Last month’s Human Rights Watch International Film Festival featured “The Axe in the Attic,” a poignant and thoughtful documentary about both the natural and human costs of Hurricane Katrina. Filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small spent 60 days on the road exploring New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky in their efforts to collect post-storm footage and interviews, but broke with documentary tradition by deciding to include themselves in the story. “When you’re two white northerners heading South,” they said in their directors’ statement, “remaining behind the camera just doesn’t feel like an option.”

The title of the film is a gloomy reference to those who sought refuge in their attics from the flood, but had to chop their way through the roof when the water failed to recede. The documentary itself focuses on how evacuees have had to adjust to their new environments, some achingly alien to them, as both subject and filmmaker take on such controversial topics as class, race, and the government’s failure to provide for those who have lost everything.

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Global Green will be hosting their 5th annual pre-Oscar party on February 20th to benefit their green rebuilding projects in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and to showcase a series of smart solutions for reducing our carbon footprint. Admission prices for this star-studded music extravaganza range anywhere from $250 for general admission to $5000 for the “green carpet” treatment for two. Global Green has already helped to rebuild 50,000 homes in New Orleans according to their green standards, which has had the equivalent effect of taking 100,000 cars off the road!

Their Green Schools initiative is a remarkable extension of their eco-friendly rebuilding efforts, aiming to create high performance and energy efficient schools in the area that will help student performance while saving school districts money on energy costs. Says Matt Peterson, President and CEO of Global Green USA of their Green Schools program:

“Across the U.S. in different cities, we have seen high performance schools create a better learning environment for students and reduce energy and water costs by 20% to 40%. Test scores improve by 20% to 22% in green schools, and can lead to fewer absences due to improved indoor air quality.”

and learn more about what you can do to help Global Green USA’s Green Schools initiative.