2015 Films A-Z
Lori Joyce and Candice Orlando/ 2012/ 88 min/ Social Justice
FILM DESCRIPTION: A film that captures the portraits and stories of extraordinary women around the world who are coming together to heal the injustices against the earth, weaves together poetry, music, art and stunning scenery to create a hopeful and collective story that inspires us to work for the earth.
Lori Joyce and Candice Orlando/ 2012/ 88 min/ Social Justice
FILM DESCRIPTION: A film that captures the portraits and stories of extraordinary women around the world who are coming together to heal the injustices against the earth, weaves together poetry, music, art and stunning scenery to create a hopeful and collective story that inspires us to work for the earth.
Amy Browne/ 2014/ 102 min/ Health & Environment
FILM DESCRIPTION: What if our last act could be a gift to the planet? Determined that his final resting place will benefit the earth, musician, psychiatrist, and folk dancer Clark Wang prepares for his own green burial while battling lymphoma. The spirited Clark and his partner Jane, boldly facing his mortality, embrace the planning of a spiritually meaningful funeral and join with a compassionate local cemetarian to use green burial to save a North Carolina woods from being clear-cut.
Evan Abramson & Carmen Elsa/ 2011/ 23 min/ Water
FILM DESCRIPTION: The award-winning short film by Evan Abramson & Carmen Elsa Lopez brings to life the daily struggles experienced by millions of residents living in western Kenya without easy access to safe drinking water. But the film is also about hope. It showcases a unique new public health program providing the region with sustainable access to clean water. The film chronicles the program start-up, when nearly 880,000 water filters were distributed for free to almost all homes in the region. It shows how this program’s unique carbon financing model ensures sustainability at no cost to residents, governmental agencies or donor groups.
Amy Miller/ 2012/ 90 min/ Health & Environment
FILM DESCRIPTION: From indigenous rain forest dwellers having their way of life completely threatened, to dozens of Campesinos assassinated, to the livelihood of waste pickers at landfills taken away, THE CARBON RUSH travels across four continents and brings us up close to projects working through the United Nations, Kyoto Protocol designed Clean Development Mechanism. This groundbreaking documentary feature asks the fundamental questions “What happens when we manipulate markets to solve the climate crisis? Who stands to gain and who stands to suffer?”
Kip Andersen/ 2014/ 91 min/ Wildlife
FILM DESCRIPTION: Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary following intrepid filmmaker Kip Andersen as he uncovers the most destructive industry facing the planet today – and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it
Andrew Hasse/ 2012/ 55 min/ Food & Agriculture
FILM DESCRIPTION: Edible City is a fun, fast-paced journey through the Local Good food movement that's taking root in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the nation and around the world. Introducing a diverse cast of extraordinary and eccentric characters who are challenging the paradigm of our broken food system, Edible City digs into their unique perspectives and transformative work, finding hopeful solutions to monumental problems.
Jared Flesher/ 2013/ 53 min/ Wildlife
FILM DESCRIPTION: Field Biologist is the story of 22-year-old Tyler Christensen, a talented but underemployed high school graduate from New Jersey still trying to figure out what to do with his life. Tyler’s great love is being outside, chasing birds and studying wildlife. One day he decides—brushing aside his lack of a college degree or scientific credentials—to drop everything and travel to Costa Rica to start doing his own conservation-oriented research on birds in the tropics.
David Mrazek/ 2014/ 57 min/ Wildlife
FILM DESCRIPTION: From Billions to None: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction reveals the compelling story of the unlikely extinction of the passenger pigeon. For millennia, the sleek long-distance flyer was the most abundant bird in North America and perhaps the world. Then, in a matter of decades, it was hunted to extinction.
Jen Rustemeyer/ 2014/ 75 min/ Food & Agriculture
FILM DESCRIPTION: An award-winning documentary about the staggering amounts of food that go to waste in households and farm fields, “Just Eat It” was one of three audience favorites in the online balloting that began the weekend of One Earth Film Festival 2015. A five-person jury screened three films, reaching the decision to select “Just Eat It” as One Earth Film Festival 2015 First Choice winner.
Caroline Bacle/ 2013/ 72 min/ Water
FILM DESCRIPTION: Once upon a time, in almost every industrial city, countless rivers flowed. We built houses along their banks. Our roads hugged their curves. And their currents fed our mills and factories. But as cities grew, we polluted rivers so much that they became conduits for deadly waterborne diseases like cholera, which was 19th century's version of the Black Plague. Our solution two centuries ago was to bury rivers underground and merge them with sewer networks. Today, under the city, they still flow, out of sight and out of mind… until now.
