In an elaborate form of preparation for next Thursday’s signal community meeting with County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Baldwin Hills area activist group is sponsoring a free screening on Friday evening of a film warning of the perils of oil drilling for neighbors.

“Split Estate,” a documentary billed by supporters as “a film everyone living near oil and gas production must see,” will be shown at 7 o’clock at Windsor Hills Aero Magnet School Auditorium, 5215 Overdale Dr., city of Los Angeles.

For about two years, hundreds of Culver Crest/Baldwin Hills residents have been staging sophisticated, high-profile protests against the steadily widening oil drilling plans of Plains Exploration & Production Co., PXP, in the Baldwin Hills (also known as Inglewood) oil field.

Philosophically opposed to the expansion campaign, specifically they are objecting — some via lawsuits — to the drilling strategy that was mapped out last year by PXP and  subsequently approved by County officials, including the pre-Ridley-Thomas Board of Supervisors.

At the behest of the Citizens’ Coalition for  a Safe Community and others, Mr. Ridley-Thomas, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, convinced his fellow Supes, in the late summer, to approve re-opening of last year’s strongly disputed verdicts.

Mr. Ridley-Thomas will come to the community next Thursday — 6 o’clock in the Fine Arts Theatre on the West Los Angeles College campus —for a gigantic 3-hour Town Hall  a further report on the state of the re-opening.

Regarding tomorrow night’s screening,  activists are telling their neighbors: “Prepare, educate, enlighten and empower yourself” by taking in “Split Estate.”

Actress Ali McGraw provides narration for the film that makes the following assertions in its pre-release publicity:

“Imagine if you did not own the mineral rights under your land, and that an energy company planned to drill for natural gas 200 feet from your front door. Imagine having little recourse other than accepting an unregulated industry in your backyard. ‘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.”