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Environmental Studies

ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH

Directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky

A stunning sensory experience and cinematic meditation on humanity's massive reengineering of the planet, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is a years-in-the-making feature documentary from the award-winning team behind Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013) and narrated by Alicia Vikander. The film follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group who, after nearly 10 years of research, argue that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century as a result of profound and lasting human changes to the Earth.

From concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60% of the mainland coast, to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, to psychedelic potash mines in Russia's Ural Mountains, to metal festivals in the closed city of Norilsk, to the devastated Great Barrier Reef in Australia and massive marble quarries in Carrara, the filmmakers have traversed the globe using state of the art camera techniques to document the evidence and experience of human planetary domination. At the intersection of art and science, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch witnesses a critical moment in geological history - bringing a provocative and unforgettable experience of our species's breadth and impact.

DVD (Region 1, English, Russian, Italian, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 87 minutes

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CONCERNED CITIZEN, A: CIVICS IN ACTION

Directed by Bo Boudart

A CONCERNED CITIZEN documents the work of Dr. Riki Ott, a whistleblower who predicted the Exxon Valdez oil spill hours before it happened and came to the aid of her Alaskan community in their battle to get fair compensation for their loss of health and income.

More recently Riki, a toxicologist, author, and activist, has been organizing the Gulf coast communities as they struggle to recover from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. Taking the lessons she learned as an activist, she is also spearheading the campaign called Ultimate Civics, a complete civics curriculum she developed that empowers students to participate in their democracy. Recognizing the power of money in politics she advocates for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood, and to reform campaign finance laws. She lectures nationally and internationally, inspiring students from fifth grade through universities and adults to take action and showing by example how one person can make a difference.

"It is my hope that, as people's health, livelihoods, and property are harmed by these extreme oil activities, people will understand the need to shift off oil to safer energy options and take action to achieve true energy independence. This is the movement that I see growing in all regions of our country."

DVD / 2019 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 41 minutes

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LOBSTER WAR: THE FIGHT OVER THE WORLD'S RICHEST FISHING GROUNDS

Directed by David Abel

Climate-changed ocean temperatures shift New England's lobster fishery across national boundaries, sparking international tension.

The buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is warming the oceans, and the waters off New England's coast are seeing some of the most dramatic temperature increases on the planet. This is having a major effect on lobster populations and the fishermen who rely on them. The southern New England lobster fishery has collapsed and the catch has moved north into cooler waters.

LOBSTER WAR documents an escalating conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War.

The disputed 277 square miles of sea known as the Gray Zone--the swath of water surrounding Machias Seal Island at the entrance to the Bay of Fundy--were traditionally fished by US lobstermen. But as the Gulf of Maine has warmed lobsters have migrated north and the Gray Zone's previously modest lobster population has surged. As a result, Canadians have begun to assert their sovereignty in the area, contesting American claims to the bounty and foreshadowing potential conflicts exacerbated by climate change.

DVD / 2019 / (Grades 10-12, Adults, College) / 74 minutes

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SPEARS FROM ALL SIDES

By Christopher Walker

Since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, Ecuador's Waorani tribe, have defended their Amazon rainforest with spears. In the 1950's American missionaries cleared the way for oil companies to enter Waorani lands. Now 70% of Ecuador's Amazon, home to some 12 tribes, has been divided into oil blocks, polluting one of the most bio diverse rainforests of the planet. Only one small tribe, the Waorani, have successfully fought to keep oil off most of their land.

25 years ago, director Christopher Walker went to the Amazon to tell the Waorani's story in the documentary film TRINKETS & BEADS (AMPAS Outstanding Documentary, Best Cultural Survival Film, Mountainfilm, Best Documentary Paris Environmental Film Festival) Now, Ecuador has started to auction off the last virgin rainforest to the international oil industry - including the Yasuni National Park, thought to contain more species per acre than anywhere else on earth. At the end of 2014, Walker returned to Ecuador to see if the Waorani could still win their fight against big oil. He filmed over three years, up to the imminent auction of Waorani oil Block 22.

SPEARS FROM ALL SIDES follows the young, charismatic Waorani activist Opi as he tells the dramatic story of a vehement, community based resistance by tribal communities in one of the most remote and beautiful areas of the world. It reveals the duplicity of the Ecuadorean government and the oil companies in their attempts to defeat the Waorani at all costs, including the co-option and subsequent betrayal of the former Waorani leader Moi - the hero of the previous film. Out of disaster, Opi sees a possibility of hope - regaining their autonomy which they lost with the arrival of the missionaries 60 years ago.

