{"id":33201,"date":"2004-02-27T12:34:06","date_gmt":"2004-02-27T16:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=33201"},"modified":"2017-11-03T14:31:49","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T18:31:49","slug":"vinyl-siding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2004\/02\/27\/vinyl-siding\/","title":{"rendered":"Director presents toxic comedy about vinyl siding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Peabody Award-winning filmmaker  and environmental activist Judith Helfand screens her documentary <em>Blue  Siding<\/em>, a serio-comic expose of vinyl siding, at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday,  March 3, in the Keck Classroom (G52) of Pettengill Hall.  The public is invited to attend the 96-minute screening, co-sponsored by  Bates Hillel and the Environmental Coalition, free of charge.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The  movie follows Helfand and her co-director, Daniel B. Gold, as they  travel, with humor and a piece of vinyl siding in their hand, from  Helfand&#8217;s Long Island hometown to America&#8217;s vinyl manufacturing capital,  Lake Charles, La., and beyond in search of answers about the nature of  polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Her parents&#8217; decision to &#8220;re-side&#8221; their house  with this seemingly benign cure-all for many suburban homes turns into a  toxic odyssey with twists and turns that most ordinary homeowners would  never dare to take.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>Blue Vinyl<\/em> manages to be charming and  chilling in equal measure,&#8221; wrote a Toronto Sun reviewer about this  feature that won the cinematography award in documentary competition at  the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and received two Emmy nominations for  best documentary and best research.<\/p>\n<p>Acclaimed for making films  that are simultaneously humorous and inquisitive, Helfand is as  recognized for her environmental health activism and community  organizing as she is for her filmmaking. Co-founder of the nonprofit  Working Films, Helfand links documentary filmmaking to long-term social  change.<\/p>\n<p><em>Blue Vinyl<\/em> is the second collaboration for Gold and  Helfand\u00a0 &#8212; herself a cancer survivor who underwent a hysterectomy at 25  after contracting a rare form of cervical cancer due to her mother&#8217;s  ingestion of the drug DES, a synthetic estrogen that was supposed to  prevent miscarriage. With Gold, Helfand chronicled that period in her  life, exploring the personal impact of toxic chemical exposure on her  relationship with her mother, in her documentary, <em>A Healthy Baby Girl<\/em> (Sundance, 1997), which garnered her a Peabody Award for excellence in  journalism and public education.<\/p>\n<p>A sequel of sorts, <em>Blue Vinyl<\/em> picks up essentially where <em>A Healthy Baby Girl<\/em> left off in front of  the Helfands&#8217; house as they are putting up the blue vinyl siding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peabody Award-winning filmmaker and environmental activist Judith Helfand screens her documentary &#8220;Blue Siding,&#8221; a serio-comic expose of vinyl siding, at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday, March 3, in the Keck Classroom (G52) of Pettengill Hall. The public is invited to attend the 96-minute screening, co-sponsored by Bates Hillel and the Environmental Coalition, free of charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1443,2981,11089],"class_list":["post-33201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event-highlights","tag-bates-hillel","tag-documentary-film","tag-public-health-and-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92888,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33201\/revisions\/92888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}