Janson Releases Emmy Award Winning Documentary 'Split Estate'

Janson Media today announced the release of the feature documentary Split Estate (1 x 76') to international Television and VOD markets. Produced by Red Rock Pictures, the investigative film examines the lives of ordinary citizens victimized by oil and gas companies cashing in on the Rocky Mountain West natural gas drilling boom of the last decade. The critically acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning project captures the disconnect between energy development and environmental health that has left the health of surrounding communities compromised beyond their control.

Imagine discovering that you don't own the mineral rights under your land, and that an energy company plans to drill for natural gas two hundred feet from your front door. Imagine having little recourse, other than accepting an unregulated industry in your backyard. Narrated by actress Ali McGraw, Split Estate maps a tragedy in the making, as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West struggle against the erosion of their civil liberties, their communities and their health.

Zeroing in on Garfield County, Colorado, and the San Juan Basin, this clarion call for accountability examines the growing environmental and social costs to an area now referred to as a &'National Sacrifice Zone.'

Exempt from federal protections like the Clean Water Act, the oil and gas industry has left this idyllic landscape and its rural communities pockmarked with abandoned homes and polluted waters as a result of their hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking' method of drilling. One Garfield County resident demonstrates the degree of benzene contamination in a mountain stream by setting the stream alight with a match! Many others, gravely ill, fight for their health and for the health of their children. All the while, the industry publicity machine assures us it is a 'good neighbor.'

Ordinary homeowners and ranchers absorb the cost. Actually, we all pay the price in this devastating clash of interests that extends well beyond the Rockies. Aggressively seeking new leases in as many as 32 states, the industry is even making a bid to drill in the New York City watershed, which provides drinking water to millions.

As public health concerns mount, Split Estate cracks the sugarcoating on an industry touted as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, and poignantly drives home the need for real alternatives. Along with the families on the front lines, the film also features industry reps from the high-stakes business of oil and gas drilling, political leaders working to stem the tide, civil servants dedicated to upholding the letter of the law, and environmental health experts piecing it all together.

Split Estate won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft - Research, the Florence Neilson Environmental Leadership Award, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson"s New Vision Award.

Red Rock Pictures is a production company dedicated to the creation of documentaries that explore deeply felt human stories about the environment, energy and human rights.

DVD and non-theatrical rights worldwide are distributed by Bullfrog Films, the oldest and largest publisher of videos and films about the environment in the United States. Founded in 1973 ,Bullfrog has been honored with a retrospective screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and with a special award from Medikinale International in Parma, Italy.