SPEARS FROM ALL SIDES, besides being a gripping story following action and events as they unfold, demonstrates the complex battles at the frontlines of climate change which we are rarely able to see on film.

DVD (Spanish, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2019 / 90 minutes

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ANOTE'S ARK

Director: Matthieu Rytz

What if your country was swallowed by the sea? The Pacific island nation of Kiribati is one of the most remote places on the planet, far-removed from the pressures of modern life. Yet it is one of the first countries that must confront an existential dilemma of our time: imminent annihilation from sea-level rise. President Anote Tong races to find options, from mass migration to building underwater cities, but many Kiribati are already seeking safe harbor overseas, leaving behind 4000 years of Kirabati culture.

With sweeping cinematography, filmmaker Matthieu Rytz captures the shifting dynamics of climate change while crafting a portrait of the Kiribati people that reveals their strength of character and grace as they confront the inevitable change they are facing head on.

DVD / 2018 / 77 minutes

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COOKED: SURVIVAL BY ZIP CODE

Directed by Judith Helfand

Judith Helfand's searing investigation into the politics of "disaster," by way of the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave.

Chicago suffered the worst heat disaster in U.S history in 1995, when 739 residents-mostly elderly and black-died over the course of one week. As COOKED links the deadly heat wave's devastation back to the underlying manmade disaster of structural racism, it delves deep into one of our nation's biggest growth industries: Disaster Preparedness.

Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand, uses her signature serious-yet-quirky connect-the-dots-style to forge inextricable connections between the cataclysmic natural disasters we're willing to see and prepare for and the slow-motion disasters we're not. That is, until an extreme weather event hits and they are made exponentially more deadly and visible.

But whether it was the heat wave in Chicago or Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, Irma and Maria, all of these disasters share something key: they reveal the ways in which class, race, and zip code predetermine who was living on the edge to start with, who gets hurt the worst, who recovers and bounces back-and who doesn't. In COOKED, Helfand challenges herself and others to truly see and respond to the invisible man-made disasters taking place in towns and cities across the country before the next "natural" disaster hits.

COOKED is an adaptation of "HEAT WAVE: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago" (2002), Eric Klinenberg's groundbreaking book.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 82 minutes

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GUARDIAN

Directed by Courtney Quirin

Against the backdrop of BC's spectacular Great Bear Rainforest, Guardians and the salmon they monitor are victims of science censorship and reckless extractive industries.

Part hermit, part biologist, Guardians live on boats, full-time, in one of the last pristine frontiers of the world to monitor salmon, the backbone of the ecosystem, economy, and culture along British Columbia's coast. But, in an age of science censorship and soaring resource extraction in the form of fracking for oil and natural gas, Guardians and the wildlife they have dedicated their lives to protect are now disappearing.

GUARDIAN is a cautionary tale about the role of science in environmental decision-making and the repercussions of its censorship.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 76 minutes

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SEQUEL, THE: WHAT WILL FOLLOW OUR TROUBLED CIVILIZATION?

Directed by Peter Armstrong

Looks at the influential work of David Fleming, who dared to re-imagine a thriving civilization after the collapse of our current mainstream economies and inspired the Transition Towns movement.

Opening with a powerful 'deep time' perspective, from the beginning of the Earth to our present moment, this film recognizes the fundamental unsustainability of today's society and dares to ask the big question: What will follow?

Around the world, fresh shoots are already emerging as people develop the skills, will and resources necessary to recapture the initiative and re-imagine civilization, often in the ruins of collapsed mainstream economies.

We encounter extraordinary projects and people from four continents, from renegade economist Kate Raworth, conservative philosopher Roger Scruton and Gaian ecologist Stephan Harding to localization revolutionary Helena Norberg-Hodge, inspirational practivist Rob Hopkins, eco-pioneer Jonathon Porritt and philanthropist/composer Peter Buffett. They are cultivating a resilience not reliant on the impossible promise of eternal economic growth; developing diverse, convivial, satisfying contexts for lives well lived.

