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On Tuesday, January 28, the Columbus Film Council, The Free Press and RadioactiveWasteAlert will present a Free Fourth Tuesday Double Feature of both Gasland at 5.30 p.m. and Gasland Part II at 7.30 p.m. Both screenings are at the Drexel Theatre, 2254 E Main St in Bexley. The screenings are one night only and admission to either or both films is free. Donations are encouraged. Director Josh Fox will be skyping in after the screening of Gasland Part II to talk with the audience. In 2008, filmmaker Josh Fox was offered $100,000 for mineral rights from a company interested in hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking,” on his family’s land in rural Pennsylvania. Curious (and perhaps sensing a great story) he took off around the country in his 1992 Toyota Camry with very little money, a banjo and a lot of charm. Fast forward to a Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary, and the now infamous scene in the film where a farmer lights his tap water on fire and you begin to understand Gasland’s huge effect on the national debate about fracking, so much so that the oil and gas industries went so far as to fund and create Truthland, a pro-fracking film. In Gasland Part II Fox sets out with a much larger budget (from HBO) and documents the gas industries responses to protesters and angry homeowners as well as the slow crawl of the legal system and the inconsistent and ineffective government regulatory agencies response to the damages (both human, animal and environmental) created by the process of hydraulic fracking. With the money from HBO, Gasland Part II is slicker and more beautifully put together than Gasland. Fox once again deftly mixes the horrific with the absurd as Gasland Part II exposes the power of money in American politics and the ability of corporate interests to control even the regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect the American people and its land. After the recent contamination of the Charleston, WV area water supplies by Freedom Industries, where a 40,000 gallon tank of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol leaked an estimated 5,000 gallons of the chemical into the Elk River, Gasland and Gasland Part II seem especially timely and poignant. While doleful and at times hard to watch, Fox states that Gasland Part II is a call for action. "Why we are not seeing action is because of a system of entrenched influence that has been going on for decades," says Fox. "But the fracking movement has great possibilities for continuing this re-invention of democracy."