Only a few of the hundreds of films premiered at Sundance 2008 will emerge in theaters in the coming year. One we’re cheering for is the documentary competition Audience Award winner Fields of Fuel. Matter Network tagged along with Fields of Fuel director Josh Tickell and producer Greg Reitman during their whirlwind Sundance experience. That experience was recorded in the video web logs posted above and here.

Following the Audience Award, Matter Network caught up with Josh and Greg by phone. We talked about conflict energy vs. non-conflict energy, the state of adoption of biodiesel and what the Sundance award means for their film.

MN: I want to quickly get into a discussion about biofuel. That’s one of the primary themes of the movie, right?

Josh Tickell: The film is actually a green energy movie. And even more than that, it gets into the basis of war and peace. The thesis of the film is that energy is currently the basis for war, while it could be the basis for peace. So it really looks at conflict energy vs. non-conflict energy, green energy vs. black energy. That speaks on so many different levels, but yeah, we do talk a lot about biodiesel because that’s the road trip that we take in the movie.

MN: Specific to biodiesel, I’m wondering about fleet conversions such as school buses switching to biodiesel or utility companies switching over their service vehicles. What information do you have about the latest trends in that area?

Josh Tickell: I think there’s a strong trend. When we started this work there were only two or three fleets in the US testing out biodiesel. Today there are almost a thousand fleets across the US, which includes many school boards, NASA, a UPS trial and a FedEx trial of biodiesel. You know it’s not a toy, not a niche fuel, not a laboratory fuel. It’s a real fuel that goes into real engines, and it does real work delivering the goods that we use every day. I think that speaks a lot to the reliability of the fuel and why people can invest in it emotionally. They can believe in it because they can see it work. I mean we have ten vehicles here at Sundance running on biodiesel, no problem.

MN: Trucking is a major form of delivering goods in this country. We’ve heard some information that there would be a huge shift away from the overall usage of petroleum if we got the entire US trucking fleet to switch to biodeisel. Do you have any comments about that?

Josh Tickell: The USA uses approximately 200 billion gallons of fuel a year, and that’s a staggering amount. We use 40,000 gallons a second. It’s so much fuel you can’t even comprehend it! Of that, diesel-powered transport accounts for about 80 billion gallons, so it’s about 40% of our fuel. Now that includes agricultural machinery and off road machinery as well. So if you look at just the trucks themselves, it’s in the range of 20 to 25%. That’s back of the napkin, very rough numbers. It’s a staggering percentage of our fuel.

And truckers understand that biodiesel is better because they get slightly increased mileage, decreased emissions, the trucks run better and the engines last longer. You’re talking about an industry where a margin of a half a penny per gallon makes the difference at the end of the year between profiting and not profiting. So biodiesel is huge for truckers and it could be huge for the country if all trucks were using it.

MN: What would you say are the hurdles we have to cross to get the industry running on biodiesel?

Greg Reitman: It comes down to a matter of putting legislation in place that certifies fuel standards. It’s no longer a science. It’s proven that it works, and standards committees are already in place to test the fuel. The vehicle manufacturers also need to publicly endorse the use of the biodiesel standards in their products.

MN: But no mechanical conversion is required on the part of the manufacturers, right?

Greg Reitman: No, there’s no conversion at all. Any diesel vehicle can run on biodiesel. It’s just a matter of the automotive industry giving a stamp of approval for the fuel standard and a providing a warranty that they will stand behind their vehicle product. If they don’t move quickly enough, legislation may be required there as well.

MN: Then what about the creation and distribution of the fuel itself? Do you think we are still limited there, or do you see progress on that front?

Greg Reitman: That’s one of the things in the movie that you’ll see. In terms of the creation of the fuel, one of the highlights is algae. We saw a few days ago where Matter Network made a post about Solazyme. The reality of the situation is that the technology is here.

It’s a matter of getting big oil to realize that it’s not about big oil, it’s about alternative energy and shifting to that paradigm. And that’s what’s happening now. And Fields of Fuel provides a catalyst and the questions to get people to challenge the politicians. We need to say why aren’t we using this fuel source!

MN: And what about personal transportation? What kind of choices do you see for individual automobiles in the diesel realm?

Josh Tickell: What’s interesting is that when Greg and I started working on this movie together, we had basically the choice of a Volkswagon, a Mercedes, or a pickup truck. Now within the time that we made the film, the selection of cars has dramatically increased. There’s Audi, there’s Jeep, and Honda is coming out with a diesel. Everyone’s bringing their diesels into the US partly because we went and stuck cameras into the faces of everybody that has anything to do with the automotive industry and the legislation of this country.

