The environmental movement in this country has gained so much momentum in recent years. Communicated via new forums, we sometimes lose sight of the origins. At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a documentary titled “Earth Days” by filmmaker Robert Stone, tells the story of “how America awakened to the environmental crisis.” The jumping off point is the first Earth Day in 1970, an event that got ordinary people involved in saving the planet, and the lives of early activists. “So many of the films and books I’ve seen and read about the environment have been about looking forward; where we’ll be in five or 10 years from now,” Stone told the NYT. “But it occurred to me that by looking back to where we’ve come from, what we’ve learned could be very informative in where we are going and how we move forward.”


At 11 years old, Stone made his first film when he borrowed his parents’ Super 8 camera about the pollution he saw around him in honor of Earth Day and he said his worldview hasn’t changed all that much since. He also made the harrowing, Academy Award nominated “Radio Bikini” in 1987, which we watched in college. A documentary on nuclear testing at the Bikini Atoll after World War II, he expertly wove archival footage on a largely forgotten part of American history. (Between 1946 and 1958, twenty-three nuclear devices were detonated at the islands.)

“Earth Days” will be released in theaters on Earth Day, April 22, and after a theatrical run, it will air on PBS’ “American Experience.”

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