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Over the past five years or so, the number of film festivals focusing specifically on films with environmental and ecological issues has grown significantly, and to coincide with NBC Universal’s Green, FilmInFocus has decided to spotlight the green film festival scene.

Wild & Scenic Film Festivals
Nevada City, California

One of the most high profile of the environmental film festivals to emerge in the past decade is the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, based in Nevada City, California. Described on its website as “a festival for activists by activists,” the event is run by the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL), a grassroots organization set up in 1983 to protect the Yuba Watershed, and initially began as a very modest operation.

Kathy Dotson, the festival’s director a SYRCL employee for the past 10 years, explains that Wild & Scenic happened for the first time in 2003 when her boss at SYRCL simply suggested, “Let’s put on a film festival.” Dotson admits that she had never been to a film festival in her life – let alone knew how to set up or run one – but that her background in organizing SYRCL events put her in a good position.

“We always knew how to throw a really good party at SYRCL,” Dotson says.” We were able to build on that with the film festival, and we infuse the event with a massive amount of fun and community. People always say how surprised they are at how enjoyable it was; there’s a spirit of celebration.”

Dotson readily admits that in the first year of the festival, “we put it on without knowing what we were doing. But it was a sold out show, and in the years since then we’ve expanded exponentially and now we’re one of the biggest environmental film festivals in the US.”

American Conservation Film Festival
Shepherdstown, West Virginia

Also started in 2003 was the American Conservation Film Festival, which runs out of Shepherdstown, West Virginia. It is headed by Amy Matthews Amos, a veteran environmental consultant, who has brought a practical and pragmatic approach to how ACFF operates. The festival looks at “the intersection between people and the environment” through classic-style wildlife films, but also examines “our impact on the environment, our culture and the way we live. Our goal is to educate and inspire people about the environment.”

In order to go beyond just what is seen on the screen, Matthews Amos introduced the Conservation in Context program that allows audiences to delve more deeply into the issues of the films after the lights have come up. At the 2009 edition of ACFF, there Conservation in Context events entitled “Returns to the Sea,” “We Are What We Eat,” “Predator Purgatory,” and “Conserving Cultures,” at which a marine biologist, a local farmer, a conservation biologist and an Environmental Studies professor respectively spoke about subjects explored in some of the movies screened. “People wanted to know more after the film,” says Matthews Amos, “and we’re hoping to expand that more, because they really want to learn.”

“I’d like to say we’re changing hearts and minds,” she continues, “but quantifying the effect isn’t easy. People are very enthusiastic. We’re doing our bit to make the world a better place, and film is a great way of getting ideas across.”

A way in which the ACFF is increasing its impact is by now complementing its annual festival slot in November with a traveling selection from the festival. During 2009, the festival played in its mobile capacity in towns in Delaware, Maine and Maryland, as well as elsewhere in West Virginia.

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EarthDance
Oakland, California

Another green film festival embracing mobility is EarthDance, an event founded by artist and environmentalist Zakary Zide in 2004 which in 2009 visited 10 U.S. locations beyond its launchpad home in Oakland, CA. Zide started EarthDance, he says, because he wanted to alter the way that the general populace looked at the planet: “I wasn’t too excited by the gloom and doom that I was seeing portrayed in the media about the environment. It didn’t reflect my experience with the natural world – it being beautiful, and full of humor and inspiration. I wanted to create a new platform for people to connect with the natural world.”

What makes EarthDance distinctive is its tone and accessibility. The festival is made up of short films (between three and 30 minutes) and the movies programmed are “fun, funny, and provocative” and “invite you to laugh and celebrate your relationship to the natural world.” And it is this alternative approach that has been the key to the success of EarthDance, says Zide: “This was before other environmental film festivals popped up, and having the short format opened it up to a wider audience. It was more inclusive to new voices.”

The most important thing for Zide is that he reaches his audience, and the combination of the wild and the movies is one that he finds people really respond to. “Everybody has a story with the natural world, it’s the context in which we live: being on the beach as a kid, or seeing a pigeon in the city as an adult. We’re living in much more urban settings now, so there’s a desire to reconnect with nature on film.”

And beyond showing films and reconnecting people with nature, Zide’s festival shows its concern for the environment in the way that it is run. “When we premiere each spring, we model environmental behavior, paying attention to the kind of materials we’re printing or on the refreshments we’re serving.”

