After a successful festival run and many screenings with community and activist groups around the US and Canada, ABOVE ALL ELSE (trailer) was released on leading digital pay-per-view platforms on January 20, 2015.

Director John Fiege is also continuing a university tour with the film, with visits scheduled in February to Syracuse and Franklin & Marshall and Penn State in Pennsylvania, and others later this spring. Please contact us if you're interested in setting up a campus visit!

We also have more festival screenings on the horizon, at Cinema Verde in Gainesville, FL, Cleveland International Film Festival, Irvine (CA) International Film Festival, and Ecofalante in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 

Our digital premiere on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, and Google Play is part of a new initiative from the highly-regarded Sundance Institute, in which Institute-supported films and select films from allied non-profit film organizations, like the Austin Film Society, are eligible for an unparalleled distribution deal that allows preferred and direct access to leading online digital retailers. As a beneficiary of two Austin Film Society Grants, Above All Else was eligible and selected for the program. Above All Else also received funding through the Princess Grace Foundation and a successful Kickstarter campaign. The film will be listed on iTunes as a special selection in Kickstarter's channel as well.

It has been a whirlwind year with the film. We’ve been all over the continent with this film and audiences have embraced it. People all over are convinced that this pipeline is neither safe nor necessary, and the product it would carry threatens our future. They also don’t like a foreign corporation using eminent domain laws to take over American landowners’ property.

As you'll recall, we made our world premiere at the 2014 South by Southwest Film Festival and won “Best North American Documentary” at the Global Visions Film Festival, in Edmonton, Alberta (on the doorstep to the tar sands) and a Special Jury Prize at the Dallas International Film Festival. The Houston Film Critics Society nominated it for a 2014 Texas Independent Film Award. The film also screened during the historic Climate Week activities in New York City in September 2014.

Huge thanks to our Nationbuilder supporters for your interest in the film and the continuing debate over tar sands, Keystone, and climate change.

 

submitted by producer Christopher Lucas

 

Above All Else screened on July 4^th and 5^th at Marfa Film Festival, deep in the beautiful Big Bend region in West Texas. Marfa, for those that don’t know it, is a unique place, both an iconic Texas small town and world-renowned art colony home to the Chinati Foundation; many fine artists, writers, sculptors, photographers and other creative types call Marfa home. It’s a harsh landscape and gets brutally hot out there, but also remarkably beautiful, especially in the magical hours of dawn and twilight.

 

I made the eight-hour drive to Marfa from Austin with my family and we took in some hot desert hikes in nearby Alpine, cool parties in Marfa, and eventually got around to watching some movies.

 

WEST TEXAS SUNSET 

 

On our first day in town John Fiege and I were interviewed on Marfa Public Radio. It was a good start to the weekend. Marfa Film Festival programs about 60 shorts and features and, a lot like the town, leaned toward the eclectic and artistically adventurous. Michel Gondry’s new film Mood Indigo was there, as well as Rick Linklater’s Boyhood, a great environmental doc Yakona, from Central Texas locals Paul Collins and Anlo Sepulveda, and Alex van Warnerdam’s Borgman, which was nominated for a Palme d’Or this year. We were thrilled to have Above All Else on the program. The film had a great response and several people came up after our first screening at the Crowley Theater -- as they often do at these festivals -- to thank us for making the film and telling David’s story.

 

CROWLEY THEATER

 

JULIE GILLIS (LEFT), JULIA TRIGG CRAWFORD (MIDDLE), CALLIE TRIGG BRACEWELL (RIGHT)

 

We screened with three short films—Honor The Treaties (Watch it), Oyate Wahacanka (Shield the People)(Watch it), and Overpass Light Brigade. Shield the People traveled to Marfa for the festival—raising a few of the tipis they are using to blockade the Keystone XL pipeline with a traditional village on their ancestral lands in South Dakota. After our screening the visiting Lakota spoke powerfully about the need to stop ecological destruction and of their own intention to preserve their people and the earth for all of us.

 

SHIELD THE PEOPLE 

 

The festival included several side events as well, like live music at the coolest “nomadic hotel and campground” in Texas, El Cosmico, a indie game showcase The Space Cowboy Arcade, and a Fourth of July concert and fireworks out in the desert.

 

Marfa was a great mid-summer celebration for Above All Else and we’re looking forward to more events later in the summer and fall.

If you're going to be at Bonnaroo Music Festival next weekend, Above All Else is screening on Saturday, June 14 at 6:30 PM! It will be featured in the Green Screens block of environmental films and will be followed with a Q&A with Executive Producer, Paul Bassis.

To see the entire Bonnaroo Cinema lineup, visit: https://www.bonnaroo.com/activities/cinema#schedule.

We're headed out on the road with the film starting this weekend!

First, don't miss John Fiege on MSNBC's Alex Witt program this Sunday around 1:15 EST/12:15 CST speaking about the movie.

