Filmmakers

Husband and wife team Lincoln and Alice Day co-produced Scarred Lands,  & Wounded Lives. The film was released in 2008 and distributed by the Video Project. Today, its messages continue to be evergreen.

Lincoln Day passed away in December 2021 at the age of 94 (see New York Times obituary), just a month after the couple celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary. A native of New York City, Alice is a graduate of Smith College and Columbia University (MA in sociology), and the Australian National University (PhD in sociology). She and Lincoln, a graduate of Yale, met as graduate students at Columbia University. They have two children and three grandchildren.

Over their long life together, Alice and Lincoln worked on many joint projects focusing on population, peace, and environmental issues. Their earliest project was a book, Too Many Americans (1964), which explored the effect of population growth in rich countries on the quality of life in those countries and the implications of such growth for the global consumption of natural resources. They lived in Australia for 23 years and became dual citizens of Australia and the United States.

During their two decades in Australia, Alice completed work for her doctorate, published articles, wrote several books on her research on the social support of the aged, worked on community boards, and directed a government project designed to study and foster more independent living among older people.

In the late 1990s, she and Lincoln retired back to the US, taking up residence in Washington, DC, where they became active in the DC Environmental Film Festival. After several years working on the advisory board of the Festival, with the support of directors of the Festival and with Steve Michelson as an Executive Producer, the two embarked on the four-year project of producing Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War. The film shows how weapons have become increasingly lethal to the natural world and demonstrates the environmental devastation and related human suffering caused by extensive deforestation, unexploded landmines, nuclear weapons and testing, and the contamination of soil and water.

Throughout their lives, Alice and Lincoln shared a strong interest in what makes for a healthy society—one that respects the natural world and can be sustained over generations. Central to this is an interest in the values and political policies that support the attainment of this goal.

In its rampant destruction of the environment and deep suffering inflicted on the Ukrainian people, the war in Ukraine echoes the central connection between human health and environmental respect that Alice and Lincoln portray in their film. It is Alice’s goal to continue giving voice to this existential connection.