“Where do we import most of our oil from?”  This is the opening question of the film, Dirty Oil an eye opening documentary which will make you think twice about driving your hummer to the store for milk.  The answer is the majority of our oil comes from Canada, specifically from a region in Alberta about the size of Florida.  Forget the land of rockies and mounties —  Alberta is a petrol state.

Writer/director Leslie Iwerks and producer Philip Alberstat with narrator Neve Campbell lead us on a dramatic ride of greed, corruption, and heroism through stories which elucidate the best and worst of the human condition.

The oil from Alberta comes from tar sands and the extraction emits three times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil and uses four times as much water and heat per barrel of oil.  Incredible aerial photography shows this once beautiful land and forests and its vast Athabasca River contrasted with the lunar looking tar sand pits and filthy water being pumped into the aquifer and what they call the “highway to hell,” the stretch of road where oil company workers from Ft. McMurray face massive traffic into the job site which is first identified by its foul smell.

The canaries in this coal mine are the native aboriginal communities which first noticed deformities in the fish they consumed from the river then an increasing rate of rare cancers in their own population, a drastic change from a native culture which not only didn’t have cancer, they didn’t even have a name for it in their language.  The doctor who flew in to treat them, when he raised the question of these elevated numbers, found himself the target of prosecution for causing unnecessary alarm.

As the filmmakers follow the pipeline into this country, it is our own great lakes which find themselves the dumping ground with BP looking to dump more of its byproduct from its Indiana processing plant into the lake.

With billions of dollars on the line for the oil companies, governments, and high paid jobs for workers, environmental concerns and those who express them come under attack.  Add in the fact that Canada is a politically safer bet as a source of oil than other foreign countries, and dissent becomes even more difficult.  Appearances by authors, scientists, environmentalists, politicians and other experts present a compelling and disturbing story of our addiction to oil and its destructive by-product to people, plants, animals, and ultimately our very planet.

Yet not only oil or government officials are culpable.  As one environmentalist states, “We have destruction by popular demand.”  What each and every person consumes in terms of energy has a direct impact.

The film, however, also points to possible solutions such as wind energy, and people’s willingness to get involved.  “Saving civilization is not a spectator sport,” eloquently states one activist.  And education can be the first step.  Films such as “Dirty Oil” for many of us can be that motivating influence.

As an added bonus the producing company Babelgum which is an integrated web and mobile video content platform available to a global audience will follow up the film online with updates and forums as well as promoting the film for theatrical release (www.babelgum.com)  Leslie Iwerks says it is a goal to even have it screened at the White House.  The short which inspired this film, “Downstream” was shortlisted for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.

Babelgum will be a company to watch with its dedication not only to environmental issues, the film was inspired by the passion of founder Silvio Scaglia, but to the arts, nurturing independent film, music, and art talent and producing original content as well as showing independent and mainstream titles.