Buried in Earthskin (2009)

Logline

Who pays the real price for our electricity - A woman's personal journey to understand what lies behind South Africa's energy dilemma.

Synopsis

Helena Kingwill, a journalist and concerned South African citizen - sets off on a road trip to follow the route the nuclear waste trucks take to the dump in Namaqualand. She meets men and women of the Nama-Khoi tribe, who live nearby, and listens to their untold stories of accidents at the dump and their fears of the underground water becoming polluted.

The second leg of her journey takes Helena to Pelindaba, the nuclear research centre near Pretoria. She speaks to officials, who tell her off the record that the waste they are about to bury in a pipe storage facility near the city, will remain radioactive for "millions of years".

Her investigation brings her into debate with nuclear analysts, economists, the government minister of minerals and energy, a nuclear activist, and the owner/manager of South Africa's first wind farm.It takes place over a period of 8 years, across South Africa as she investigates the impact of nuclear power, and searches for alternatives.

Over this time, Helena becomes a mother of two girls. This becomes further motivation to question reasoning behind the energy choices being taken now by decision makers, as they will determine what kind of earth her children will inherit.

This film aims to look at the nuclear issue as holistically as possible, and sheds light on the severity of the predicament facing decision makers: energy generation versus the environment. Alternative solutions are blowing in the wind, but can we access them?
Who pays the ultimate price for our convenient electricity? Who holds the power and can a critical mass shift the paradigm?

Buried in Earthskin subtly demonstrates how energy and political power go hand in hand and gives a voice to marginalized peoples who pay the ultimate price for decisions made (about where we get our electric power)for the sake of political and financial power.

Festivals

The film had it's world premier at the Oakland International Film Festival in the Bay Area California U.S.A in October 2009. It was selected for the Encounters International Film Festival, where it was shown in 2010. In Feb 2011, it screened at the International Social Communciation Cinema Conference in Kolkata, India. Fireworx media currently holds non-exclusive African
distribution rights on the film.