‘Wrenched’ examines Ed Abbey’s influence on environment movement
Mar 13, 2014 | 2120 views | 0 0 comments | 28 28 recommendations | email to a friend | print
Author Edward Abbey’s influence on the modern environmental movement is explored in the film “Wrenched,” which will be screened in Moab on Thursday, March 15 at Star Hall. A panel discussion featuring friends of Abbey, the filmmaker and local environmentalists, will take place after the screening. Courtesy photo
Author Edward Abbey’s influence on the modern environmental movement is explored in the film “Wrenched,” which will be screened in Moab on Thursday, March 15 at Star Hall. A panel discussion featuring friends of Abbey, the filmmaker and local environmentalists, will take place after the screening. Courtesy photo
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On the 25th anniversary of Edward Abbey’s final journey home to canyon country, Moab will celebrate and reflect on the works and influence of the acclaimed author with a film screening on March 15 of a new documentary on Abbey. “Wrenched,” a film by M.L. Lincoln, explores how Abbey’s “anarchistic spirit and riotous novels influenced and helped guide the nascent environmental movement of the 1970s and ‘80s,” according to the film’s website.

“Wrenched” will be shown on Saturday, March 15, at 7 p.m. at Star Hall, 159 E. Center St.

“It has been 25 years since Ed Abbey’s journey home, and the subsequent gathering of the tribe in Moab for a sunrise memorial service in Arches National Park, close to the site of the trailer Abbey occupied as a ranger, and where he wrote his masterpiece, ‘Desert Solitaire.’ That book, along with others including ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang’ (which have sold more copies after Abbey’s death than when he was alive) facilitated a global love-affair with Canyon Country, and radicalized a generation of passionate citizens who were fed up with government-corporate complicity, local politics and greedy developmental schemes, and environmental compromises which were destroying the spectacular wildlands and river systems of Southern Utah and the American Southwest ...” said Abbey’s friend, Bob Lippman. “Abbey is even more relevant to Moab and Southern Utah today, as what’s left of our iconic landscapes, rivers, and air and water quality are under siege from the fossil energy frenzy and rampant industrialization which are overrunning our public lands and strangling our National Parks.” 

The film features archival footage and interviews with Abbey’s friends and contemporaries, including members of the “real” Monkey Wrench Gang.

Presented by the Utah Film Center and sponsored by Living Rivers, the Center for Biological Diversity and Back of Beyond Books, the evening will also feature speakers and a panel discussion. Participants will include Lincoln, Abbey’s friends “Seldom Seen” Ken Sleight and Ken Sanders, and river activist and director of Living Rivers, John Weisheit. Lippman will introduce and facilitate the discussion, and Bob Greenspan will provide music.

Admission to the film screening is free of charge, although a suggested donation will be accepted at the door to benefit Living Rivers.

Additional information is available at the film’s website: http://wrenched-themovie.com.
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