Tangri, Climate Change Campaign Director, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA)

“The fact of the matter is, companies are producing stuff for which there is no solution and they take no responsibility. And it’s left in the hands of Kevin (San Francisco Department of the Environment) and your tax dollars to solve that problem…If you can’t recycle it, if you don’t have a plan for it, you shouldn’t be producing it in the first place.”
-Bradley Angel, Executive Director, GreenAction

“We really shouldn’t be shipping things a long way away, we should be trying to live locally to the extent that we shouldn’t expect to get avocados year-round or other things, until very recently, we didn’t get year-round. Living within our means from a local ecosystem sense is where you’re going to find the right answer.”
-Kevin Drew, Residential Zero Waste Coordinator, San Francisco Department of the Environment

“If the waste pickers in Cairo can do eighty percent, I think San Francisco can do eighty percent as well.”
-Neil Tangri

Garbage Dreams tells the story of garbage pickers in Cairo, Egypt who are among the best recyclers on the planet

Community Cinema Charleston (South Carolina) distributed free recycling bins provided by the city, had a discussion about the Charleston Green Plan, and how to improve recycling in the area.

At Community Cinema Sheboygan our facilitator, Nate Lowe an assistant professor at Lakeland College, teaches a senior level course on environment and consumption. He is also the faculty adviser for the student led group Eco-Friends. He was able to speak about some of their success in getting our local community to begin recycling programs. In 2002, during a trip to Egypt, Nate visited Makattam, the largest recycling village in Cairo where a UNESCO school teaches young Zabbaleen women how to recycle thrown-away fabrics into marketable items. Lowe pointed out that 90% of Cairo is Arabic and 10% is Christian. There were comments addressing concern for the Zabbaleen particularly regarding the statistic that 1 in 5 children die from complications due to the garbage environment and were encouraged to hear that The Gates Foundation donated one million dollars to their recycling school. A public works representative who attended the screening said the average amount recycled in America is about 36% and Sheboygan recycles 24%. He emphasized the severity of the landfill situation in the area by revealing that our landfills are not decomposing like we thought they would and predicted that in 40-50 years we would be mining our own landfills for resources.

Garbage Dreams airs in April on Independent Lens on PBS (check local listings)

At Community Cinema Chicago we had people sitting on the floor in front of the first row, and standing throughout the entire film in the back. We must have turned away over 50 people. The discussion following the film was amazing. Elise Zelichowski from the ReBuilding Exchange moderated. She kicked off the discussion by asking via applause vote how many people in the audience thought that Chicago’s recycling program was poor. That got a resounding round of applause. There was much discussion about improving the efficiency of our city’s recycling and garbage collection. And about correcting the city’s stringent plan for community gardening in vacant lots. One panelist was Ken Dunn, Founder and Director of the Resource Center. Ken is considered Chicagos pre-eminent authority on all things environmental. When Ken said that he learned much from the Zeballeens methods and attitudes, it really meant a lot. Erin Kennedy from SCARCE teaches recycling at schools and community groups across the broad Chicago area. She spoke about what it takes to change habits. The third panelist was Clissold Elementary 7th grader Alana Hurley. She said that at a very young age, she took her parents concern for the environment to heart and was determined to put her concern for the planet into widespread practice. She got her school to start a recycling club and now many students are involved in the effort.

And, at Community Cinema Steamboat Springs (“Ski Town USA”) in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains the Bud Werner Memorial Library, Yampa Valley Sustainability Council, and Yampa Valley Recycles presented a free screening of the documentary Garbage Dreams. Along with Home ReSource, all three groups set up informational tables, including a fairly large Recycling 101 display, for people to discuss and peruse before the film. YVSC then did a short presentation about their Zero Waste initiative at the Steamboat Ski Area and large events around town, plus the upcoming Talking Green event. Yampa Valley Recycles then did a short, informative talk about the state of Steamboat Springs recycling and took questions from the audience.

Audience members and partner organizations mingle and share at the Garbage Dreams event in St. Louis.