All were inspired by the posthumously published lifework of the late David Fleming, "Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It", a work of rare depth that is rekindling optimism in the creativity and intelligence of humans to nurse our communities and ecology back to health.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 7-9, College, Adults) / 61 minutes

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AWAKE, A DREAM FROM STANDING ROCK

Directed by Josh Fox, James Spione, Myron Dewey

Record of the massive peaceful resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the Dakota Access Pipeline through their land and underneath the Missouri River.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a controversial project that brings fracked crude oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa and eventually to Illinois. The Standing Rock Tribe and people all over the world oppose the project because the pipeline runs under the Missouri river, a source of drinking water for over 18 million people, and pipeline leaks are commonplace. Since 2010 over 3,300 oil spills and leaks have been reported.

Moving from summer 2016, when demonstrations over the Dakota Access Pipeline's demolishing of sacred Native burial grounds began, to the current and disheartening pipeline status, AWAKE, A Dream from Standing Rock is a powerful visual poem in three parts that uncovers complex hidden truths with simplicity. The film is a collaboration between indigenous filmmakers: Director Myron Dewey and Executive Producer Doug Good Feather; and environmental Oscar-nominated filmmakers Josh Fox and James Spione.

The Water Protectors at Standing Rock captured world attention through their peaceful resistance. The film documents the story of Native-led defiance that has forever changed the fight for clean water, our environment and the future of our planet. It asks: "Are you ready to join the fight?"

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 89 minutes

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BUGS

Directed by Andreas Johnsen

With global food shortages on the horizon, forward-thinking chefs, environmentalists and food scientists are turning toward an unexpected source of protein: insects. Bugs is an artful and thoughtful documentary that provides a perfect entry point to insect cuisine. For three years, a cast of charming and brave food adventurers from the Nordic Food Lab traveled the world - from Europe to Australia, Mexico, Kenya, Japan and beyond - to learn what some of the two billion people who already eat insects had to say. Filmmaker Andreas Johnsen followed them as they foraged, farmed, cooked and tasted everything from revered termite queens and desert-delicacy honey ants to venomous giant hornets and long-horned grasshoppers. Throughout the team's experiences, some hard questions started to emerge. If industrially produced insects become the norm, will they be as delicious and as beneficial as the ones in diverse, resilient ecosystems and cuisines around the world? And who will actually benefit as edible insects are scaled up? Equal parts travelogue, nature documentary, food porn and political treatise, Bugs is a beautifully shot film that makes a convincing argument for the inherent flavor of insects and raises unexpected and important questions about the future of our food culture along the way.

DVD (Region 1, English, Danish, Color, Closed Captioned, With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 74 minutes

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CHESHIRE, OHIO: AN AMERICAN COAL STORY IN 3 ACTS

Directed by Eve Morgenstern

Follows a community devastated by coal, starting with American Electric Power's buyout and bulldozing of this Ohio River town, after exposing them to years of harmful emissions.

A gun toting 83-year old woman refuses to sell her house to the power plant next door but the plant has moved ahead with their 20 million dollar deal to buy out most of Cheshire and bulldoze all the homes. What happened in this Ohio River town overrun by one of the largest coal-fired power plants in the world? A story of money, power and the increasingly difficult choices we face surrounding coal and the environment, CHESHIRE, OHIO makes us think twice about home.

Filmed over a decade, CHESHIRE, OHIO follows a community devastated by coal, starting with American Electric Power's buyout and bulldozing of this Ohio River community after exposing them to harmful emissions, and then returning several years later to the now almost emptied town as we follow the case of 77 plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit against American Electric Power for cancer and other diseases they developed from working unprotected at the plant's coal ash landfill site.

As the cycle of pollution from coal continues, we see how one quintessential American town suffers from our reliance on carbon energy.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 75 minutes

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EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC: THE STORY OF THE ORGANIC MOVEMENT

Directed by Mark Kitchell

The story of organic agriculture, told by those in California who built the movement.

EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC, which brings us the story of organic agriculture, told by those who built the movement. A motley crew of back-to-the-landers, spiritual seekers and farmers' sons and daughters rejected modern chemical farming and set out to invent organic alternatives. The movement grew from a small band of rebels to a cultural transformation in the way we grow and eat food. By now organic has mainstreamed, become both an industry oriented toward bringing organic to all people, and a movement that has realized a vision of sustainable agriculture.

This is not just a history, but looks forward to exciting and important futures: the next generation who are broadening organic; what lies "beyond organic"; and carbon farming and sequestration as a solution to climate change -- maybe the best news on the planet.

The film is divided into four "acts".

Act I: Origins - Looks at the beginning of the organic movement in California when the 60s counter-culture moved back to the land.

Act 2: Building Organic - Follows the development of increasingly effective organic farming techniques concentrating on the soil and the microbial life within it.

