Mine Your Own Business

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For the episode of "Scooby-Doo, Where are You!" of the same title, please see List of Scooby-Doo, Where are You! episodes

Mine Your Own Business: A Documentary About the Dark Side of Environmentalism is a documentary, produced by filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, which investigates controversial proposed mining projects in impoverished villages. Their main focus in the film is the village of Roşia Montană in Romania. There, McAleer and McElhinney interview western environmentalists who oppose the project as well as the local people that are in favour of the project. The movie portrays western environmentalists as wealthy elites who are working counter to the interests of the local people.

Unemployed 23 year old Roşia Montană miner Gheorghe Lucian joins McAleer and McElhinney as they then travel to Fort Dauphin, Madagascar, where Gheorge interviews Mark Fenn, World Wide Fund for Nature’s American representative in the southern portion of the island, showing off his 36 foot catamaran sailing yacht; Fenn, in attempting to explain to Gheorghe Lucian, an unemployed Romanian miner, that Lucian didn’t really understand what poverty was, displays the often hidden and insidious side of the environmentalist worldview when, while scolding Lucian, yields the film's money quote,

“I could put you with a family and you count how many times in a day that family smile, if you could measure stress. Then I put you with a family well off, or in New York or London, and you count how many times people smile and measure stress… Then you tell me who is rich and who is poor.”

[edit] Film financing

The film project was initiated and funded by the Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources Ltd., the same foreign corporation that wants to develop Roşia Montană as an open pit gold mine. The film freely admits to this [1], as did Alan Hill, Gabriel Resources' CEO and President at the New York City premier. Gabriel Resources had no editorial control over the film's content. The film has also received some funding from the Moving Picture Institute and support from the Institute of Public Affairs, Australia.

[edit] External links

• Official movie website
• Moving Picture Institute: MYOB's New York premiere (January 19, 2007 at The Director's Guild Theater)
• Photo gallery of the January 19th New York City premiere
• The Forgotten Mammal by Mary Katherine Ham, Townhall.com
• Mine Your Own Business by Bill Hobbs, BillHobbs.com
• Movie review on Spiked.com
• 2:45 movie trailer of Mine Your Own Business on YouTube
• "Report from Rosia" A blog by Gheorghe Luchian, a villager in Roşia Montană.