2013 Films

Rallying the youth of the world to tackle the greatest challenge of our times, this film seeks to inspire a revolution that will change the planet and save life on Earth... 

Join Us to Celebrate the 21th Anniversary of the Environmental Film Festival!

Contemporary Art, Dance, and Music * Wine, Beer, and a special FRESHFARM Markets cocktail * Hors d’oeuvre * Silent Auction

Heavy crude oil extraction from the northern Alberta tar sands is arguably one of the world’s most environmentally devastating industries... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Animated Films For School Age Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested Ages: 5-8 

Program includes A SEA TURTLE STORY, HELLO, I'M A NUTRIA, BUNTY'S TREE, SONG OF THE SPINDLE, HANGING AROUND, THE WINDMILL FARMER, and A DROP'S LIFE...

Shown as part of the Rivers Program

Once flowing through nearly every developed city in the world, rivers provided the infrastructure upon which modern metropolises were built... 

A strong-willed 32-year-old Jordanian mother of four, Rafea is traveling outside of her village for the first time ever to attend Barefoot College’s solar engineering program...

Rhine Film Series, Part One and shown as part of the Rivers Program

Includes THE YOUNG AND THE WILD RHINE - SWITZERLAND and THE TAMED RHINE - SWITZERLAND, GERMANY, FRANCE...

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Join filmmakers Lizabeth Rogers and Kevin Flint on a journey through the American West to expose uranium mining and our atomic legacy for what it really is...

According to Bajo tribal folklore, a ritual mirror can display an image of a missing fisherman who will return from the sea... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Animated Films For School Age Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested Ages: 5-8 

Program includes A SEA TURTLE STORY, HELLO, I'M A NUTRIA, BUNTY'S TREE, SONG OF THE SPINDLE, HANGING AROUND, THE WINDMILL FARMER, and A DROP'S LIFE...

Program includes COMMUNITY HARVEST and IN TRANSITION 2.0... 

At the age of 14, Juliette is on a mission to save elephants. After single-handedly raising funds, she embarks on a life-altering journey...

Shown with GO GANGES! 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program

Once flowing through nearly every developed city in the world, rivers provided the infrastructure upon which modern metropolises were built... 

Part of the beauty of renewables is their availability: we all get some sun, wind or geothermal heat and we can harvest that energy...

Inori is a picturesque and isolated mountain village in Japan, where only a few elderly residents remain... 

Dropped by their national milk company, a group of Maine dairy farmers is suddenly confronted with the real possibility of losing their farms...

A Gabonese tribal queen, played by popular singer Patience Dabany, hopes to recover a sacred necklace...

For the last five decades, Baltazar Ushca has made a living harvesting glacial ice from the tallest mountain in Ecuador...

Shown with LONESOME GEORGE AND THE BATTLE FOR THE GALAPAGOS

Officially the loneliest animal on the planet until his death in June 2012, Lonesome George was the very last Pinta Island giant tortoise...

Shown with THE LAST ICE MERCHANT

In January 2001 local conservationists discovered an inter-tidal area on Pulau Ubin Island in Singapore...

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Two television producers and adventure travelers test their skills on an epic adventure, paddling down one of the world’s busiest, most polluted and most sacred rivers...

Shown with HOW I BECAME AN ELEPHANT.

Animated Films For Pre-School Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested ages 2-5 years

Program includes RED HEN, HI! FLY GUY, A SEA TURTLE STORY, GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT, CONSTRUCTION SITE & HANGING AROUND.

While China’s economic ascent commands global attention, less light has been shed upon the monumental problem of waste...

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Animated Films For School Age Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested Ages: 5-8 

Program includes A SEA TURTLE STORY, HELLO, I'M A NUTRIA, BUNTY'S TREE, SONG OF THE SPINDLE, HANGING AROUND, THE WINDMILL FARMER, and A DROP'S LIFE...

