2012 Films A-Z
Chris Bentley/2011/16 min/Food & Agriculture
A film about Angela Taylor her community garden on Chicago's west side.
Bill Finnegan/2011/56 min/Health & Environment
Biophilic Design is an innovative way of designing the places where we live, work, and learn. We need nature in a deep and fundamental fashion, but we have often designed our cities and suburbs in ways that both degrade the environment and alienate us from nature. . . . Biophilic Design points the way toward creating healthy and productive habitats for modern humans.
Bill Plympton/2010/6 min/Wildlife
The Cow Who Wanted to be a Hamburger is a children's fable about the power of advertising, the meaning of life and ultimately the test of a mother's love.
Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow/2009/86 min/Health & Environment
DIRT! The Movie--directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow--takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth's most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility--from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.
Mark Kitchell/2012/119 min/Climate Control
A Fierce Green Fire is the first film to take on environmentalism as a whole, to bring together all the parts and eras, from conservation to climate change. It explores how the issues built into an international cause, the largest movement the world has ever seen and perhaps the most crucial in terms of what’s at stake.
Jeff & Jennifer Spitz/ 2014/ 73 min/ Food & Agriculture
A midwestern mother whose son nearly died from contaminated food embarks on a roller coaster journey to understand the food industry and improve her family’s eating habits. Surprising, funny, and poignant, this personal film unfolds from one family’s story into a powerful consumer movement. Food Patriots features food advocates from all walks of life who are trying to hatch a revolution to change the way Americans eat and buy food and educate the next generation of consumers.
Ana Sofia Joanes/2009/70 min/Food & Agriculture
FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.
Josh Tickell/2008/112 min/Energy
Eleven years in the making, FUEL is the in-depth personal journey of filmmaker and eco-evangelist Josh Tickell, who takes us on a hip, fast-paced road trip into America’s dependence on foreign oil. Combining a history lesson of the US auto and petroleum industries and interviews with a wide range of policy makers, educators, and activists such as Woody Harrelson, Sheryl Crow, Neil Young and Willie Nelson.
Bret Malley/2010/51 min/Health & Environment
Featuring renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben and business executive Scot Case, Greenwashers is a satirical documentary that blurs the line between green and greed, truth and believability, environmentalism and marketing. Misleading consumers about the environmental benefits of a product or service has become a new marketing standard and Greenwashers takes this practice to the extreme. Following a pair of Greenwashers, the film illustrates the various strategies, sins, and consequences of greenwash.
David Bunting/2011/6 min/Health & Environment
An immersive, animated documentary taking you into the heart of the Ecuadorian rainforest. A child's eye view of a life changing expedition by their teacher, Mrs Jones and their joint mission to preserve these vital forests. Pupils at Bricknell Primary School collaborated with animator David Bunting and local campaigning organisation, One Hull on Rainforest to create an animated campaign film about the Ecuadorian rainforest.
David John Kennard/2011/57 min/Health & Environment
Using his skills as a masterful storyteller, acclaimed author and evolutionary philosopher Brian Swimme connects such big picture issues as the birth of the cosmos 14 billion years ago – to the invisible frontiers of the human genome – as well as to our current impact on Earth’s evolutionary dynamics. Through his engaging and thoughtful observations audiences everywhere will discover the profound role we play in this intricate web of life.
Bill Haney/2011/95 min/Health & Environment
In the valleys of Appalachia, a battle is being fought over a mountain. It is a battle with severe consequences that affect every American, regardless of their social status, economic background or where they live. It is a battle that has taken many lives and continues to do so the longer it is waged. It is a battle over protecting our health and environment from the destructive power of Big Coal.
Christoph Fauchere/2011/54 min/Health & Environment
Mother, the film, breaks a 40-year taboo by bringing to light an issue that silently fuels our most pressing environmental, humanitarian and social crises - population growth. In 2011 the world population reached 7 billion, a startling seven-fold increase since the first billion occurred 200 years ago. . . Grounded in the theories of social scientist Riane Eisler, the film strives not to blame but to educate, to highlight a different path for humanity.
Taggart Siegel/2010/82 min/Wildlife
Taking us on a journey through the catastrophic disappearance of bees and the mysterious world of the beehive, this engaging and ultimately uplifting film weaves an unusual and dramatic story of the heartfelt struggles of beekeepers, scientists and philosophers from around the world including Michael Pollan, Gunther Hauk and Vandana Shiva. Together they reveal both the problems and the solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature.
Field Museum/2010/20 min/Climate Control
“We want people to come away from the exhibition realizing that conservation is much more than they may have previously thought — it’s science that helps us understand our world, but it’s also a lifestyle we can practice every day. . .We want to effect an attitude change – to make people care about nature instead of just learning about it. We’re trying to inspire.” (- Chicago’s Field Museum)
Peter Bratt/2007/56 min/Health & Environment
Her 1963 warnings about the effects of pesticides and herbicides - especially DDT - sparked a revolution in environmental policy and created a new ecological consciousness.
Christopher Monger/2010/30 min/Health & Environment
When pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, the backlash from her critics thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Despite her love of privacy, Carson's convictions about the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into a very public and controversial role.
Lisa Merton and Alan Dater/2010/30 min/Health & Environment
Taking Root tells the dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy—a movement for which this charismatic woman became an iconic inspiration.
Stephanie Soechtig/2010/76 min/Water
Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig's debut feature is an unfliching examination of the big business of bottled water. From the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car and I.O.U.S.A., this timely documentary is a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water.
Nick Hilligoss/1996/9 min/Wildlife
In this highly acclaimed animated film, a lone sea turtle travels through space, her breath creating a whole new atmosphere. This becomes filled with forests, rivers, mountains and enterprising monkeys...so enterprising that they are forced to learn about sustainability the hard way.
Disney/2008/98 min/Waste
What is mankind had to leave earth and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off? After hundreds of years doing what he was built for, WALL-E discovers a new purpose in life when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. EVE comes to realize that WALL-E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans. Meanwhile, WALL-E chases EVE across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most imaginative adventures ever brought to the big screen.
Ruby Yang/2010/39 min/Food & Agriculture
Villagers in central China take on a chemical company that is poisoning their land and water. For five years they fight to transform their environment and as they do, they find themselves transformed as well.
Lucy Walker/2010/100 min/Waste
Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives.
Liz Marshal/2010/79 min/Water
Water on the Table follows Council of Canadians activist Maude Barlow in her campaign to have water declared a human right and during her tenure as senior adviser on water to the UN. Barlow has been campaigning since the 1980s to get special protection for Canadian water and prevent it being sold commercially.
Catherine Gund/2010/76 min/Food & Agriculture
Whats on Your Plate? is a witty and provocative documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics. Filmed over the course of one year, the film follows two eleven-year-old multi-racial city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah take a close look at food systems in New York City and its surrounding areas. With the camera as their companion, the girl guides talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, in their quest to understand what’s on all of our plates.