The Greening of Southie (2008) (SIFF) - A

"The Greening of Southie" is an excellent documentary about the construction of The Macallen Building in South Boston. The Macallan Building was the first "green" building project in the Boston area, and sought a Gold rating under the LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) standard. The movie does an excellent job of making you understand LEED certification. Essentially, you get points for doing a bunch of things in 5 different areas: Sustainable Sites, Materials and Resources, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, and Indoor Air Quality. Depending on how many points you earn you will get a Platinum, Gold, Silver, or Certified rating.

"The Greening of Southie" gives a lot of detail about the strengths and weaknesses of the LEED certification process. For example, using bamboo flooring earns you points because bamboo grows really fast (only about a year to achieve the desired size) and is considered a renewable wood source. As the process went on, though, the builders began to wonder whether it had really been a great decision to go with bamboo flooring because this involved shipping wood from China, and after there were some problems, it involved shipping wood from China three times. One of the claims made in the movie is that in a typical building project, the energy used to ship building materials to the site is greater than all the energy consumed by the building during it's lifetime. The film also doesn't shy away from presenting some of the problems with "green" building. Many of the materials are relatively new and untested, and you see the various hiccups this causes during construction.

Probably the best decision the filmmakers made was to spend a lot of time on the reactions and thoughts of the construction crew at the Macallan building. It was fascinating to see the various reactions of the crew members to the idea of environmentally friendly building. The focus on the crew also allowed for some interesting side explorations into issues such as the impact of gentrification of the Southie area on families living in the area, and the fact that this kind of construction is quite expensive, and none of the construction crew could ever hope to live in a building like that.

Great story telling, fantastic educational value, and some excellent time lapse camera work to show the progress of the building make this a documentary that I highly recommend.

Final Grade: A