Act 3: Mainstreaming Organic - Organic booms, growing 20% annually for two decades.

Act 4: Organic Futures - The next generation of organic farmers as well as carbon farming and sequestering carbon dioxide hold out great hope for combating climate change.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 86 minutes

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KEEPERS OF THE FUTURE: LA COORDINADORA OF EL SALVADOR

Directed by Avi Lewis

Following El Salvador's civil war, a farmers' cooperative puts down roots, builds resilience and provides a model of how to mitigate climate change and resist unsustainable, extractive development.

In a fertile floodplain in El Salvador, where the great river meets the sea, a peasant movement puts down roots - growing resilience in the scorched earth of exile and civil war. But soon these farmers and fishing folk discover new challenges, and this time they are global: climate crisis, exacerbated by an economy of ruinous extraction. The solutions they come up with will be a revelation for audiences in the prosperous north. On the surface, the life of these campesinos may resemble the past: but in their model may lie the key to the future.

Canadian journalist, media personality and documentarian Avi Lewis, along with his wife, author Naomi Klein, has advocated for radically new social and political structures as the only viable and effective response to climate change. In KEEPERS OF THE FUTURE he profiles the Baja Lempa coordinadora, a farmers' cooperative that demonstrates how "deep local democracy" can help even a poor population build environmental, economic and political resilience.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 24 minutes

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MY COUNTRY NO MORE

Directed by Rita Baghdadi, Jeremiah Hammerling

The oil boom in N Dakota sets off a crisis in a rural community, forced to confront the meaning of progress as they fight for a disappearing way of life.

Between 2011 and 2016, drilling for oil in America reached an unprecedented peak, setting off a modern day gold rush in one of the most rural communities in the country: Trenton, North Dakota. Kalie Rider and her older brother Jed are both striving to rebuild farming in their family, having suffered the foreclosure of their parents' farm during the traumatic 1980s farm crisis.

When their uncle Roger makes a decision to sell a piece of his land, it sets off a domino effect of industrialization in Trenton. Now, with the church being eyed for a diesel refinery, the community becomes riven by competing interests. While Jed faces the possibility of having to uproot his young family and move away, Kalie learns to organize and resist.

Through its lyrical core, the film challenges the notion of "progress" as it questions the long term human consequences of short term approaches to land use, decisions that ultimately affect all Americans, rural and urban alike.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 70 minutes

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OYSTER

Directed by Kim Beamish

Observes the daily life of a family running an oyster farm in a lake on the SE coast of Australia, as they deal with climate change, pollution, and the fickleness of consumers.

OYSTER captures the daily routines, chaos and drama in the lives of Dom and Pip Boyton, a lively and hard-working second generation oyster farming family on Merimbula Lake on the southeast coast of New South Wales, Australia.

The film watches as Dom and Pip juggle the demands of parenting two precocious young boys with the long hours, logistical decision-making and labor required to keep their crop of Sydney rock oysters healthy and thriving. The Boytons and the other members of their oyster farmer collective face a host of challenges, from climate change and the threat of environmental disaster to the fickleness of the buyers and luxury markets that the collective depends on.

Oysters have been called "the canaries of the estuaries" due to their importance as bioindicators, and as we watch Dom and Pip combat threats to their vulnerable operation-such as the proliferation of the invasive Pacific oyster and bacterial contamination triggered by severe "east coast low" storms and an influx of vacationers-OYSTER presents a unique and intimate look at a business whose fortunes are entwined with the health and stewardship of the environment.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 80 minutes

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PATRIMONIO

Directors: Lisa F. Jackson, Sarah Teale

A multi-billion dollar American development is poised to engulf a small coastal community in Mexico with a mega hotel/condo complex. But local people are banding together to save their way of life and the delicate ecosystem on which they all depend. This powerful yet intimate documentary reveals how rampant, unsustainable development is destroying communities, ecosystems and long-held ways of life all over the world - and how it can be stopped.

Rosario Salvatierra is a fourth generation fisherman in Todos Santos, a small desert town on the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur. For generations hundreds of fishermen have launched their boats into the sea directly from Punta Lobos, the beach just outside of town. But all that is about to change. As Rosario walks along the beach he is confronted by a massive sea wall and a concrete platform that stretches for hundreds of meters from the breakwater back towards the mountains. Thousands of mangroves that once protected the beach have been bulldozed, an arroyo backfilled, dunes flattened and a boutique hotel and massive tourist complex is being constructed on the site along with the first of a projected 4,472 homes, the residents of which will triple the population of the town.