Producing Partners are local community organizations that co-present Community Cinema screenings across the country. Back in January, Producing Partner KETC in St. Louis, MO, screened the Independent Lens film Garbage Dreams at the not-to-be-missed Missouri History Museum for over 300 local folks. The audience learned that St. Louis recycles about 35% of its waste and that over the past 30 years, St. Louis has made a concerted effort to increase that percentage. As one audience member observed, “It looks funny to see soda cans in a regular waste can and not in a recycle container and we don’t use just one side of the paper.” Watch an interview below with one of our other St. Louis event partners who is working on garbage, solid waste, and recycling education locally.

Find more videos like this on Community Cinema Series St. Louis

Filmmaker Mai Iskander

Filmmaker Mai Iskander sat down in January with Kojo Nnamdi on WAMU in Washington, DC to talk about global environmental challenges and how the “Zabaleen” — or garbage collectors — has captured the world’s attention for their startlingly efficient, eco-friendly, and low-tech methods of recycling.
Listen to the full interview [20 minutes] >>

The New York Times’ Jeannette Catsoulis reviewed Garbage Dreams. She says, “…this new film digs deeper into the politics of a life that few would choose but many depend on.” Read her full review.

At one of our first events for Garbage Dreams in Saratoga Springs, NY at the Saratoga Springs Public Library, our partner organization for the free screening of Garbage Dreams was the local chapter of GAIA, The Global Anti-Incerator Alliance, The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. Our speaker from GAIA was Tracy Frisch, who is active in several other nonprofit organizations in the area. We also had as audience members a husband and wife who own a local Egyptian products store who were brought up in Cairo.

In sunny San Diego, California at the  San Diego Public Library, Garbage Dreams was the best screening of the season according to our partners at the library.  It was the biggest audience so far, and we had an excellent speaker follow the film who kept more than half the audience in their seats for Q&A. The film presented a wonderful opportunity to discuss grassroots activism and how to mobilize now on recycling issues in San Diego.  We had press coverage from the the San Diego Reader.

Read on for more event outcomes and a chance to win a gift from The Recycling School in Cairo!

Michael Wonsidler works for both Zero Waste San Diego and the local county waste department. Zero Waste San Diego is a local grassroots group that advocates for increased recycling awareness and better alternatives to current recycling practices. Michael’s combined knowledge of government action and grassroots perspective made him the perfect speaker to engage the audience in meaningful discussion about the issues presented in Garbage Dreams. Like most cities, San Diego constantly works to improve its recycling capacity.

“I’ve always wondered what happens with my trash. It seems to magically disappear each week and I don’t really have any idea what happens to it or what impact it has on my community. Well that all changed last night. What I learned at the HoustonPBS Community Cinema screening of Garbage Dreams was fascinating.” That was Julie Coan’s reaction to her Garbage Dreams event in Houston where they  recycle about 22 percent of their solid waste. Houston’s recycling rate is on the rise, but they can probably learn some tricks and procedures from cities like San Antonio, Portland, and San Francisco who are America’s municipal “Recycling Stars.”

Austria is the leading recycler in the European Union with about 60 percent of waste products being recycled. The United States recycles about 32 percent of its waste. At the Beijing dump, scavengers earn three times the monthly salary of college professors. Scavengers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico earn three times the minimum wage, putting them in the top 5 percent of income earners in that city.

Learn more interesting facts and consider some of the challenging questions or activities in our Discussion Guide (PDF, 2.5M). [Consider not printing the discussion guide. You can view PDF documents on your computer, laptop, Palm, Blackberry, iPhone, or other smart device.]

The film makes it clear. Now is the time for recycling. In this video, Mai Iskander and Adham, one of the young subjects from the film, take us on a tour of a typical American trash dumpster:

Our national partners create unique ways for audiences to learn more about recycling, sustainability and environmental education. Global Alliance For Incinerator Alternatives is a worldwide alliance of more than 500 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 80 countries whose ultimate vision is a just, toxic-free world without incineration. The Cloud Institute works to ensure that innovative curricula is available to educators in the K-12 school systems to prepare young people for the shift toward a sustainable future. Working Films leverages the power of storytelling through documentary film to advance struggles for social, economic, and environmental justice, human and civil rights.

Garbage Dreams airs in April 2010 on PBS (check local listings). If you attended one of our free Garbage Dreams preview events, please comment below and let us know what you thought. One commenter will receive a small gift bag made from 100% recycled materials from The Recycling School in Cairo, Egypt.

