Blue Vinyl

2002
6.8| 1h33m| en| More Info
Released: 10 January 2002 Released
Producted By: Next Wave Films
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.nextwavefilms.com/bluevinyl/
Synopsis

With humor, chutzpah and a piece of vinyl siding firmly in hand, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand and co-director and award-winning cinematographer Daniel B. Gold set out in search of the truth about polyvinyl chloride (PVC), America's most popular plastic. From Long Island to Louisiana to Italy, they unearth the facts about PVC and its effects on human health and the environment.

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Reviews

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.
Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
SBecause Interesting and engaging as far as documentaries go, but maybe that's because I'm interested in the topic. Overall, I thought the message was overly dramatized. Trying to link vinyl chloride monomer, the stuff that's reacted to form PVC, and allegedly poor manufacturing processes from 30 yrs ago to DES, a pharmaceutical that was created specifically to interact with and was prescribed to people was a bit of a stretch. And to try and say that burning PVC is the most dangerous thing about a fire is completely ridiculous. This inability to rank risk is why we spend soooo much time and money focusing on small issues while completely ignoring the big picture. Don't get me wrong, the manufacturing industry, and the chemical industry in particular, had and has issues. But to continue to think that they operate with a 1970s mentality and technology is wrong. We need to recognize the progress that's been made and continue to partner with industry to drive further improvements in safety while acknowledging that the products of chemistry have had a vast influence on making our everyday lives better. And that includes PVC, a versatile, affordable product that's had a positive impact for a whole lot of people.
ktatlow Blue Vinyl is lefty scare-mongering propaganda, but nevertheless worth a viewing. Helfand gives enough names and references to provide the viewer with opportunity for deeper research if desired. Chemical-phobic true believers will love the film, and skeptics will find plenty of examples of bad science and misleading presentation to debunk and debate.JH's crusade against vinyl chloride is so intense that she seems unaware of her daily use of hundreds of other synthetics, such as the toxic-spawned semiconductors in her cameras, phones, and transportation. She inflicts this intensity upon her parents, who seem to bear fairly well a level of hectoring that would surely shorten my lifespan if I had to endure it like they did. (I would have had a stroke sometime during the days-long sales presentation by the California mud architect.) She concludes that wood is a dandy safe building material, and recommends old planking recovered from demolished picturesque mills in New Hampshire, at premium cost. Since the supply of quaint old mills and barns is limited, sooner or later she's going to have to start cutting down forests, and that will probably upset some of her allies. It's not as if there are any work-related injuries or deaths in the lumber industry! (And if your house catches fire, be sure to breathe in that harmless innocent wood smoke; it's so much better for you than PVC combustion products.) Let me mention just two specific problems with the film: 1) She depicts the Bucket Brigade, a grass-roots air-sampling project in a Louisiana community. But she fails to show whether any _control_ samples were taken, which would establish whether the samples were perhaps contaminated by the _plastic_ bags in which they were collected. 2) She interviews a spokesperson for the vinyl industry (a PhD organic chemist.) She goes out of her way to demonstrate her frustration that the interview is limited to 30 minutes. Well, guess what? She doesn't even show you the full 30 minute interview; she edits it down to about two minutes, most of which is taken up by her canned questions. The least she could have done was to include the full, unedited interview in the DVD extras, but I have a feeling that would have been too fair to her nemesis.
morachi This is one of those documentaries where folks have a knee jerk reaction and start thinking how horrible this is and we must save the environment and I'm so glad this was brought to my attention.Problem is what exactly was brought to our attention. This "documentary" had a conclusion first and then set out to prove it. She asks folks what they think, they tell her and she then presents this as fact. When she interviews folks who have an opposite viewpoint she misrepresents what they say and then mocks it. There is a scene in this show where she goes to a convention for the makers of vinyl one of the folks mentions that two of the components in PVC are sodium and chloride which are the components that make table salt, she then says that chemical compounds such as PVC are made up of common elements. Right after this our narrator says that she was just told that PVC is safe as table salt which is absolutely not what she was told. Later on she wants to get an expert opinion on if PVC is dangerous or not, so she has two "scientists" from Greenpeace come. Gee...we know this will be a fair evaluation. Basically the rest of this show is the same way and I think you can get the idea.Stay away from this program as it's more harmful than good.
cmyklefty You think vinyl is safe? This film Blue Vinyl make you think about how polyvinyl chloride is made and the products we use everyday for living. The consequences of the manufacture, use and disposal of vinyl, how get rid of the material can be fatal for the workers in the industry plant and people around the plant. It digs deeper that this means to our health in general public. It is light and funny, but straight to the point. After the watching film at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, I saw the directors Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand and told them it a film that will open your eyes about the world around us. The directors were glad to hear about the comment of the film. A film not to be missed.