SA film unearths fracking truths

[caption id="attachment_34912" align="alignright" width="620"] SEEKING TRUTH: Director Jolynn Minnaar, seen here in the Karoo, will screen her documentary 'Unearthed' this weekend at the Encounters Festival in Cape Town[/caption]

RESEARCHING fracking extensively across the US for an investigative documentary provided an Eastern Cape filmmaker with insights which forced her to rethink her attitudes and beliefs about the energy harnessing method.

Having spent five months in North America – from New Brunswick, Canada, to Pennsylvania, and West Virginia to Colorado – founder and director of Un-Earthed Motion Pictures, Jolynn Minnaar  traced the gas industry and met scientists, gas companies and those living in gas drilling areas, to fully research this method of gas extraction.

Minnaar, a BA film and media production graduate from the University of Cape Town, last year received the WorldView award at the closing ceremony of the Durban FilmMart for the feature film, which was one of only eight of 106 submissions across Africa selected to participate.

The investigative documentary probes fracking in the US and questions whether shale gas is the solution for our energy-hungry world.

According to Minnaar, fracking forms part of a large-scale industrial extractive industry that introduces many threats to the environment. - Chanice Koopman