''Surviving Progress'' is a 2011 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Mathieu Roy and

Harold Crooks Harold Crooks is a Canadian-American filmmaker. He began his career as an investigative journalist covering environmental issues in Canada during the 1980s and 90s. His films cover the subjects of political economy and the impact humans have o ...

, loosely based on '' A Short History of Progress'', a book and a 2004

Massey Lecture The Massey Lectures is an annual five-part series of lectures given in Canada by distinguished writers, thinkers and scholars who explore important ideas and issues of contemporary interest. Created in 1961 in honour of Vincent Massey, the former ...

series by

Ronald Wright Ronald Wright (born 1948, London, England) is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestseller ''Stolen Continents'', winner of the Gordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of th ...

about

societal collapse Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse) is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of socioeconomic complexity, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence. Possible cause ...

. The film was produced by

Daniel Louis Daniel Louis (born October 12, 1953) is a Canadian film producer. He is co-founder, with Denise Robert, of Cinémaginaire. He has earned two Genie Awards, among other nominations, including the Genie Award for Best Motion Picture for ''The Ba ...

Denise Robert Denise Robert, , is a Canadian film producer, co-founder and President of Cinémaginaire with Daniel Louis. She is currently married to Denys Arcand and she has produced many of his films. Robert has won many awards, including four Genie Awards. ...

, and Gerry Flahive.

Subject matter

The film is structured as a series of interviews, interspersed with footage from all over the world. The film is said to be "inspired by" Wright's lectures: Unlike the book, which focused on

ancient civilizations A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). Civi ...

, the film focuses on the present-day impact of civilization, including the impact of concentrated wealth. The underlying message here is that current models and strategies of economic growth have no practical connections with the real world. That is to say, the lack of an ethical underpinning in modern global economic practices is directly responsible for the

overconsumption Overconsumption describes a situation where a consumer overuses their available goods and services to where they can't, or don't want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this may be described as the point where the marginal cost of ...

and exploitation of natural resources to the extent that the increasingly more probable future population collapse would take modern society right along with it.

Interviewees

Production

The film rights were sold to Cinémaginaire in 2008. It was directed by Mathieu Roy and co-directed by Harold Crooks with

and

as producers for Cinemaginaire and Gerry Flahive as producer for the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...

(NFB). Executive producers included director

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominatio ...

, Silva Basmajian from NFB, and Big Picture Media Corporation; the latter had produced the 2003 documentary '' The Corporation''.

Release

The film premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. It was also shown as part of Festival Atmospheres on March 31, 2012 in Paris.

Reception

Calling it a "bone-chilling new documentary",

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

gave the film 3½ stars out of 4, and called it "bright, entertaining". According to ''

Maclean's ''Maclean's'', founded in 1905, is a Canadian news magazine reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events. Its founder, publisher John Bayne Maclean, established the magazine to provide a uniquely Canadian perspe ...

'':

Turning ideas into seductive, irresistible cinema isn’t easy, especially if they’re the kind of ideas that are good for you....But a fresh genre of populist persuasion has emerged in recent years that’s met with remarkable success: the dynamic docu-essay. Some notable examples include '' The Corporation'', hit that diagnosed capitalism’s basic organism as a psychopath; '' The Inconvenient Truth'',
Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
's power-point
polemic Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topic ...
, which put
global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
on the map; and ''
Inside Job An insider threat is a malicious threat to an organization that comes from people within the organization, such as employees, former employees, contractors or business associates, who have inside information concerning the organization's security ...
'', a forensic inquiry into Wall Street's 2008 financial meltdown. The popularity of these films (the last two won Oscars) underscores a genuine appetite for global analysis that the fragmented vision of the news media fails to provide....The latest example is ''Surviving Progress'', a Canadian documentary about the increasing weight of the human footprint of the planet. It’s a high-level lesson that is enlightening, engrossing and beautiful to look at.

Kenneth Turan Kenneth Turan (; born October 27, 1946) is an American retired film critic, author, and lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He was a film critic for the ''Los Angeles Times'' from 1991 ...

calls it "brainy and light on its feet, bristling with provocative insights and probing questions"; according to Turan, "though it features lively editing and a wide variety of involving visuals, ''Surviving Progress'' depends for its impact on the intelligence and eloquence of the numerous people interviewed." On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, 73% of the 37 reviews were positive.. The film received a Green Cross Italia Special Mention at the CinemAmbiente Environmental Film Festival in Torino, Italy, in June 2012.

References

External links

Homepage

Trailer and excerpts for ''Surviving Progress''
at the

* {{IMDb title, 1462014 Canadian documentary films National Film Board of Canada documentaries Documentary films about technology Anti-modernist films Films based on non-fiction books Documentary films about environmental issues 2011 films 2011 documentary films 2010s English-language films 2010s Canadian films