Amy Miller/ 2013/ 75 min/ Food & Agriculture
FILM DESCRIPTION: No Land No Food No Life is a hard-hitting film which explores sustainable small scale agriculture and the urgent call for an end to corporate global land grabs. This feature length documentary gives voice to those directly affected by combining personal stories, and vérité footage of communities fighting to retain control of their land.
Steve Ellington/ 2013/ 20 min/ Wildlife
FILM DESCRIPTION: This story follows Steve Repasky, a beekeeper in Pittsburgh, Pa., during his beekeeping efforts throughout the year. Urban beekeeping is not only about honey production. Educating the public, managing feral bee colonies and capturing swarms around the city keep Steve very busy, in addition to dealing with the calamity of Colony Collapse Disorder.
David Bond/ 2013/ 120 min/ Health & Environment
FILM DESCRIPTION: Filmmaker David Bond is a worried man. His kids' waking hours are dominated by a cacophony of marketing, and a screen dependence threatening to turn them into glassy-eyed zombies. Like city kids everywhere, they spend way too much time indoors - not like it was back in his day. He decides it's time to get back to nature – literally.
Jessica Plumb/ 2014/ 69 min/ Water
FILM DESCRIPTION: Return of the River offers a story of hope and possibility amid grim environmental news. It is a film for our time: an invitation to consider crazy ideas that could transform the world for the better. It features an unlikely success story for environmental and cultural restoration. Fundamentally, the Elwha River in Washington State is a story about people and the land they inhabit. The film captures the tenacity of individuals who would not give up on a river, mirroring the tenacity of salmon headed upstream to spawn.
Deborah Koons/ 2013/ 104 min/ Food & Agriculture
FILM DESCRIPTION: Drawing from ancient knowledge and cutting edge science, Symphony of the Soil is an artistic exploration of the miraculous substance soil. By understanding the elaborate relationships and mutuality between soil, water, the atmosphere, plants and animals, we come to appreciate the complex and dynamic nature of this precious resource.
David Sington & Simon Lamb/ 2013/ 74 min/ Climate Control
FILM DESCRIPTION: Climate science has been coming under increasing attack. Geologist Simon Lamb takes a look at what’s really happening with global warming by filming scientists at work in the Arctic, the Antarctic and around the world. The result is a unique exploration of the science behind global warming, and an intimate portrait of a global community of researchers racing to understand our planet’s changing climate.
Andrew Garrison/ 2013/ 68 min/ Waste
FILM DESCRIPTION: Choreographer Allison Orr finds beauty and grace in garbage trucks, and in the unseen men and women who pick up our trash. Filmmaker Andrew Garrison follows Orr as she rides along with Austin sanitation workers on their daily routes to observe and later convince them to perform a most unlikely spectacle.
Ed Brown/ 2013/ 90 min/ Waste
FILM DESCRIPTION: Unacceptable Levels examines the results of the chemical revolution of the 1940s through the eyes of affable filmmaker Ed Brown, a father seeking to understand the world in which he and his wife are raising their children. To create this debut documentary, one man and his camera traveled extensively to find and interview top minds in the fields of science, advocacy, and law.
Nailah Jefferson/ 2014/ 91 min/ Health & Environment
FILM DESCRIPTION: Vanishing Pearls is the story of paradise lost – an ongoing, environmental David and Goliath struggle between multinational oil and gas company BP plc (Beyond Petroleum) and a 300 person,
Orlando von Einsiedel/ 2014/ 100 min/ Wildlife
FILM DESCRIPTION: In the forested depths of eastern Congo lies Virunga National Park, one of the most bio-diverse places on Earth and home to the planet’s last remaining mountain gorillas. In this wild, but enchanted environment, a small and embattled team of park rangers - including an ex-child soldier turned ranger, a caretaker of orphan gorillas and a dedicated conservationist - protect this UNESCO world heritage site from armed militia, poachers and the dark forces struggling to control Congo's rich natural resources.
Orlando von Einsiedel/ 2014/ 100 min/ Wildlife
FILM DESCRIPTION: In the forested depths of eastern Congo lies Virunga National Park, one of the most bio-diverse places on Earth and home to the planet’s last remaining mountain gorillas. In this wild, but enchanted environment, a small and embattled team of park rangers - including an ex-child soldier turned ranger, a caretaker of orphan gorillas and a dedicated conservationist - protect this UNESCO world heritage site from armed militia, poachers and the dark forces struggling to control Congo's rich natural resources.