Oil Sands Karaoke Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: Oil Sands Karaoke

Year: 2013

Director: Charles Wilkonson

Country: Canada

Language: English

The Alberta Oil Sands is an incredibly disgusting, degrading and devastating assault on the Canadian environment. It is a wasteland where faceless and mindless corporations line up to fill the pockets of the already incredibly wealthy, to get their hands on one of the largest petroleum deposits on the planet. Sadly the once great city named Alberta transformed most of the region into the common man’s hell, another city known as Fort McMurry has become an urban service area.

Director Charles Wilkinson and Producer Tina Schliessler find themselves in McMurry, aiming their cameras at not the greedy soulless corporations nor their owners, but at the real working class people of the region. Focusing on five individuals, we see exactly who they are and get an insight into what they love; Karaoke at Bailey’s Pub.

Though the corporations like to treat their employees like livestock, faceless hordes of cattle that live only to serve their interest, the film-makers give the working class people the respect they deserve. They give them an identity and expose the people’s true honest selves. Oil Sands Karaoke is a celebration of humanity and life in a place where that appears non-existent.

Wilkinson does a fantastic job at contrasting Bailey’s Pub to the all too depressing Oil Sands. The Oil Sands are loud, full of expensive machinery and are full of workers, yet nobody is excited to work there and the working conditions are terrible. The camera captures a treeless wasteland and endless stacks of smoke, spewing clouds of filth into the air. In the pub we are shown nothing of the sort, it’s full on endless beauty, spirituality and creativity. As the bartender puts it “It's a big escape from reality,"

In conclusion, Oil Sands Karaoke is a remarkable documentary that puts man over money, as well as inspiring its audience to learn more about environmental issues. It's a real shame that many people do not even know about the Alberta Oil Sands, so hopefully this film will create some awareness. 3.5/5