It is all part of an American mega development, called Tres Santos, that threatens to transform and overwhelm the town of Todos Santos. The fishermen themselves are being pushed off the beach and the development would drain the already diminished aquifer, taking drinking water from a town where many residents already do not have access.

What are the rights of small, under-represented communities in the face of global business interests and unsustainable development and what can they do to stand up for those rights and their way of life? For the last year Rosario, who is one of the leaders of the Punta Lobos Fishermen's Cooperative, has been asking these questions and pushing the fishermen and the town to stand up for their rights. He is being supported by his 29 year-old daughter Maria Salvatierra and John Moreno, a young, charismatic Mexican lawyer.

The film follows the efforts of the Salvatierra family as they struggle to educate and organize their community against the developers and as well the efforts of Moreno to inform the fishermen of their legal rights as he takes on the municipal and then federal governments on their behalf. As Moreno slowly begins to succeed in his efforts to thwart the developers, they begin to target him in increasingly threatening and desperate ways. The developers, in collusion with local politicians, also attempt to divide the town, the fishermen and families and we watch as they work to stay united. As Rosario points out early on "we are taking on giants".

DVD (Spanish with English subtitles) / 2017 / 83 minutes

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REDEFINING PROSPERITY: THE GOLD RUSHES OF NEVADA CITY

Directed by John de Graaf

The story of how a mining town recovered from its legacy of pollution and prospered by building community around the battle to save their beautiful river.

Born in the California Gold Rush, Nevada City was once the scene of some of the most destructive environmental practices on earth. By the 1960s, the town was a backwater, its extractive industries dying. Then it was discovered by the "back to the land movement." It was a second gold rush but with a different idea of gold based on nature, community and a sense of place.

The fight to save the Yuba River from proposed power dams brought conflicting factions of the community together while different ideas about the meaning of wealth have led to changes in local food production, education, arts, music and a commitment to building community. Once a place whose essence was individualism, competition and extractive industries, Nevada City is now moving toward a future of solidarity, stewardship, and livelihoods based on renewable resources, husbandry and sustainability.

Featuring two dozen of Nevada City's most active citizens and their stories, REDEFINING PROSPERITY is the remarkable story of a beautiful California town and the outward-looking, creative people who call it home and forged its new identity.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 57 minutes

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THANK YOU FOR THE RAIN

By Julia Dahr and Kisilu Musya

Five years ago Kisilu, a Kenyan farmer, started to use his camera to capture the life of his family, his village and the damages of climate change. When a violent storm throws him and a Norwegian filmmaker together we see him transform from a father, to community leader to an activist on the global stage.

THANK YOU FOR THE RAIN is a feature documentary by Julia Dahr and Kisilu Musya. It addresses a range of issues linked to climate change, including climate justice, urbanization, gender equality, education, access to water, climate refugees, and adaptation.

DVD (Color) / 2017 / 87 minutes

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HOMO SAPIENS

By Nikolaus Geyrhalter

HOMO SAPIENS is a film about the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being.

What will remain of our lives after we're gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, though humanity has disappeared. Now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature after being taken from it so long ago. HOMO SAPIENS is an ode to humanity as seen from a possible future scenario.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 94 minutes

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SMALL GOOD THING, A

Directed by Pamela Tanner Boll

This feature-length documentary is set in western Massachusetts in the Berkshires, long a destination for change-seekers, spiritual explorers, artists, and musicians seeking solace and stimulation amid the pastoral landscape - the perfect setting for a story about renewing personal and universal bonds. The film follows innovative farmer Sean Stanton, social work student Tim Durrin and yoga teacher Mark Gerow, whose earlier careers in the armed forces have now shifted to service of a different kind; Jen and Pete Salinetti, a college-educated couple with two small children who have chosen to be farmers as a way to connect with their community; and Shirley Edgerton, community activist and founder of both the Youth Alive Step Team and the Women of Color Giving Circle. What these people share is a deep desire to have more meaning in their lives, a closer bond with their families and communities, and a connection to themselves and the natural world.

DVD (Region 1, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2016 / 71 minutes

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WHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDE

Directors: Heidi Brandenburg & Mathew Orzel

In this tense and immersive Sundance award-winner, audiences are taken directly into the line of fire between powerful, opposing Peruvian leaders who will stop at nothing to keep their respective goals intact. On the one side is President Alan Garcia, who, eager to enter the world stage, begins aggressively extracting oil, minerals, and gas from untouched indigenous Amazonian land. He is quickly met with fierce opposition from indigenous leader Alberto Pizango, whose impassioned speeches against Garcia's destructive actions prove a powerful rallying cry to throngs of his supporters. When Garcia continues to ignore their pleas, a tense war of words erupts into deadly violence.