Rhine Film Series, Part Two and shown as part of the Rivers Program

Includes THE MAJESTIC RHINE - GERMANY and OPENING TO THE WORLD - THE NETHERLANDS...

Gives the drought Eastern Africa has just experienced in 60 years a human face and brings us closer to the challenges that individuals face from climate change...

Venice is inextricably linked to her salty, fresh and brackish waters, an inexhaustible resource that now threatens the city’s very survival... 

This event is canceled due to the death of Hugo Chávez

Based in Berlin and Milan, the media arts group FLATFORM creates time-based works, events and installations under their collective name...

Follow the quest of professional surfer Dave “Rasta” Rastovich and his friends to help protect the ocean and its inhabitants... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Retired Marine Colonel Eric Hastings remembers flight missions “high above the death and destruction” in Vietnam...

In a remote community where life is cheap and people struggle to survive, one small Aboriginal boy shows how courage can conquer even the greatest odds...

New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the nation, is situated between New York, the largest U.S. city and Philadelphia, the fifth largest... 

Cuba's ambitious National Art Schools project, designed by three young visionary architects in the wake of Castro's Revolution... 

The fight for the last great mountain in America's Appalachian heartland pits the mining giant, Massey Energy, which wants to explode the mountain... 

Film, Discussion and Book Signing

Artist, writer and naturalist James Prosek has been called “the Audubon of the 21st Century” for his realistic depictions of fish as they appear in the wild... 

In a remote cabin in the Patagonian Andes, Payaguala, an elderly native Tehuelche gaucho, lives a solitary and contented life... 

Spotlighting the rebels, a group of citizens from many walks of life who fought to preserve open space and protect agriculture and wildlife... 

Among the world’s most influential designers, Italian-born Lella and Massimo Vignelli have created signage and maps for New York’s subway, the interior of Saint Peter’s Church at Citicorp Center, and more... 

Sculptor Todd McGrain believes that forgetting is a type of cultural extinction. He aims to keep memories alive for five extinct North American birds... 

According to a popular saying in Dakar, Senegal, “You can find anything in the world at Colobane Market”... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, Amazon Gold is the disturbing account of a clandestine journey that bears witness to the apocalyptic destruction of the rainforest... 

A Presentation by Tony Huston

The Earth Conservation Corps and Wings Over America will present live birds of prey used in falconry. 

Follow the story of Tim DeChristopher and his stunning act of civil disobedience in a time of global climate chaos... 

Based on the Chinese legend of Ye Xian that predates Perrault’s Cinderella by about 800 years, the film focuses on little Mei Mei who is a gifted potter...

Suggested ages 10 and up. 

Featuring THE AFRICAN QUEEN, THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, and WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART. 

John Huston in Africa Program

In Fort Lamy, French Equatorial Africa, idealist Morel launches a one-man campaign to preserve African elephants from extinction, which he sees as the last remaining "roots of heaven"...

Shown with THE AFRICAN QUEEN and WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART. 

Animated Films For Pre-School Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested ages 2-5 years

Program includes RED HEN, HI! FLY GUY, A SEA TURTLE STORY, GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT, CONSTRUCTION SITE & HANGING AROUND.

Oceans at Risk

Do we fish the last ocean or do we protect it? The most pristine marine ecosystem on Earth, the Ross Sea...

Shown with OCEAN FRONTIERS: THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA IN OCEAN STEWARDSHIP and PLANET OCEAN. 

Filmed over the course of a year, Meerkats 3D follows an extraordinary—not to mention adorable —family that stands just 12 inches tall... 

John Huston in Africa Program

Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn go on location with Oscar-winning director John Huston in the African countries of Nairobi, Uganda and the Republic of Congo...

Shown with THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN and WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART.

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Animated Films For School Age Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested Ages: 5-8 

Program includes A SEA TURTLE STORY, HELLO, I'M A NUTRIA, BUNTY'S TREE, SONG OF THE SPINDLE, HANGING AROUND, THE WINDMILL FARMER, and A DROP'S LIFE...

