Pipeline Fighters

Admission is Free and Open to the Public

Cookie Cole, her face a portrait of grief and ire, flings toward the sky a handful of creek water.

Award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer Marino Colmano of Blacksburg captured the moment.

Cole laments the risk that the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline would pollute water precious to her farm in Monroe County, West Virginia. Colmano’s footage shifts into slow motion, and the creek water flung by Cole separates into drops that glisten in the air like tears.

Colmano, 68, recently completed “Pipeline Fighters,” a 98-minute documentary that fuses testimonies of lamentation, defiance and resolve in a scathing examination of fossil fuel infrastructure projects, hydraulic fracturing, climate change and the use of eminent domain in the service of corporate profits.

Colmano, a native of Italy whose filmmaking career included about three decades in Los Angeles, hopes the film will soon screen at regional independent theaters. He said he believes “Pipeline Fighters” — less polemical than a Michael Moore documentary but generally unencumbered by dissenting views — will be a call to action.