TORONTO - B.C. eco-warrior Tzeporah Berman is taking her fight for the forests to Hollywood, where she's set to walk the red carpet Wednesday at a gala premiere for Leonardo DiCaprio's upcoming documentary
The longtime conservation activist appears briefly in the film to warn that Canadian logging practices are contributing to the death of the world's forests.
Berman says she ended up in the film - narrated by DiCaprio and including commentary from heavyweight environmentalists David Suzuki, physicist Stephen Hawking and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev - by pure chance.
She was at a conference in California last October when she overheard a couple of people frantically talking about needing someone who knows about the state of the world's forests.
"I turned to them and said, 'What you really need is some of the satellite data that shows that 80 per cent of the world's intact forests are already gone and there are only three countries left - Canada, Russia and Brazil - that have enough forest to maintain ecological integrity and biodiversity,"' Berman said Tuesday from the Vancouver airport as she waited for a flight to Los Angeles.
"And they just turned around to me - as one - and said: 'Who are you?"'
They turned out to be the film's directors, Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners. One week later, Berman was on a flight to L.A to be interviewed for the film.
Produced and narrated by DiCaprio, "The 11th Hour" explains how humans have changed the climate and how to fix the damage.
Berman said she hasn't had the chance to discuss her position with DiCaprio, but did get to know his mother, Irmelin DiCaprio, who met her for lunch in L.A.
"I really understood where a lot of Leonardo's environmental leanings come from," Berman said of the meeting. "She's a very powerful woman and a strong environmentalist. ... She has a real breadth of knowledge on the issue."
DiCaprio, who debuted the film at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is one of several high-profile figures who have joined the environmental movement of late.
Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore won audiences and critical acclaim last year for his Oscar-winning eco-documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Berman, who rose to prominence as a leading figure in B.C.'s massive Clayoquot Sound protests of 1993 and who is one of the founders of ForestEthics, says she's pleased to see Hollywood embrace the cause she's dedicated her life to.
"I'd much rather see celebrities working on environmental issues and that being reported in the media than many of the other things that we're barraged with every day," Berman said.
"The fact that Hollywood is going green is a sign of the times."
Berman's short segment has her indicting Canada's logging industry for contributing as much greenhouse gas emissions as all the cars on the road in California each year.
"It's really one of the untold stories of global warming that Canada's forests are such an incredible storehouse of carbon," says Berman, noting that Canada logs about two hectares of old-growth forest every minute.
Berman says she plans to attend the premiere in a hybrid limousine, and will meet with eco-clothing designer Linda Loudermilk to choose an outfit for the gala.
The film opens in limited release in the United States on Aug. 17 and in Canada on Aug. 31.
Advance screenings will be held in Vancouver and Toronto on Aug. 23, and the film opens in Toronto the next day.