And diesels get almost twice the gas mileage. I’m driving a Volkswagon Golf diesel that gets 55 miles per gallon, while the legislated CAFE standard for American cars is about 26 mpg. So just by driving a biodeisel, we get almost twice the fuel mileage of your average American car.

We really go into this in Fields of Fuel. We go into what’s wrong with American car manufacturers. European prototypes being road tested today are getting over 150 miles per gallon. That’s a four-door, four-seater car getting 150 mpg. If the US car companies can’t produce a car that gets better than 26 miles per gallon they’ll be out of business.

A key issue is whether Detroit is going live or die, because what’s happening right now is that Detroit is dieing. And Japanese companies are coming in and picking it apart. The foreign companies are coming in and hiring our US workers like we’re the third world.

So you quickly get in a conversation that it’s not about what kind of car is available. If you choose a diesel, you make a statement. If you choose biodiesel you are voting for green. And as more consumers do that, we could watch the US automotive industry and the US energy industry evaporate. We will be beholden to the organizations and the corporations that know how to produce technologically adept green energy solutions. It’s just a choice. Every consumer’s choice.

MN: That’s a very good point. Additionally, a number of Matter Network readers are advocates of electric vehicles, hybrids, or plug–in hybrids. Where would you see, in the individual’s personal choice, the selection of a diesel vehicle vs. a hybrid?

Josh Tickell: Biodiesel vs. hybrid. They are both good choices and for many, the hybrid is the most practical option. But at the end of the day when you look at the environmental impact, one currently uses gasoline, and the other uses biodiesel, which is a non-conflict fuel. There’s no blood on anybody’s hands from using biodiesel. There are no terrorists in our soybean fields. So I think the reality is we’ve got to take all these energy technologies and combine them. Isn't it time for a biodiesel hybrid?

Greg Reitman: Manufacturers built gasoline hybrids because at the time biodiesel wasn’t as big of a movement. But that’s changing. There are now many more biodiesel stations in Los Angeles since we started this film. Within the next 18 months, there will be hundreds more biodiesel stations added in our area and elsewhere because the green revolution is taking off. People are seeing An Inconvenient Truth, they are seeing The 11th hour, and they’ll see Fields of Fuel. They are now empowered to make demands.

MN: It appears that empowerment was expressed by the Audience Award. Congratulations. I know that each of you has poured all of your life force into making this film.

Greg Reitman: Winning the award for me was everything because up to that point, none of the distributors had made an offer on the movie. Josh and I talked before the awards ceremony and concluded our fate was coming down to winning the Audience Award. We’ve watched people express the desire to make their own choice about their fuel, their energy, and we’ve hoped Fields of Fuel both captures and inspires that. Then all of a sudden we are at the awards ceremony, we realize this is the one we really want to win, and then they announce Fields of Fuel, and it’s like, wow, that says everything!

MN: Fields of Fuel also represents a life mission for you, Josh. How does it feel to reach this milestone?

Josh Tickell: It’s funny, we’ve spent so much time working on the movie, 10 years just on the film itself. It was such a long process coming, that the closer we got to the awards ceremony, the more nervous I got.

But the gratification in receiving the award was not in getting a little glass trophy that says Sundance. The power was that the people consistently voted for this film in eight separate screenings. One of those screenings was in Salt Lake City and composed of a diverse audience of not just the Sundance crowd, but regular people on the street. So we had a cross section of left-leaning people and right-leaning people that consistently voted for the film.

If we would have had one screening with one set of votes, you could say well, it’s a fluke. Or if it was a jury of two or three judges, you could have said well, those particular judges like that particular movie. But we took a cross section of America, and they consistently voted that Fields of Fuel was the best film. The people made the ultimate decision and I think that speaks very powerfully about the movie.

MN: So far I’ve only seen clips from the film, and what I’ve seen represented really fine craftwork. How much would you attribute this award to the quality of filmmaking compared to the time we live in, as so many want to vote in favor of alternative fuels?

Josh Tickell: I think that both things are true. It’s a well-made film and it is a timely movie. We also think it speaks to something special and timeless. I believe that we will see Fields of Fuel live for a long time as a theatrical film, then as a TV film, then as a DVD film, and as an Internet downloadable film being seen around the world.

I think it’s a well-made movie. Everybody that has worked on this picture to bring it to completion is part of a cadre of very strong craftsmanship. So I believe the movie will stand the test of time. I believe it will hold up based on the beauty of the film and the emotional journey people are able to take when they sit in the theater.