Crude Independence

Documentary Film Screening & Director's Talk

Sunday, 31 Jan 2010 at 10:00 am – Sun Room, Memorial Union

Crude Independence documents the impact our nation's demand for oil and global energy markets are having on America's heartland. Director Noah Hutton takes us to the town of Stanley, North Dakota, population 1300, which sits atop the largest oil discovery in the history of the North American continent. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there to be more than 200 billion barrels of crude oil resting in a previously unreachable formation beneath western North Dakota. Armed with new drilling technologies, oil companies from far and wide are descending on towns like Stanley. Through interviews and imagery, Crude Independence captures the effect this modern-day gold rush is having on small-town life. Director Noah Hutton will discuss the film and take questions following the screening. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.
NOAH HUTTON was born in Los Angeles to actors Timothy Hutton and Debra Winger. Noah spent his childhood on and around film sets and developed a passion for filmmaking of his own at an early age. After attending the Fieldston School in the Bronx, NY, Hutton entered Wesleyan University as a freshman in 2005. In the summer of 2007, he traveled to Uganda with the Jacob Burns Film Center's World Crew program and co-directed a documentary film entitled Shooting for Peace that tracked three pressing issues in that country: child soldiers, water treatment, and HIV/AIDS orphans. Before directing Crude Independence, Noah directed the narrative 16 mm short Knives produced by the Wesleyan Film Cooperative.

View the complete schedule of symposium events:
Things Fall Apart: Finding Beauty in a Broken World

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This lecture was made possible in part by the generosity of F. Wendell Miller, who left his entire estate jointly to Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Mr. Miller, who died in 1995 at age 97, was born in Altoona, Illinois, grew up in Rockwell City, graduated from Grinnell College and Harvard Law School and practiced law in Des Moines and Chicago before returning to Rockwell City to manage his family's farm holdings and to practice law. His will helped to establish the F. Wendell Miller Trust, the annual earnings on which, in part, helped to support this activity.

Cosponsored By:
  • Bioethics Program
  • Center for Excellence in the Arts & Humanities
  • College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
  • Creative Writers’ Milieu
  • Ecology, Evolution & Organismal Biology
  • English
  • Environmental Studies
  • Geological & Atmospheric Sciences
  • Humanities Iowa
  • LAS Miller Lecture Fund
  • MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment
  • Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture
  • Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government)

Stay for the entire event, including the brief question-and-answer session that follows the formal presentation. Most events run 75 minutes.

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