Ed Begley Jr. to host green DVD club

Earth Cinema Circle will distribute environmentally-minded films

By Danny King -- Video Business, 2/14/2008

FEB. 14 | Ed Begley Jr. will host a collection of ecologically-based short films that will be part of a subscription service launched today by a Santa Fe, N.M.-based film-distribution company.

Earth Cinema Circle will produce the DVDs, which will include four short films six times a year. Customers will pay $17.95 plus shipping for the DVDs, whose films’ subject matters will range from air and ocean pollution to genetically modified foods to green living, the company said today.

“Films have influenced popular culture for many years, often for the good, sometimes to our detriment, with films that have promoted consumerism and excess. That’s what Hollywood was known for for many years,” said Begley in a conference call today. “There has been a move for some years to promote other things, more responsibility for the way we purchase things and environmental stewardship.”

Earth Cinema Circle is a sister company of Spiritual Cinema Circle, which was founded in 2003 by film producer Stephen Simon (What Dreams May Come, All the Right Moves) to distribute socially-conscious, spiritually-oriented films to its members. Earth Cinema, which gets its movies from film festivals and independent producers, licenses the films on its DVDs for 60 days, said spokeswoman Arielle Ford.

The first group includes Garbage Warrior, an 86-minute feature about an architect who builds things out of recycled materials; Flip-Flotsam, a 30-minute program about the life of a flip-flop sandal; The Queen of Trees, 60 minutes about a fig tree in Africa; and five-minute short Papa New Guinea: Land of the Unexpected.

Begley, along with wife Rachelle Carson, star in the HGTV reality-TV series Living With Ed, which follows Begley’s efforts toward ultra-sustainable living and Carson’s occasional frustration with his methods.