Oceans at Risk

Tainted waters, dying reefs and failing fisheries, the myth of the boundless ocean is no more...

Shown with THE LAST OCEAN and PLANET OCEAN.

Castelli in performance

All of modern poetry is here . . . the quais, the boats, the dirty room, the great inspiring themes of the literature of the day.  – Henri Langlois...

Presented in collaboration with the exhibition, “Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock Ossorio, and Dubuffet” 

The fierce struggle by art critic René Deroudille to persuade the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, France...

Ciné-Concert:  Marseille, The Old Port

A Marseille barmaid tries to flee her lover for another man in this spare, silent melodrama...

Shown with MARSEILLE WITHOUT SUN (MARSEILLE SANS SOLEIL). 

Ciné-Concert: Marseille, The Old Port

Three young people shoot a film celebrating their city, the largest port on the Mediterranean and a muse for filmmakers since the birth of cinema...

Shown with FAITHFUL HEART (COEUR FIDELE).

As energy exploration, excavation and export remain Canada’s economic backbone, contradictions and debates abound on the risks and rewards of development... 

John Huston in Africa Program

The world-famous movie director John Wilson has gone to Africa to make his next movie...

Shown with THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN and THE AFRICAN QUEEN. 

Oceans at Risk

Can a film change the way people look at the ocean? Can we explain the greatest natural mystery of our planet...

Shown with THE LAST OCEAN and OCEAN FRONTIERS: THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA IN OCEAN STEWARDSHIP. 

Rallying the youth of the world to tackle the greatest challenge of our times, this film seeks to inspire a revolution that will change the planet and save life on Earth... 

A modern-day story of love, loss and resilience, the film follows Monique Verdin’s quest to find a place in her Native American community, the Houma Nation... 

A political drama following a California Congresswoman as she struggles for re-election that highlights the strategies, highs and pitfalls of running for and holding on to elected office...

Based on the Chinese legend of Ye Xian that predates Perrault’s Cinderella by about 800 years, the film focuses on little Mei Mei who is a gifted potter...

Suggested ages 10 and up. 

Nature’s powerful role in children’s health and development is explored through the experience of toddlers, children in middle childhood and adolescents... 

In 2006, one man began a quest to make the world a better place for everyone to live and show that if you try hard enough, one person really can make a difference... 

It would be hard to name anyone who has had more of an impact on animal research and wildlife conservation than Jane Goodall...

Shown with BENY, BACK TO THE WILD and FOR THE BEST AND FOR THE ONION. 

Urban Rivers and shown as part of the Rivers Program

How do we transform our city landscapes to actually benefit the environment? How do we manage our natural resources... 

The March 17 screening is part of the Urban Rivers Program, shown with The Anacostia River. 

Winners from the Siemens CityStories for Sustainability Film Project 

This project features ten next generation filmmakers selected from around the world to make films about sustainability in their city...

Shown with In Search of Solutions. 

Shown as a part of In Search of Solutions and with CityStories Series. 

Shot over the past nine years by award-winning Brazilian documentary photographer Salgado during more than 30 different trips to distant corners of the globe, the black and white photographs...

A Shorts Program including GENESIS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIÃO SALGADO, THE SECRET OF TREES, GROW DAT YOUTH FARM, SONG OF THE SPINDLE, and WHERE WE LIVE: THE CHANGING FACE OF CLIMATE ACTIVISM.

Shown with CityStories Series.

Urban Rivers and shown as part of the Rivers Program

Shown with ROCK THE BOAT.

The moving true story of a young bonobo's return to life in the wild. Captured by hunters and held in captivity in the city of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Beny is rescued by Claudine André...

Shown with JANE'S JOURNEY and FOR THE BEST AND FOR THE ONION. 