DVD (Spanish with English subtitles) / 2016 / 103 minutes

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ANTARCTIC EDGE: 70 DEGREES SOUTH

Director: Dena Seidel

A thrilling journey to the world's most perilous environment, Antarctic Edge: 70 Degrees South joins a team of world-class scientists as they explore the West Antarctic Peninsula.

In the wake of devastating climate events like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina, oceanographer Oscar Schofield teams up with a group of researchers in a race to understand climate change in the fastest winter-warming place on earth: the West Antarctic Peninsula. For more than 20 years, these scientists have dedicated their lives to studying the Peninsula's rapid change as part of the National Science Foundation's Long-Term Ecological Research Project.

Filmed in one of the most perilous environments on the planet, Antarctic Edge brings to us the stunning landscapes and seascapes of Earth's southern polar region, revealing the harsh conditions and substantial challenges that scientists endure for months at a time. While navigating through 60-foot waves and dangerous icebergs, the film follows the team as they voyage south to rugged, inhospitable Charcot Island to study the fragile and rapidly declining Adelie Penguin. For Schofield and his crew, these birds are the greatest indicator of climate change and a harbinger of what is to come.

DVD / 2015 / 72 minutes

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MESSENGER, THE

Directed by Su Rynard

For thousands of years, songbirds were regarded by mankind as messengers from the gods. Today, these creatures woven inextricably into the fabric of our environment are vanishing at an alarming rate. Under threat from climate change, pesticides and more, populations of hundreds of species have dipped dramatically. As scientists, activists and bird enthusiasts investigate this phenomenon, amazing secrets of the bird world come to light for the first time in the acclaimed and visually thrilling documentary The Messenger. Find out what's killing our songbirds, and what can be done about it. As in ancient times, songbirds may once again be carrying a message to humansone that we ignore at our own peril.

DVD (Region 1, Color, English, German, Dutch, French, With English Subtitles) / 2015 / 90 minutes

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PEARL BUTTON, THE

Director: Patricio Guzman

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds the voices of the Earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of a mysterious button that was discovered in its seabed. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline, the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian indigenous people, of the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

DVD (Region 1, Spanish, Color) / 2014 / 82 minutes

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PENGUIN COUNTERS, THE

Directors: Harriet Gordon & Peter Getzelsl

Armed with low-tech gear and high-minded notions that penguin populations hold the key to human survival, Ron Naveen lays bare his 30 year love affair with the world's most pristine scientific laboratory: Antarctica. Famed as a place that wants you dead, this film follows a ragtag team of field biologists to some of the harshest corners of the planet, where they track the impact of climate change and ocean health by counting penguin populations. From the tip of Argentina to the ominous Deception Island, The Penguin Counters is a treacherous, heart warming journey by a 21st century Dr. Doliitle who dreams of conserving this stunning but fragile region for future generations.

DVD / 2014 / 67 minutes

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SEED BATTLES

By Kees Brouwer

Hidden deep inside a massive mountain in inhospitable Spitsbergen is the most important vault in the world: the Global Seed Vault. It is 20 degrees below zero and the vault is able to withstand earthquakes, floods, missile attacks and nuclear disaster. It's Noah's Ark for our food production with the largest diversity in seeds from all over the world, a backup of as many crops as possible and the toolbox for seed breeders. This is vital, for by 2050 there will be 9 billion mouths to feed. But the success of the vault also shows its downside. The increasing strategic importance of seed has given rise to the fundamental discussion on the question: who do the seeds belong to?

Not all countries are willing to donate their seed collections to the vault these days. Emerging economies regard their own seeds as a green gold mine for which others will have to pay. And large seed companies patent their latest seeds. If seeds can no longer be freely used, the diversity will decline which makes it vital that all seeds are freely available.

The 'Doomsday Vault', as it is called today, and its worldwide mission, is the life's work of the inspired American professor Cary Fowler. In February 2013, on the occasion of the vault's five-year anniversary, he met with an international management committee in Spitsbergen to discuss the current deadlock. SEED BATTLES gains an insight into the worldwide political and strategic game that is being played. The stakes: our daily bread.