At a time when film festivals are struggling financially and many are falling by the wayside, it’s impressive to see the ways in which environmental film fests are not just talking the talk but also walking the walk. At Wild & Scenic, Kathy Dotson has an extremely rigorous approach to minimizing damage from ecological standpoint, and has hired a “greening manager” who scrutinizes every aspect of the festival’s operations. “There’s definitely going to be a carbon footprint,” says Dotson, “but we try to make everything green. Everything is recyclable or compostable, and in the VIP lounge, everything is reusable.”

Princeton Environmental Film Festival
Princeton, New Jersey

Also making strides in this direction is the Princeton Environmental Film Festival (PEFF), which was started in 2007. Its director, Susan Conlon, has established a relationship with the local Environmental Commission to monitor sustainability. The festival also carefully scrutinizes its energy use to minimize waste, and uses EcoWare products (disposable “paper” plates, knives, forks, etc. made from a by-product of sugar) whenever it provides food.

Conlon established PEFF, after previously overseeing a human rights film festival at the university, due to the abundance of films addressing green issues. In the two years since, she has become aware of the impact the festival and its films can have on people: “Our aim is to have a venue like this where everyone to come together and develop awareness get new insights – for people get unformed and for those people to take community action. We try to be aware that we need to explore and expose the doom and gloom subjects, but people are opened up to new ideas and come here and then come back.”

Thinking long term is also a big part of the picture, as PEFF does not rent the films to screen at the festival but instead buys them for the permanent collection of the Princeton Library (of which the festival is a cultural program). People can watch something later if they missed one of the festival screenings (which are all free) so, as Conlon says, “the films live on.” The dynamism of the festival is central to how it defines its success, and Conlon describes the festival’s venue as “a pot that gets hotter and hotter – the energy really builds and builds.” And the people who attend PEFF, she stresses, are not audience members – “they’re participants. They’re not just there to be entertained.”

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Tales From Planet Earth
Madison, Wisconsin

Gregg Mitman, who runs the Tales From Planet Earth (TfPE) film festival in his capacity as Interim Director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has similarly found himself thinking closely about community involvement in his work. The author of Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film, Mitman had planned to run the festival as a one-off event in 2007, however it was such a success that it returned by popular demand earlier this month for a second edition.

The key question for Mitman has been, “What do you do with that kind of energy get from watching these films and link that to action?” As he sees it, the festival’s ideal role is to use film “as a force of environmental change and community activism.” One way that TfPE and Mitman have achieved the latter is by working with nine different community partners, such as Porchlight, a local residential and job training program for homeless people. The festival has acted as vendor of food products made by Porchlight, and thus helped create jobs for homeless people within the program.

As he looks forward, Mitman sees cinema as being one of the best hopes for educating people about the planet, and the way in which they can make a positive change. “It’s a really compelling medium for environmental issues,” says Mitman. “Stories move people, not issues. Film is a medium all about relationships, and how to see them in new ways, and the science of ecology is all about new relationships.”

RioFest
Socorro, New Mexico

Frances Deters, the head of RioFest, a green film festival based in Socorro, New Mexico, agrees with Mitman. “Film has the power to control our emotions and influence us more than any medium,” she says. “When you see ice shelves falling off in An Inconvenient Truth, it’s more likely to have a big impact than if you just read about it. It exposes people to things they’ve never seen before.”

The job of RioFest (which is named for the local river in the area, the Bosque) is, as Deters says, to “engage people in environmental issues and empowering people with solutions for their environmental problems and issues. We want to present films that offer ideas to people.”

Talking to the heads of environmental film festivals, there is an immense feeling of positivity looking forward to the future. Not only has there has been a great increase in the number of green-themed movies that festival programmers have to choose from, but the desire to tackle these issues is being felt just as strong by audiences as it is by filmmakers.

“I think it’s a wonderful movement forward,” says Amy Matthews Amos. “We aren’t going address our environmental problems unless we care, and film is a fabulous way of engaging people that way. I have worked as an environmental consultant for many years, working with fact and logic, but that only gets us so far. Films are immediate. What got me involved as a kid was watching National Geographic films, and seeing how wonderful and beautiful the world is. The more green film festivals there are and the more people who see the films, the more chance we have of changing things.”