Native carnivores balance ecosystems and keep the wilderness healthy, but they are also seen as a threat to livestock, and for decades ranchers and government trappers have slaughtered them... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Take an Odyssean voyage of outward adventure and inner reflection to the Alaska Peninsula, a narrow frontier between warm and cold latitudes extending 500 miles from the Alaskan mainland... 

“I am singing about onion farming, bringing both suffering and joy.” So sings an onion farmer as he works his field in Galmi, Niger.

Shown with JANE'S JOURNEY and BENY, BACK TO THE WILD. 

Twilight touching down on a near-empty American townscape is the consistent theme of Gregory Crewdson's hyper-real photography... 

As Einstein warned: "If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live"... 

Selection from Matsalu Nature Film Festival, Estonia

Harri has been studying moose and their inner natures for more than 30 years...

Shown with A JOURNEY TO THE SOURCE OF THE LENA and THE RETURN OF THE MUSK OX. 

Thanks to the Trust for Mutual Understanding for their support of this program.
 
Featuring OLD MAN AND THE MOOSE, A JOURNEY TO THE SOURCE OF THE LENA, and RETURN OF THE MUSK OX.

Selection from Matsalu Nature Film Festival, Estonia and shown as part of the Rivers Program

The Lena is the greatest river in Russia. At its center, the Lena is 19 miles wide, while its lower delta has 150 branches...

Shown with OLD MAN AND THE MOOSE and THE RETURN OF THE MUSK OX. 

Lucien and Regina are a husband-and-wife team of foragers who make their living gathering wild mushrooms in the woodlands of New Jersey and selling them to New York City restaurants... 

Selection from Matsalu Nature Film Festival, Estonia. 

The experiment of repopulating the Taimyr Peninsula with the musk ox, which began thirty years ago, has enriched Arctic biodiversity...

Shown with OLD MAN AND THE MOOSE and A JOURNEY TO THE SOURCE OF THE LENA. 

If you have ever asked yourself where the fish you eat comes from, you are about to learn first-hand about the huge pirate fishing industry that is committing a crime on your plate every day... 

Endangered Rivers

Shown as part of the Rivers Program

The Southeastern United States is a region that used to be known for plentiful rainfall and abundantly flowing rivers...

Shown with POTOMAC: THE RIVER RUNS THROUGH US. 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program.

Featuring CHATTAHOOCHEE: FROM WATER WAR TO WATER VISION and POTOMAC: THE RIVER RUNS THROUGH US

From currency to candy, chocolate reflects a rich history of sacred ritual, endorphin highs, hip anti-oxidants, exotic sensuality, high quality luxury and enslaved children...

The Alps are an ancient region of natural beauty that is changing as a result of global warming... 

Endangered Rivers

Shown as part of the Rivers Program

Each of us is connected to rivers in our everyday lives. Most of the six million people living in the Potomac River watershed do not realize that their drinking water comes from the Potomac... 

Shown with CHATTAHOOCHEE: FROM WATER WAR TO WATER VISION. 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Embark on a 30-day drift boat expedition down the longest free-flowing river in the continental United States...

Shuttles entertainingly from the ridiculous to the sublime as the film introduces us to an unforgettable group of characters whose years-long obsession with the moon has reached truly galactic proportions...

Botanical illustrator Margaret Mee lived for 36 years in Brazil, where she organized and carried out 15 expeditions to the Amazon rainforest, leaving an important and rare iconographic and artistic legacy...

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

The Bozos in the West African nation of Mali have been renowned for many generations for their skill in the art of fishing... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

The Amazon is generally portrayed as a land of mystery populated by indigenous people surrounded by exotic fauna and flora in an environment threatened by encroaching mining and farming...

A Selection from the 2012 United Nations Association Traveling Film Festival 

What happens when one industry has too much power? Politicians become pawns. Laws are created, prevented and sometimes broken. Regulations are bypassed...