DVD (Color) / 2014 / 50 minutes

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SEEDS OF TIME

Director: Sandy McLeod
Starring: Cary Fowler (Himself)

The clock is ticking on one of the greatest potential disasters in the history of our species and one man leads a worldwide crusade to avert it. Crop diversity pioneer Cary Fowler travels the world, educating the public about the dire consequences of our inaction. The world's agriculture - and it's fate - are dependent on the ability of plants to adapt to changes in climate, pests and disease - but today's crops around the globe are grown from human-engineered seeds and have lost nearly all their diversity and ability to naturally adapt. Could one massive infestation of fungus, blight or insects cause all the world's corn, wheat or lettuce to die? Is modern agriculture setting the stage for economic disaster, food riots, and global starvation? Dr. Fowler is the head of an international consortium to store seeds from every agricultural plant in the world. But is his farsighted program enough to save humanity from annihilation?

DVD (Region 1, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2014 / 77 minutes

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GREAT FLOOD, THE

By Bill Morrison
Music by Bill Frisell

The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in American history. In the spring of 1927, the river broke out of its earthen embankments in 145 places and inundated 27,000 square miles. Part of its legacy was the forced exodus of displaced sharecroppers, who left plantation life and migrated to Northern cities, adapting to an industrial society with its own set of challenges.

Musically, the Great Migration fueled the evolution of acoustic blues to electric blues bands that thrived in cities like Memphis, Detroit and Chicago becoming the wellspring for R&B and rock as well as developing jazz styles.

THE GREAT FLOOD is a collaboration between filmmaker and multimedia artist Bill Morrison and guitarist and composer Bill Frisell inspired by the 1927 catastrophe.

In the spring of 2011, as the Mississippi River was again flooding to levels not seen since 1927, Frisell, Morrison, and the band traveled together from New Orleans, through Vicksburg, Clarksdale, Memphis, Davenport, Iowa, St. Louis and on up to Chicago.

For the film, Morrison scoured film archives, including the Fox Movietone Newsfilm Library and the National archives, for footage of the Mississippi River Flood. All film documenting this catastrophe was shot on volatile nitrate stock, and what footage remains is pock marked and partially deteriorated. The degraded filmstock figures prominently in Morrison's aesthetic with distorted images suggesting different planes of reality in the story-those lived, dreamt, or remembered.

For the score, Frisell has drawn upon his wide musical palette informed by elements of American roots music, but refracted through his uniquely evocative approach that highlights essential qualities of his thematic focus. Playing guitar, Frisell is joined by Tony Scherr on bass, Kenny Wollesen on drums and Ron Miles on trumpet.

In THE GREAT FLOOD, the bubbles and washes of decaying footage is associated with the destructive force of rising water, the filmstock seeming to have been bathed in the same water as the images depicted on it. These layers of visual information, paired with Frisell's music, become contemporary again. We see the images through a prism of history, but one that dances with the sound of modern music.

DVD (Black & White) / 2013 / 80 minutes

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H2OMX

By Jose Cohen

A driver who was kidnapped for the contents of his water truck. A man filling dozens of fifty-gallon drums with water, in an urban neighborhood whose residents have spent more than three decades fighting for running water. Large drifts of industrial foam billowing through the air from a drainage canal, and contaminating crops with heavy metals and coliforms.

These are just some of the striking moments in H2OMX, a masterful, award-winning documentary about getting water to and from the 22 million people of Mexico City.

Built on a basin surrounded by mountains and with little drainage, the city is facing a water crisis driven by geography, population, and history. With a growing population, a depleted aquifer, and 40 percent of the water being brought in by aqueduct from another drainage area being lost to leaky pipes, the challenges are huge.

H20 MX captures the scope of the problem by taking us to a wide range of locations in and near the municipality, and introducing us to people dealing with a wide range of water-related issues. On the fringes of the city, we meet residents who can only access water by filling large jugs and hauling them back home with donkeys. We visit what will one day be the largest wastewater treatment plant in the country, only to learn that it is already five years behind schedule, and won't deal with many of the contaminants that make crops irrigated with the water dangerous to eat.

Meanwhile, as residents struggle to get access to fresh water, periodic floods-caused by storm sewers overwhelmed with torrential rains and sewage-overflow on a regular basis.

There are solutions: a pair of enthusiastic young industrial designers are helping rural communities install rainwater harvesting systems that, together, are collecting millions of gallons of water a year; fixing leaky pipes could mean not having to go as far afield for water; and proper treatment can allow purified water to go back into the aquifer. But none of this will be easy-and time is running out.

