From film festivals and house parties, to sold-out theaters and large advocacy events, Dirty Business continues to impact communities throughout the country.

On Thursday, January 6, The Center for Investigative Reporting hosted the Bay Area premiere of the film at the David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley. The screening, which included an opening reception in the Center’s gallery, generated an overwhelming response, with the 180-seat theater filled to capacity. The diverse audience ranged from local energy experts, government officials, environmental activists and the general public. Following the screening was a panel discussion moderated by filmmaker Peter Bull, with Rainforest Action Network Executive Director Rebecca Tarbotton, an anti-coal activist, and Julio Friedmann, a carbon sequestration expert at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Both panelists were prominently featured in the film.

Video by envirobeat.com

Click here to view all clips from the panel discussion.

The event marked the first CIR-sponsored screening of Dirty Business. Three additional events – planned for March and April in Charleston, WV; Washington D.C.; and Los Angeles – share the objective of providing a forum to address the pressing energy issues that the film explores.

Other non-CIR-sponsored upcoming events include a February screening at the World Community Film Festival in British Columbia and the Council of Foundations Film and Video Festival in April. As the film’s exposure increases, so too have screening requests, which continue to come from an array of festivals and community theaters. They include a number of international inquiries – communities in Spain, Scotland, and China among them.

In addition, Dirty Business has been shown at multiple venues across the country, including community screenings and campus events. Most recently, it was featured – in a prominent Saturday night timeslot - at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, CA on January 15 where it received a strong audience response. Bull and Tarbotton took questions following the screening.

During the previous week, the film was shown at an event sponsored by the Council on Canadians at the University of Regina, in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The screening followed the release of a study suggesting that carbon dioxide had leaked from a nearby storage site – one of the largest in the world – onto a farm owned by a family featured in the film.

In August, two screenings of the film in Kansas, organized in part by the state chapter of the Sierra Club and the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy (GPACE), coincided with a public comment and hearing process by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) regarding expansion of a coal-fired power plant in the western part of the state (which, despite strong opposition, ultimately succeeded.)