“Jonathan Bird's Blue World” is an award-winning, educational, family-oriented television series hosted by marine naturalist and underwater photographer Jonathan Bird...

The Atlantic bluefin tuna, one of the largest, fastest, most prized fish in the sea, is now being fished to the brink of extinction...

A Focus on Environmental Solutions in Africa

Along the northern coast of Tanzania, a series of innovative development projects organized by community members, the Tanzania Coastal Management Partnership, the BALANCED Project and USAID are combining conservation efforts...

Shown with TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE CENRTRAL ALBERTINE RIFT TRANSFRONTIER PROTECTED AREA NETWORK. 

A Focus on Environmental Solutions in Africa

The second episode in the Transcending Boundaries series takes us to the Central Albertine Rift in the Great Lakes region of East Africa between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda...

Shown with INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT IN TANZANIA: HEALTHY PEOPLE, HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT. 

A selection of short films that explore some of the most critical, and timely, topics related to one of the planet's most valuable, yet under-appreciated, resources: our oceans...

Connecting people in different places of this world whose everyday lives are affected by global warming...

Shown with RAISING RESISTANCE. 

The advent of the automobile changed the world and its inhabitants as no other means of transport had ever done before... 

Internationally renowned environmental artist Patrick Dougherty has created hundreds of monumental site-specific sculptures out of nothing more than saplings...

Veteran wildlife film producer Chris Palmer’s controversial book, “Shooting in the Wild: An Insider’s Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom,” has been widely praised... 

“There’s no Hispanic air. There’s no African-American air. There’s air! And if you breathe air – and most people I know do breathe air, then I would consider you an environmentalist,” as one advocate put it...

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Central Europe’s largest tributary of the Danube, the 323-mile Inn River flows through Switzerland, the Austrian Tyrol and Bavaria... 

The ground in Paraguay is perfect for the cultivation of soy. In recent years, countless acres of forest have been chopped down to make room for the growing of this protein-rich bean...

Shown with WARM PERIOD (WARMZEIT). 

What really does happen to our trash once we have thrown it away? If you are like most people, you don’t know. There are seven billion people on the planet today and we are creating more garbage than ever... 

A blue dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria, indigo has captured the human imagination for millennia and has been in use worldwide since antiquity...

Animated Films For Pre-School Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested ages 2-5 years

Program includes RED HEN, HI! FLY GUY, A SEA TURTLE STORY, GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT, CONSTRUCTION SITE & HANGING AROUND.

The unique Finnish forest and its colorful and diverse life are celebrated in this film for the entire family...

Aluminum is a fascinating metal: light, stainless and easy to process. One hundred years ago, it was still so exotic that it was presented at world expositions... 

***Work-in-Progress***

Does a family make a house or does a house make a family? Times change. A once simple and sparse seaside town has become crowded and opulent...

Screening EFF-selected student films and films by the 2012/2013 Scholars at the Center for Environmental Filmmaking at American University, the student shorts program highlights the opportunities and challenges of environmental filmmaking...

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

After Home and the “Earth from Above” series, Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s latest film focuses on one of the major challenges to human survival: water...

In Bahia, Brazil, generations of impoverished families live in palafitas, a vast network of shacks built on stilts above a rising tide of garbage over the ocean bay... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program

Working in an intimate, verité style, filmmaker Kalyanee Mam spent two years following three young Cambodians as they struggled to overcome the crushing effects of deforestation, overfishing, and overwhelming debt...

Animated Films For Pre-School Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested ages 2-5 years

Program includes RED HEN, HI! FLY GUY, A SEA TURTLE STORY, GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT, CONSTRUCTION SITE & HANGING AROUND.

Through the story of a mason in Djenné, Komusa Tenapo, and his family, this documentary examines an African tradition of mud architecture in Mali... 

Do you know how to turn ordinary water into a billion-dollar business? In Switzerland there's a company that has developed the art to perfection – The Nestlé Corporation...

Shown wtih THE PEOPLE THE RAIN FORGOT.

