Location: The Heritage Foundation's
Allison Auditorium
Ann McElhinney is a documentary film
director and producer. She is the producer and director of
Not Evil Just
Wrong, a feature length
documentary which examines the dangers and true cost of global
warming hysteria. The film highlights the tragic consequences of
the first triumph of the environmental movement, the ban on DDT,
which has resulted in the deaths of more than 40 million children
and adults in the developing world.
Previously McElhinney produced and
directed Mine Your
Own Business (2006), the
first documentary that asks difficult questions of the
environmental movement. As a result, 80 NGOs, including Greenpeace,
called for the film to be banned when it was screened in the
National Geographic auditorium in Washington.
Protestors compared Mine Your Own Business
to "nazi propaganda" and "pornography" and the filmmakers received
two death threats from environmentalists.
However Canada's The National Post said Mine Your Own Business
is "devastating because it combats prejudices
and fantasies with pictures that refute thousands of weasel words.
Images spun from afar. It deserves to be seen by anybody who wants
to understand the impact on poor people of radical
environmentalism."
McElhinney has also made documentaries for
the BBC, CBC (Canada) and RTE (Ireland). The Search for Tristan's
Mum (RTE, 2005) concerned the
case of Tristan Dowse, a baby who was adopted by an Irish man and
his wife in Indonesia. Then two years later when the adoptive
mother became pregnant they abandoned Tristan in an Indonesian
orphanage.
The case outraged Ireland and McElhinney
tracked down Tristan's natural mother and, going undercover,
infiltrated the baby-selling ring. Tristan is now living with his
natural mother in Indonesia and the baby sellers are serving
lengthy jail sentences.
The Irish government initiated a high court
protection order to protect Tristan's interests and when delivering
his judgment Justice John McMenamin said McElhinney deserved the
"highest of praise" for her investigative journalism.
McElhinney was featured in and was the
Associate Producer of the highly controversial documentary
Return to
Sender (2005) for
CBC.
McElhinney has also written for or
contributed to an array of international media organizations
including ABC (US), BBC, CBC (Canada), ABC (Australia), RTE
(Ireland), The
Sunday Times and
The Irish
Times. She is a regular
contributor to talk radio in the U.S. and has most recently
contributed to the Dennis Miller and Randi Rhodes show. McElhinney
has worked as a journalist and filmmaker in the US, Canada,
Romania, Bulgaria, Chile, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, China,
Ghana and Uganda.
McElhinney is also a highly entertaining and
inspirational speaker. She has most recently spoken at conferences
in New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Maine and Salt Lake
City.
More About the Speakers
Ann McElhinney
Producer