Film Maker: Joe Berlinger

Species: Homo conscious

Websites:

Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger has been a leading voice in nonfiction film and television for two decades. Berlinger’s films include the landmark documentaries BROTHER’S KEEPER, PARADISE LOST, and METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER, a film that re-defined the rockumentary genre. CRUDE, about oil pollution in the Amazon Rainforest, won 22 human rights, environmental and film festival awards and recently triggered a high-profile First Amendment battle with oil-giant Chevron.

Five of Berlinger’s documentary features, including his 2012 Paul Simon documentary UNDER AFRICAN SKIES, have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, earning three Grand Jury Prize nominations. He has also received multiple awards from the Directors Guild of America, the National Board of Review and the Independent Spirit Awards. Berlinger’s UNDER AFRICAN SKIES was just nominated for three primetime Emmy awards, including Outstanding Nonfiction Special.

In addition to his feature documentary work, Berlinger, a two-time Emmy and Peabody winner (and five additional Emmy nominations), has created many hours of television as both a producer and director, including the Emmy-winning History Channel series 10 DAYS THAT UNEXPECTEDLY CHANGED AMERICA and the Emmy-nominated GRAY MATTER. He has directed and produced five seasons of the critically acclaimed Sundance Channel series ICONOCLASTS and directed/executive-produced the first season of MASTER CLASS, a new series for the Oprah Winfrey Network. His numerous HBO productions include ADDICTION, JUDGEMENT DAY and VIRTUAL CORPSE, and he has created series for VH1 and Court TV.

His series THE WRONG MAN helped lead to the exoneration of Marty Tankleff, falsely imprisoned for 17 years for the killing of his parents. Berlinger’s dramatic television directorial credits include NBC's acclaimed hit drama HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET, as well as the short-lived UPN/Dick Wolf series D.C.

Berlinger’s multiple Emmy-winning PARADISE LOST series for HBO helped spawn a worldwide movement to free "The West Memphis Three" from wrongful murder convictions, ultimately resulting in a death sentence and two life-without-parole sentences being vacated, allowing the men to finally be released from prison on August 19, 2011. The latest film in the trilogy, PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY was nominated for an Oscar in 2012 and was just nominated for two primetime Emmy awards.

Berlinger also directs commercials and industrial films for such clients as Ford, Honda, Kodak and Tiffany & Co., and is represented for commercials by bicoastal/international @radical.media. That relationship was expanded in 2001 — Berlinger houses his production company, Third Eye Motion Picture Company, at @radical.media, running many of his television and feature projects through @radical’s content division. His most recent advertising campaign for the Cadillac division of General Motors began airing during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Berlinger’s articles and photographs have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, ArtForum, Film Comment, and Aperture magazines. His book, METALLICA: THIS MONSTER LIVES, THE INSIDE STORY OF SOME KIND OF MONSTER, was published in 2004 by St. Martin’s Press.

Joe Berlinger is a member of the DGA, the WGA, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the National Board of Review.

“A fascinating and important story. CRUDE does an extraordinary job of merging journalism and art.”

—Christiane Amanpour, CNN Chief International Correspondent

Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous “Amazon Chernobyl” case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

The landmark case takes place in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, pitting 30,000 indigenous and colonial rainforest dwellers against the U.S. oil giant Chevron. The plaintiffs claim that Texaco – which merged with Chevron in 2001 – spent three decades systematically contaminating one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, poisoning the water, air and land. The plaintiffs allege that the pollution has created a “death zone” in an area the size of the Rhode Island, resulting in increased rates of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, and a multiplicity of other health ailments. They further allege that the oil operations in the region contributed to the destruction of indigenous peoples and irrevocably impacted their traditional way of life. Chevron vociferously fights the claims, charging that the case is a complete fabrication, perpetrated by “environmental con men” who are seeking to line their pockets with the company’s billions.

The case takes place not just in a courtroom, but in a series of field inspections at the alleged contamination sites, with the judge and attorneys for both sides trudging through the jungle to litigate. And the battleground has expanded far beyond the legal process. The cameras rolled as the conflict raged in and out of court, and the case drew attention from an array of celebrities, politicians and journalists, and landed on the cover of Vanity Fair. Some of the film’s subjects sparked further controversy as they won a CNN “Hero” award and the Goldman Award, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Shooting in dozens of locations on three continents and in multiple languages, Berlinger and his crew gained extraordinary access to players on all sides of the legal fight and beyond, capturing the drama as it unfolded while the case grew from a little-known legal story to an international cause célèbre. Crude is a ground-level view of one of the most extraordinary legal dramas of our time, one that has the potential of forever changing the way international business is conducted. While the environmental impact of the consumption of fossil fuels has been increasingly documented in recent years, Crude focuses on the human cost of our addiction to oil and the increasingly difficult task of holding a major corporation accountable for its past deeds.

FILMOGRAPHY (AS DIRECTOR)

Under African Skies (2012, A&E and Sony Music Entertainment)

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011, HBO)

Black Tide: Voices From the Gulf (2011, Animal Planet)

Masterclass (2011, OWN)

Iconoclasts (2005 – 2010, The Sundance Channel)

Crude (2009, First Run Features and Sundance Channel)

Addiction: South Boston Drug Court (2007, HBO)

Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America: Murder at the Fair – The Assassination of President McKinley (2006, The History Channel)

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004, IFC Films and Paramount Home Entertainment)

Gray Matter (co-production of Cinemax/France 2/CBC Canada for 2004 release)

Judgment Day: Should the Guilty Go Free (2003, HBO)

One Who Day (2002)
Short film about legendary band The Who’s last rehearsal before their Fall 2002 tour, featuring the last recorded interview and performances from Who bassist John Entwistle.

VH-1 FanClub: Metallica (2000, VH-1)

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000, Artisan Entertainment)

Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000, HBO)

D.C. -- Episode 6, "Party" (2000, UPN)

HOMICIDE: Life on the Street -- Episode 721, "Identity Crisis" (1999, NBC Television)

Where It's At: The ROLLING STONE State of the Union (1998, ABC Television)

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hill (1996, HBO)

The Begging Game (1994, ABC News, PBS/Frontline)

Brother's Keeper (1992, Creative Thinking/American Playhouse Theatrical Films)

Outrageous Taxi Stories (1989, Creative Thinking/PBS; also aired on The Sundance Channel)