With the completion of two large-scale projects in New York City – the renovation of the High Line and revitalization and expansion of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts – the award-winning interdisciplinary design firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro has galvanized the public's attention... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

This is the story about the new rush to mine for uranium around the Grand Canyon and the advocates who are fighting back against it... 

Shown with WATERSHED: EXPLORING A NEW WATER ETHIC FOR THE NEW WEST.

From Diego Luna and Alejandro Fernandez, to Carla Morrison and Chavela Vargas, the film weaves a cinematic tapestry composed of original songs and insights from the most iconic artists and performers of contemporary Mexico...

In 2006, two Czech electricians, Milan and Tomas, set off for the Zambian village of Mupande. They provided electric power to the local school, clinic and several homes, and bringing the villagers out of their equatorial darkness... 

A fictional story within the historical context of the disastrous flood that engulfed the Dutch coastal province of Zeeland in 1953, now 60 years ago... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

“Whiskey is for drinkin’, Water is for fightin’,” says Jeff Ehlert, a fly fishing guide in Rocky Mountain National Park, recalling a well-worn saying heard throughout the Colorado River basin...

Shown with GRAND THREAT.

Environmental activism really began with the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 and precipitated an unexpected and galvanizing effect on the national psyche...

Film clips and Panel Discussion moderated by Chris Palmer, Director, Center for Environmental Filmmaking, American University...

Transporting viewers to the beautiful and otherworldly frozen landscapes of North America, Europe and Asia ten thousand years before modern civilization... 

2013 Winner of the Environmental Film Festival’s fourth annual Polly Krakora Award for Artistry in Film

For three decades, The Prince of Wales has worked side-by-side with a dynamic array of people to address the global environmental crisis... 

Animated Films For Pre-School Children, D.C. Public Library Program 
Suggested ages 2-5 years

Program includes RED HEN, HI! FLY GUY, A SEA TURTLE STORY, GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT, CONSTRUCTION SITE & HANGING AROUND.

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

In May 1941 the Bonneville Power Administration hired the folksinger Woody Guthrie for one month as an “Information Consultant” to work on a film meant to publicize and promote the Columbia Basin Project and hydroelectric power... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Pare Lorentz’s monumental documentary about the exploitation and misuse of the Mississippi River, one of our greatest natural resources...

A community outreach effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and supported by a local citizens’ advisory board is documented in this film... 

Taking us to France, England and Cuba, this passionate film on farmer and community-led responses to food insecurity presents solutions that are excellent in their common sense, simplicity and low cost, as well as their ecological integrity... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Stories of Mekong citizens upstream and down, from fishermen on the Tonle Sap to activists still fighting against the Pak Mun Dam in Thailand...

Shown with MEKONG THE MOTHER. 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

The Mekong River Basin is the lifeline for more than 60 million people in China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam... 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

The importance of the Mekong to the inhabitants of the river basin is demonstrated as fishermen, boat captains and other ordinary people tell of their livelihoods, their beliefs and their love for the river...

Shown with MEKONG. 

Program includes JULIO SOLIS, A MOVESHAKE STORY, THE GROWTH OF LAKE ENRIQUILLO: ENVIRONMENT, SOCIAL AND SCIENTIFIC IMPLICATIONS and OUR BACKS TO THE SEA

Shown with HEART OF SKY, HEART OF EARTH.

Urban Rivers and shown as part of the Rivers Program

How do we transform our city landscapes to actually benefit the environment? How do we manage our natural resources... 

The March 17 screening is part of the Urban Rivers Program, shown with The Anacostia River. 

Filmed over three years in Venice, Nsukka, Nigeria and the United States, this is a powerful portrait of Africa’s most widely acclaimed contemporary artist, El Anatsui... 

Presented in celebration of World Water Day

Each day, the villagers of a small, rural community called La Source in Haiti must choose between enduring a long, treacherous walk to retrieve clean water or drinking contaminated water from a nearby river...