Then, on April 1, the film screens at the Atlanta Film Festival, with John in attendance.

April 4 and 5, the film screens at the Dallas Film Festival, with John, Liz, and Chris attending.

April 16, the film screens in Columbia, South Carolina at the Indie Grits festival.

April 17 and 19, the film screens at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Film Festival, with John in attendance.

Finally, April 29-May 1, we screen four times at Hot Docs in Toronto, with John and Chris attending.

Get more details on our new "screenings" page, and stand by for more news.

Thank you for supporting Above All Else!

We have many, many people to thank for helping make Above All Else possible. These individuals and organizations provided assistance big and small--sometimes at critical points, in other cases offering the kind of steady support over weeks and months that keeps an indie project pushing forward. Between now and our premiere on March 10 we will use this space to thank our legion of helpers, adding to the list each day.

Thank you to:

• David Daniel and Family
• Eleanor Fairchild
• Susan Scott
• Julia Trigg Crawford
• Garrett Graham
• Ben Kessler
• Ron Seifert
• Cindy Spoon
• Candice Bernd
• Grace Cagle
• Tammie Carson
• Mike Coleman
• Coyote
• Maggie Gorry

We have many, many people to thank for helping make Above All Else possible. These individuals and organizations provided assistance big and small--sometimes at critical points, in other cases offering the kind of steady support over weeks and months that keeps an indie project pushing forward. Between now and our premiere on March 10 we will use this space to thank our legion of helpers, adding to the list each day.

Thank you to:

• Duncan Meisel
• Eric Moll
• Andrew Neef
• Raccoon
• Ramsay Sprague
• Jason Stroud
• R.W. Torgerson
• Corey Troiani
• Will Wooten

We have many, many people to thank for helping make Above All Else possible. These individuals and organizations provided assistance big and small--sometimes at critical points, in other cases offering the kind of steady support over weeks and months that keeps an indie project pushing forward. Between now and our premiere on March 10 we will use this space to thank our legion of helpers, adding to the list each day.

Thank you to:

• Eddie Becker
• Shannon Beebe
• Big Wonder
• May Boene
• Julian Bond
• Bold Nebraska
• Holly Herrick
• Julie Gillis
• Owen and Evan Lucas
• Duncan Meisel
• Farhad Ebrahimi
• Callie Trigg Bracewell
• Rae Breaux
• Michelle Monk
• Lester Brown
• Michael Brune
• J.J. Campbell

We have many, many people to thank for helping make Above All Else possible. These individuals and organizations provided assistance big and small--sometimes at critical points, in other cases offering the kind of steady support over weeks and months that keeps an indie project pushing forward. Between now and our premiere on March 10 we will use this space to thank our legion of helpers, adding to the list each day.

Thank you to:

• Cheer Up Charlie's
• Jake Conroy
• Ian Cook
• Ayden Cordova
• Caren Cordova
• Gabriel Cordova
• Ricardo Correa
• Benjamin Craft-Rendon
• Andre Dahlman
• Toben Dilwort
• Jessica Ellison
• Kai Ferguson
• Beverly & Fred Fiege
• Caroline Frick
• Paul & Barb Grabowski
• Brian, Michelle, & Phil Grabowski
• James Hanson
• Jerry Hightower

We have many, many people to thank for helping make Above All Else possible. These individuals and organizations provided assistance big and small--sometimes at critical points, in other cases offering the kind of steady support over weeks and months that keeps an indie project pushing forward. Between now and our premiere on March 10 we will use this space to thank our legion of helpers, adding to the list each day.

Thank you to:

• Jim Hightower
• Deena Kalai
• Robert Kennedy, Jr.
• Daniel Kessler
• Lauren Klotzman
• Melina Laboucan-Mossimo
• Osprey Lake
• Crystal Lameman
• Maggie Lea
• Bekah Lynn
• Houston McKenzie
• Bill McKibben
• Piper Nelson
• Mirror Travel
• Michelle Monk
• Natural Resources Defense Council
• Tom Parish
• Karen Parker
• Scott Parkin

We have many, many people to thank for helping make Above All Else possible. These individuals and organizations provided assistance big and small--sometimes at critical points, in other cases offering the kind of steady support over weeks and months that keeps an indie project pushing forward. Between now and our premiere on March 10 we will use this space to thank our legion of helpers, adding to the list each day.

Thank you to:

• Doris & Lenny Perlman
• Erich Pica
• John Quigley
• Cari Quoyeser
• Joey Reyes
• Ryan Rittenhouse
• Joshua Kahn Russell
• Lucas Schaeffer
• Paul Schmidt
• Sierra Club/Lone Star Chapter
• Kathy Da Silva
• Steve Da Silva
• Tom "Smitty" Smith
• Aly Tharp
• Elizabeth and Roger Tsang
• UT Department of Radio-TV-Film
• Tom Weis
• Forrest Wilder
• Chris Wynnyk Wilson
• Susan Yates
• Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.