We’ve selected the best environmental activism short films for your pleasure. Here’s what you can expect to enjoy during our Evening Film Screening.
- A Liter Of Light
Nick Santiago, Mike Talampas
The film documents a foundation’s project to light up a poor neighborhood through the efforts of a local man who works for them. He becomes a beacon of hope to his community when he installs hundreds of solar-powered light bulbs in his neighbor’s houses. The clever device is made from old plastic soda bottles filled with water and bleach. Many of the homeowners can barely afford electricity and because their houses stand so close to each other, they don’t really get much daylight. With a little bleach, water and good will, their days are now much, much brighter.
- Gimp Monkeys
Fitz Cahall
What has four legs, five arms and three heads? The Gimp Monkeys. Craig DeMartino lost his leg after a 100-foot climbing fall. Pete Davis with born without an arm. Bone cancer claimed Jarem Frye’s left leg at the age of 14. While the three are linked by what they are missing, it is their shared passion for climbing that pushed them towards an improbable goal – the first all-disabled ascent of Yosemite’s iconic El Capitan. There was no cause. No call for awareness. No fundraising. “We are climbers first, disabled second,” says DeMartino. “If you’re a climber, you want to climb El Cap.” The Gimp Monkeys follows their successful ascent of Zodiac, a 1,800-foot route on the Southeast Face of El Capitan.
- Public Lands, Private Profits: Too Special To Drill
Pierre Kattar, Tom Kenworthy, Christy Goldfuss
The Center for American Progress, in partnership with the Sierra Club, undertook a series of video mini-documentaries that revealed three places held in the public trust threatened by pending proposals to mine and drill in or around them. In Part Three, natural gas drilling would bring an ignoble end to Wyoming’s spectacular Noble Basin and its residents’ exceptional way of life.
- Second Nature: The Biomimicry Evolution
Guy Lieberman and Matthew Rosmarin
Second Nature: The Biomimicry Evolution explores biomimicry, the science of emulating nature’s best ideas to solve human problems. Set in South Africa, the film follows Time magazine “Hero of the Environment” Janine Benyus as she illustrates how organisms in nature can teach us to be more sustainable engineers, chemists, architects, and business leaders. After 3.8 billion years, nature has discovered not only how to survive but also how to thrive as a system. Benyus brings deep affection for the natural world as she guides us toward a vision of a planet in balance between human progress and ecosystem survival.
- Moonwalk
Mikey Schaefer
Dean Potter is nothing if not creative. In this short piece, he highlines across a desert landscape with a massive full moon as his backdrop.
- Murder Mouth
Madeleine Parry, Daniel Joyce
Madeleine loves her Greek family’s traditional lamb souvlaki but her friends claim that meat is murder. Well, Madeleine’s never killed anything bigger than a spider, so she decides to reconnect the animal and the meal or never eat meat again. After talking to the people who slaughter animals for their livelihood she is encouraged to do it herself, but even if she can kill an animal, will she still want to eat it afterwards?
- Two Laps
Val and Pete have been swimming together every morning for the past seventeen years. Once a year they have a race, two laps up and back.
- Last Light
Nick Waggoner, Ben Sturgelewski
There is an undeniable magic in alpenglow– the final seconds of a day’s light that give mountains impossible texture and life before falling into shadow. In the endless spring hours of Haines, Alaska, light is as bountiful as snow. But to capture the best of both, that singularly lit moment that turns powder into frozen red fire, you must live all day in the midst of them; ready to drop in long after the helicopters have gone home and your line is made magic in the last of the light. Featuring Stephan Drake, Forrest Shearer, and Johan Jonsson and presented by Patagonia.
- Wild Things
Daniel Hinerfeld, Molly O’Brien, Lisa Whiteman
Native carnivores balance ecosystems and keep wilderness healthy. But they are also seen as a threat to livestock, and for decades ranchers and government trappers have slaughtered them. The Wildlife Services program within U.S.D.A. kills a hundred thousand coyotes, wolves and other native carnivores annually. It is a battle against nature that is costly, brutal, and not very effective. Does the battle really need to be fought? Wild Things introduces audiences to progressive ranchers learning to peacefully coexist with these animals and features scientists, conservationists and even former Wildlife Services trappers, who believe it is time for a major change in the way we treat our magnificent native carnivores.
- Ernest
Samuel Bricker, Nathan Ward, Claude Demoss
Ernest Wilkerson is struggling to hold onto an independent lifestyle while facing a changing world and his own advancing age. Born in 1924, this humble mountain man cherishes his active life: “I cannot picture myself just sittin’ around doing nothin’.” A local legend in Monte Vista, Colorado, Wilkerson learned to fend for himself at a young age, becoming a government-hired wildlife trapper, taxidermist, conservationist and teacher of backcountry survival skills. His specialty is snow caves, but he says, “Your best survival tool is your brain.”
