Environmental Selection

From the Ashes – USA  (2017)

Directed by:  Michael Bonfiglio

From the Ashes captures Americans in communities across the country as they wrestle with the legacy of the coal industry and what its future should be under the Trump Administration. From Appalachia to the West’s Powder River Basin, the film goes beyond the rhetoric of the “war on coal” to present compelling and often heartbreaking stories about what’s at stake for our economy, health, and climate. The film invites audiences to learn more about an industry on the edge and what it means for their lives.

From the Ashes premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 26, 2017

Print courtesy of National Geographic Films

Environmental Selection

Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution (USA) 2017

Directed by:  Jamie Redford

Filmmaker Jamie Redford embarks on a colorful journey into the dawn of the clean energy era as it creates jobs, turns profits, and makes communities stronger and healthier. Unlikely entrepreneurs in the communities from Folsom, CA to Georgetown, TX to Buffalo, NY reveal pioneering clean energy solutions while Jamie’s discovery of how clean energy works, and what it means at a personal level, becomes the audience’s discovery too. Reaching well beyond a great story of technology and innovation, the film als explores issues of human resilience, social justice, embracing the future, and finding hope for survival.

Print courtesy of HBO and the Redford Center

Environmental Selection

No Man’s Land – USA (2017)

Directed by:  David Byars

With unfettered access, director David Byars gives a detailed on-the-ground account of the 2016 standoff between protesters occupying Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and federal authorities. After the leaders of this occupation put out a call to arms via social media, the Malheur occupiers quickly bolstered their numbers with a stew of right-wing militia, protesters and onlookers. What began as a protest to condemn the sentencing of two ranchers quickly morphed into a catchall for those eager to register their militant antipathy toward the federal government. During the 41-day siege, the filmmakers were granted remarkable access to the inner workings of the insurrection as the occupiers went about the daily business of engaging in an armed occupation. No Man’s Land documents the occupation from inception to its dramatic demise and tells the story of those on the inside of this movement – the ideologues, the disenfranchised, and the dangerously quixotic, attempting to uncover what draws Americans to the edge of revolution.

Nominated for Jury Award – Best Documentary Feature – Tribeca Film Festival

Print courtesy of The Film Collaborative

Environmental Selection

Rise: Two Films (2017)

Rise: Sacred Water – Standing Rock (2017) – 50 minutes
Rise: Poisoned River (2017) – 44 minutes

Directed by:  Michelle Latimer

RISE is a vibrant, gripping and immersive documentary series that takes us to the frontlines of global indigenous resistance.

The people of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation of North and South Dakota are fighting to stop a pipeline from being built on their ancestral homeland. The Dakota Access Pipeline would snake its way across four states, bisecting sacred Indigenous sites and burial grounds along the route. The tribe fears that a leak could contaminate the Missouri River and spell disaster for the Great Sioux Nation. But water protectors are standing up in unprecedented numbers to preserve their way of life for future generations and to defend their sacred water.

Poisoned River examines indigenous life in the modern age and gives viewers a rare glimpse into Brazil’s Krenak People as they struggle to survive in the wake of a massive toxic spill that has not only contaminated their drinking water, but also their hunting grounds and culture.

Director Michelle Latimer will introduce the film

Environmental Selection

The Age of Consequences – USA (2016)

Directed by:  Jared P. Scott

The Age of Consequences investigates the impacts of climate change, resource scarcity, migration, and conflict through the lens of US national security and global stability. Whether a long-term vulnerability or sudden shock, the film unpacks how water and food shortages, extreme weather, drought, and sea-level rise function as accelerants of instability and catalysts for conflict. Left unchecked, these threats and risks will continue to grow in scale and frequency, with grave implications for peace and security in the 21st century. Military veterans and Pentagon insiders take us beyond the headlines of the European refugee crisis, the conflict in Syria, the social unrest of the Arab Spring, the rise of radicalized groups like ISIS, and lay bare how climate change stressors interact with societal tensions, sparking conflict. The film’s unnerving assessment is a call to action to rethink how we use and produce energy. In any military strategy, time is the most precious resource.