Audience members and partner organizations mingle and share at the Garbage Dreams event in St. Louis.

Producing Partners are local community organizations that co-present Community Cinema screenings across the country. Last Thursday night, Producing Partner KETC in St. Louis, MO, screened the Independent Lens film Garbage Dreams at the not-to-be-missed Missouri History Museum for over 300 local folks. Sydney Meyer of KETC shares her experiences at the event below.

January 14, 2010 was a great night for passionate recycling people in St. Louis. The free screening of Garbage Dreams drove over 300 people to the Missouri History Museum. The film is a story about the Zaballeen (Arabic for “garbage people”), a peasant community whose only source of income is to recycle trash collected from the streets of Cairo – a city with no municipal waste-disposal system.

The film touched members of the audience as they watched the boys work hard to make life as good as possible and aspire to live a better life like they see Westerners enjoying. One panel member wondered what would happen to the Zaballeen –would they become wards of the state if newer recycling methods replaced their outdated ways? The film in her eyes was a wonderful way to put a human face to trash or the “people side of trash” to quote her exactly. Another provoking question concerning the human side of trash that came up was “Do people who see recycling and reusing as a moral responsibility not to waste become the ‘always recycler’ opposed to the ‘sometime or not at all recycler’?”

Some studies confirm that moral responsibility does make a difference in the way people recycle, according to Katy Mike of the Missouri Botanical Gardens EarthWays Center which conducts recycling education programs. Aside from the human side of the story, which by the way reminded me of how much I take for granted, there were the other questions of the night: “Why is it hard for people to recycle?”; “Are we doing any better than 30 years ago?”; “What are St. Louis’ statistics in recycling?” and “What do we still need to do to get better at recycling after we leave here tonight?”. Good questions but not easy to answer in one evening!

Useful materials that help now, and will one day be recycled and used in another way.

Our panelists and facilitator did a great job and rose to the occasion to address the issues- not a piece of cake in my eyes. But we did learn that St. Louis recycles about 35% of its waste and that over the past 30 years, St. Louis has made a concerted effort to increase that percentage. As one audience member observed, “It looks funny to see soda cans in a regular waste can and not in a recycle container and we don’t use just one side of the paper.”

So we are more aware and better, but still are we really committed? Do we take charge of everything that comes in our house and how we will dispose of it? Are adults good models for our children? Will teaching children to recycle at a young age make them more likely to recycle throughout their lifetimes?  More questions……

But we did leave the night with a few practical ways to keep on the reuse, reduce, and recycle pathway.  Take home the fliers in the lobby on “Reduce—What You Can Do” provided by Missouri Botanical Gardens EarthWays Education Programs (and be sure to recycle them after you’ve incorporated the tips into your daily life). Buy recycled products so there will be a market for recycled items. Compost food waste and encourage schools to compost and grow gardens. Stop using Styrofoam products! Buy a water filter instead of bottled water. And the most important practice source reduction: reduce the waste we generate in the first place. Consume less.

Guess we all left feeling like there was more we could do….but at least I took the pamphlets home and I will try to add another recycling habit to my repertoire– change is the hardest thing but we need to do it for our country and our earth. Oh! and I do plan to volunteer at the Missouri History Museum’s Swap-O-Rama-Rama on April 10 which will recycle old clothing into new, re-deigned outfits or make stuffing out of the “lost causes” pile!

Michael Wonsidler, who works for both the local county waste department and Zero Waste San Diego a local grassroots group that advocates for increased recycling awareness and better alternatives to current recycling practices, spoke following the film.  His combined knowledge of government action and grassroots perspective made him the perfect speaker to engage the audience in meaningful discussion about the issues presented in Garbage Dreams. The audience truly benefited from discussing the film afterward with an expert in the recycling field right here in San Diego where we may not quite have garbage dreams, but we’re certainly dreaming about recycling more and more.

Padnos Car Shredder

He talked about some of the misconceptions that people have about recycling, like not being able to recycle appliances. Michael made the point that in order for recycling to work, people have to be willing to make the extra effort.  He also answered a question from the audience about expanding recycling, and said that recycling initiatives will expand as people become more willing to and focused on buying recycled goods.