Feel like the only militant vegan in town? Then you’ll be happy to know that a new film club of sorts wants you to join its community. Dubbed Green Light Flix, this self-described “fan-managed, motion picture studio” wants to make films and videos with “characters that are admirable animal rights activists, vegetarians, vegans, and environmentalists.”

 

 

According to its press release, this club would fill “a critical gap in the entertainment industry” in which “vegetarians, animal rights activists and environmentalists have a very rare and often negative representation.” That statement might seem a bit surprising to environmentalists who feel Gore presented himself quite positively in An Inconvenient Truth and that Julia Roberts portrayed Erin Brockovich quite heroically. Hasn’t Hollywood at least been giving pretty good lip service to environmental issues of late?

 

Well, Green Light Flix is seeking a more specific type of environmentalist — the type that believes meat is murder and is willing to take action to stop it, for example. After all, Green Light Flix is the brainchild of a self-described vegan animal rights activist called Scott Cardinal who’s previously made Saints & Angels, an Animal Liberation Front film he described to me in an email as “the first (and remains the only) fictional feature film that shows animal liberators in a positive light.”

 

Scott says he’s tired of films and TV shows portraying vegetarians and vegans “as pale, 85 pound hippies that look sickly and need a murdered farm animal’s carcass and dairy products to feel better.” (emphasis mine)

 

Are you a similarly angry vegan? Then you can join Green Light Flix’ “Producer Club” to vote on — and help pay for — animal activist films and videos. The 2009 slate includes such films as V-Day, a documentary that imagines a future in which everyone’s vegan, and more enticingly, Vegan Sexual.

 

Scott enthuses that “by becoming a member of Green Light Flix they can be part of a team that helps produce films, TV shows and videos that can reach hundreds of thousands, and even millions of people.” But will these films really have such broad-based appeal? Scott says “there are so many people out there who have confidence in us” but has declined to say how many members Green Light Flix has attracted so far. And despite the fact that Scott’s Saints & Angels is available free via 3-4 minute bits and pieces on YouTube, the first section’s gotten only a little over 2600 views, while the last section’s gotten a measly 172.