A Memorial Tribute to the Award-winning documentary filmmaker of the Amazon.

Adrian Cowell’s  “Decade of Destruction” film series reveals the pressures that led to the greatest destruction of tropical forest ever...

The ancient Maya believed our present world would end and a new cycle would arise after 5125 years. What lies behind the myth of the Mayan calendar...

Shown with Living Waters, Ocean Life. 

Ducks are ancient creatures. True originals, they practice habitual lifestyles that have been essential to their evolutionary success for millions of years...

Shown with A SEA TURTLE STORY, SONG OF THE SPINDLE, and BIRDERS: THE CENTRAL PARK EFFECT.

During the night a sea turtle digs a hole on a tropical beach and lays her eggs in the sand. So begins the treacherous journey that is the life of a sea turtle among predators such as crabs, birds and sharks, depicted in this stop-motion animation...

Shown with SONG OF THE SPINDLE, AN ORIGINAL DUCKUMENTARY, and BIRDERS: THE CENTRAL PARK EFFECT.

In this humorous and informative conversation between animated sperm whale and a man, each tries to convince the other that his brain is larger...

Shown with A SEA TURTLE STORY, AN ORIGINAL DUCKUMENTARY, and BIRDERS: THE CENTRAL PARK EFFECT.

Combining documentary and dramatic narrative techniques, Otter 501 chronicles the remarkable true story of an orphaned baby otter... 

The extraordinary array of wild birds that grace Manhattan’s celebrated patch of green, along with the equally colorful, full-of- attitude New Yorkers who schedule their lives around the rhythms of migration...

Shown with AN ORIGINAL DUCKUMENTARY, SONG OF THE SPINDLE, and A SEA TURTLE STORY. 

Sometimes inspiration can be found in unexpected places. Choreographer Allison Orr finds beauty and grace in garbage trucks and in the men and women who pick up our trash... 

“In order to have a piece of land, you must suffer,” laments an old man in this poetic cinema verité film of a cattle-ranching community in northeastern Mexico on the verge of extinction...

Exploring the Gullah culture of the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia, where African folkways were maintained well into the 20th century... 

'Amazonia' features the work of renowned National Geographic photographer Sam Abell. Drawing on months of concentrated work on the small, untouched rivers of tropical Peru, this program brings to life the delicate and imposing beauty of the Amazon rain forest... 

Set inside one of the world’s most dangerous professions, the commercial fishing industry, this film takes to the high seas of the North Atlantic – Herman Melville territory – to capture this harsh, unforgiving world in all of its visceral, haunting, cosmic detail... 

On opposite sides of the globe, indigenous shamans and a northern California tribe confront massive government megaprojects in a growing movement to defend human rights and protect the environment...

This is the story of a wolf called Koani, who, with the help of her human companions, became an ambassador for her species...

An exploration of love in its many forms, Terrence Malick’s latest film is a romantic drama about a man who reconnects with a woman from his hometown after his marriage to a European woman falls apart...

From deep within a bloody conflict emerges a powerful story of survival. Recently, a new breed of poachers has gone to war with South Africa's rhino population...

Shown with the other Winners from the 2012 Wildscreen Festival, Bristol, England HUMMINGBIRDS: JEWELLED MESSENGERS and HIPPOS: NATURE’S WILD FEAST. 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Made while working with 35 indigenous communities whose only access to the outside world is through the Amazon River...

Shown with THE CARBON RUSH. 

Hummingbirds have become the greatest aerial acrobats on earth. They can hover, fly backwards and even fly backwards and upside down simultaneously...

Shown with the other Winners from the 2012 Wildscreen Festival, Bristol, England SAVING RHINO PHILA and HIPPOS: NATURE’S WILD FEAST. 

River Shorts and shown as part of the Rivers Program 

The profound impact of climate change on one of the world's poorest countries, Bangladesh, is illustrated in this film, which documents the effects of increasingly severe climate-related hazards...

