Crude, a lively and gripping documentary directed by Joe Berlinger, follows the shifting course of a lawsuit brought by 30,000 Ecuadoreans against Chevron over its responsibility for the country’s contaminated waters and streams. Part of The San Francisco Film Society’s second annual Investigative Documentary Week, the film opens for a one-week run at the Landmark Lumiere (San Francisco) and Shattuck (Berkeley) Theaters on Friday, September 25th.

Following the 12:00 noon screening at the Lumiere on Saturday the 26th, CIR board member and San Francisco Chronicle editor-at-large Phil Bronstein will moderate a discussion with Berlinger and Robert Rosenthal, CIR’s executive director. The panel, called Slippery Slopes, will address the functions, roles and processes of documentary film as a form of investigative journalism.

Free admission to the Forum; tickets to the film screening must be purchased separately. More information and a theatrical trailer of Crude are available at

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Christa Scharfenberg

cscharfenberg@revealnews.org

Christa Scharfenberg is a former CEO of The Center for Investigative Reporting. She joined CIR in 2003 as communications manager and has been a leader in its growth from a small nonprofit news organization, producing a handful of stories a year, to a multiplatform newsroom that reaches millions of people monthly through public radio, podcasts, documentaries, social media and the web. She managed the launch and growth of Reveal, CIR's Peabody Award and duPont-Columbia University Award-winning national public radio show and podcast, produced with PRX. She has been an executive or senior producer of documentaries for CIR, including the Academy Award-nominated film “Heroin(e),” numerous FRONTLINE co-productions and the independent film “Banished,” which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Scharfenberg is a member of the Poynter Institute's National Advisory Board and was a 2014 Punch Sulzberger Program fellow at Columbia University Journalism School. Prior to joining CIR, she was associate director of the Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco.