Greetings:

We were recently contacted by folks from Occupy Oakland who wanted to screen our film “If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.” The documentary, released earlier this year, is about a radical environmental group (the ELF), and it follows in particular the story of Daniel McGowan, an activist who took part in two multi-million dollar arsons in 2001 against companies that he believed were destroying the environment.

The film raises a lot of central questions and issues that seem super relevant to people involved in this growing movement today — its startling footage of late 90s pepper spray use alone is eerily familiar in light of recent developments in NYC, UC Davis and beyond — and Occupy Oakland’s interest in the movie sparked an idea to share it with occupations across the US. It’s a nuanced documentary that asks more questions than it answers and we share in Oakland’s belief that it can be a helpful tool for generating critical discussion about movement building and the ethics, effectiveness and legal ramifications of different kinds of activist tactics. It’s also pretty entertaining — the film won the documentary editing award at Sundance — and even Entertainment Weekly gave it an ‘A’ grade, saying “the film sweeps us up like a thriller.”

After discussing things further with people at Occupy Oakland, reaching out to Occupy Cinema, and later attending an Arts and Culture Group meeting at OWS in NYC, we’d like to offer the film to Occupy groups who are interested in setting up screenings and discussions in their communities around the country. We can’t set up the screenings ourselves — we’ll need local people to handle that — but we’re happy to provide a number of DVDs for free that can be used.

Additionally, we have uploaded a free stream of the entire film onto Vimeo. Unfortunately we are only able to host the film in this manner until Wednesday, December 14th, but in that time feel free to pass this link and password to anyone who might find the film beneficial:

PASSWORD: occupywallstreet

For more background info, people may want to check out a discussion guide that PBS made for the film’s recent broadcast. It can be downloaded directly here: http://www.pbs.org/pov/ifatreefalls/discussion_guide.php.
The film is trailer online here at: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/ifatreefalls/.
Our website is http://www.IfaTreeFallsFilm.com and we’re also on Facebook at ifatreefalls.

Please let us know if you have any questions or ideas on how to push this along, and also if you’d like to set up a screening in your area. We’re really looking forward to sharing this film and hope that there are some useful lessons in the story we tell as things move forward with occupations across the US.

Please direct inquiries to our @treefallsfilm handle here, or by email at treefallsows@gmail.com.

Many thanks in advance for your interest,

Josh,
Oscilloscope Laboratories