We’ve Been Bamboozled!

Pamela Falkenberg, Jack Cochran

Pamela Falkenberg

United States

English

English

Pamela Falkenberg Director
Jack Cochran Director
Jack Cochran Writer
Pamela Falkenberg Producer
Jack Cochran Editing and sound design
Pameal Falkenberg Cinematography and production design

Recent revelations show that the fossil fuel industries, over the course of many decades, sponsored scientific research about the potential consequences of burning fossil fuels on the earth’s environment, which concluded that the impact would be “dramatic” and “urgent.” Instead of sharing this information and seeking alternatives, the fossil fuels industries embarked on a longstanding campaign of disinformation and obfuscation that has outdone that of big tobacco (see, for instance, this Guardian article from 2021 —https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment).
Now that all this has come to light, the result is an unprecedented rash of lawsuits and investigations. These legal proceedings are expected to take years, but right now we need to be informed about what is at stake.

Our short film, “We’ve Been Bamboozled,” which combines images of a world powered by fossil fuels with a poetic summary, based on text extracted from the oil industry’s own reports, is part of that effort.

We freely admit that our poem takes liberties with the original texts, ironically paring down their prose using an erasure strategy, to reveal and highlight that the fossil fuel industries knew how much they were contributing to climate change, how dangerous that was, and just how long they chose to keep that information to themselves (since at least 1959).

We encourage our audience to get the full story from our source materials, via this link on our website:

https://www.outliermovingpictures.com/we-ve-been-bamboozled

Erasure ≠ cover up

Pam is an independent filmmaker who received her PhD from the University of Iowa and taught at Northern Illinois University, St.Mary's College, and the University of Notre Dame. She directed the largest student film society in the US while she was at the University of Iowa, and also ran films series for the Snite Museum of Art in South Bend, IN. Her experimental film with Dan Curry, Open Territory, received an individual filmmaker grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as grants from the Center for New Television and the Indiana Arts Council. OT screened at the Pacific Film Archives, as well at numerous film festivals, including the AFI Video Festival, and was nominated for a regional Emmy. Her other films include museum installations, scholarly/academic hybrid works shown at film conferences, and a documentary commissioned by the Peace Institute at the University of Notre Dame. She is an occasional contributor to Moving Poems Magazine (discussion.movingpoems.com/) and Liberated Words (liberatedwords.com/).
/> Jack is an independent filmmaker who has produced, directed, or shot a variety of experimental and personal projects. As a DP he has extensive experience shooting commercials, independent features, and documentaries. His varied commercial client list includes BMW, Ford, Nissan, Fujifilm, Iomega, Corum Watches, and Forte Hotels. His features and documentaries have shown at the Sundance, Raindance, Telluride, Tribeca, Edinburgh, Chicago, Houston, and Taos film Festivals, winning several honors. His commercials and documentaries have won Silver Lions from Cannes, a BAFTA (British Academy Award), Peabody Awards, and Cable Aces. Some notable credits: Director of Photography on Brian Griffin's Claustrofoamia, Cinematography for Antony Thomas’ Tank Man, Director/Cinematographer of Viento Nocturno, and Cinematographer of Ramin Niami’s feature film Paris. Jack was trained at the University of Iowa Creative Writers Workshop as well as the University of Iowa film studies program.