Shown with EEL • WATER • ROCK • MAN, THE KING'S RIVER, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH US, and THE WATER TOWER.

Incinerators burn garbage in India. Hundreds of hydroelectric dams pump in Panama. Biogas is extracted from palm oil in Honduras...

Shown with WITHIN THE RIVERS AMONG THE TREES (NO MEIO DO RIO, ENTRE AS ARVORES). 

River Shorts and shown as part of the Rivers Program

Ray Turner, who lives on the Delaware River in Western New York, is the last man on the East Coast who still fishes for eels with an ancient stone weir.

Shown with THE KING'S RIVER, BANGLADESH: LAND OF RIVERS, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH US, and THE WATER TOWER. 

Witness a high-tech natural history event that presents the most comprehensive illustration to date of nature's food chain in action...

Shown with the other Winners from the 2012 Wildscreen Festival, Bristol, England SAVING RHINO PHILA and HUMMINGBIRDS: JEWELLED MESSENGERS. 

Recreating little-known tragic events that occurred on Jeju Island off the southern coast of Korea, this powerful film tells a harrowing story... 

River Shorts and shown as part of the Rivers Program

Examining both sides of a current dispute that may have a critical, long lasting effect on a local environment...

Shown with EEL • WATER • ROCK • MAN, BANGLADESH: LAND OF RIVERS, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH US, and THE WATER TOWER.

River Shorts and shown as part of the Rivers Program

“Rivers are life” is the theme motivating activists in the global movement to protect rivers from the ravages of big dams...

Shown with EEL • WATER • ROCK • MAN, THE KING'S RIVER, BANGLADESH: LAND OF RIVERS, and THE WATER TOWER. 

Shown as part of the Rivers Program 

Featuring EEL • WATER • ROCK • MAN, THE KING'S RIVER, BANGLADESH: LAND OF RIVERS, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH US, and THE WATER TOWER...

River Shorts and shown as part of the Rivers Program 

In central Kenya, northeast of the Rift Valley, there is a tower. It is a monumental, granite swell... 

Shown with EEL • WATER • ROCK • MAN, THE KING'S RIVER, BANGLADESH: LAND OF RIVERS, and A RIVER RUNS THROUGH US.

In the prefecture of Nagashima (the epicenter of Japan’s nuclear traumas), two families are torn apart when an earthquake causes a nuclear meltdown... 

In Papua New Guinea, Bosmun village leaders reach into their past to revive a canoe-launching ceremony, while embracing the modern strategy of lawsuits... 

Rivers Lost, Found and Turned-Around and shown as part of the Rivers Program

Biodiversity. It’s in the rivers of the Amazon, the jungles of Borneo, the coral reefs of Belize… oh, and the creeks of Tennessee...

Shown with THE LOST FISH and WILLAMETTE FUTURES. 

Rivers Lost, Found and Turned-Around and shown as part of the Rivers Program

An ancient fish native to the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific lamprey has been an important subsistence fishery for Northwest American Indian tribes for thousands of years...

Shown with HIDDEN RIVERS OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIA and WILLAMETTE FUTURES. 

Films by Jeremy Monroe and shown as part of the Rivers Program

Featuring THE HIDDEN RIVERS OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIA, THE LOST FISH, and WILLAMETTE FUTURES...

Rivers Lost, Found and Turned-Around and shown as part of the Rivers Program

Communities across the United States are rediscovering the importance of clean healthy river systems, but after a century of neglect and disconnection, many of our rivers are far from clean and healthy...

Shown with HIDDEN RIVERS OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIA and THE LOST FISH. 

In Belgium's secluded Ardennes, where people live close to the land, a mystifying force is changing the natural order...

You can find them deep in the jungles of Borneo, in the hills of Umbria and perhaps even in your own backyard. They are the fruit hunters...