From stunning shots millions of gallons of water on the move to Mexico City and aerial views of a drainage canal choked with miles of garbage, to interviews with those trying to solve the water problem and those who must live with it every day, H2OMX captures the complexities of trying to provide one of the most basic of human rights-access to clean water-to one of the world's megalopolises.

DVD (Color) / 2013 / 82 minutes

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PLASTIC OCEAN, A

Director: Craig Leeson

A Plastic Ocean is a new feature-length adventure documentary that brings to light the consequences of our global disposable lifestyle. We thought we could use plastic once and throw it away with negligible impact to humans and animals. That turns out to be untrue.

In A Plastic Ocean, an international team of adventurers, researchers, and Ocean ambassadors go on a mission around the globe to uncover the shocking truth about what is truly lurking beneath the surface our seemingly pristine ocean. The result will astound viewers - just as it did our adventurers, who captured never-before-seen images of marine life, plastic pollution, and its ultimate consequences for human health.

During its four-year production period, A Plastic Oceanwas filmed in 20 locations around the world in beautiful and chilling detail to document the global effects of plastic pollution and introduce workable technology and policy solutions that can, if implemented in time, change things for the better.

DVD / 100 minutes

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ROCKAWAY: BEFORE AND AFTER

Directed by Jennifer Callahan

Rockaway: Before and After chronicles the epic highs and epic lows of New York City's only oceanfront community.

Feature one: The Bungalows of Rockaway (2010, RT: 57 min)

A popular summer resort, a rival to Coney Island, once existed along the Rockaway shore, replete with wide beaches, a long boardwalk and honky-tonk amusements. The first bungalow went up in Rockaway in 1905; by 1933 over 7000 covered the peninsula. For decades, the bungalows were affordable summer rentals for working-class vacationers, largely Jewish and Irish immigrant families. Today fewer than 450 bungalows remain.

Narrated by Academy-Award-winning Estelle Parsons and completed in 2010, the film tracks the lifeline of the Rockaway bungalows. Sparkling, funny, and sometimes moving interviews with former bungalow residents bring the bungalow heyday to life; a trove of archival stills and unseen footage from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, such as that of the Marx Brothers and their families frolicking on Rockaway beaches, show viewers what a delightful and treasured summer experience Rockaway was for thousands of immigrant families.

Feature Two: Everything Is Different Now: Rockaway After The Storm (2015, RT: 53 min)

In October, 2012, Superstorm Sandy tore into New York and woke the city up to the fragility of its shorelines. Everything Is Different Now: Rockaway After the Storm documents the first summer and fall after the storm as the urban beach community re-builds, re-thinks, and re-invents.

DVD (Region 1) / 110 minutes

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BLUE HEART

?Director: Britton Caillouette?

The Fight To Save Europe's Last Wild Rivers

Activists and European NGOs fight to stop the destruction of the culture and ecology of the forgotten region, The Balkan Peninsula.

The Balkan Peninsula is home to the last wild rivers in Europe. However, a deluge of hydropower development threatens to destroy the culture and ecology of this forgotten region. If fierce local opposition fails, the last undammed watersheds on the continent will be corralled by more than 3,000 proposed hydropower dams and diversions-at a time when dams are being decommissioned throughout much of the developed world. Activists, who span the shores of these rivers, and European NGOs such as RiverWatch (run by German activist Ulrich Eichelmann), are fighting against local government corruption and foreign investment. Blue Heart documents the battle for the largest undammed river in Europe, Albania's Vjosa, the effort to save the endangered Balkan lynx in Macedonia, and the women of Kruscica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are spearheading a months-long, 24/7 protest to protect their community's only source of drinking water. These and other stories expose for the first time the gravest impending environmental disaster in Europe.

DVD / 43 minutes

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SAVING JAMAICA BAY

Director: David Sigal

Despite its natural beauty, rich history, and immense resources, Jamaica Bay was New York City's dumping ground for decades. Towering landfills created landscapes of garbage. Abandoned boats, piers, and docks added to the eyesore - not to mention the occasional gangland hit victim. Jets scream overhead constantly as they take off and land at JFK. Four sewage treatment plants discharge into Jamaica Bay. And now there are plans to fill in hundreds of acres of the bay to build the runways needed to handle future air traffic increases at the airport.

Saving Jamaica Bay tells how the Bay's neighbours - residents of working-class Brooklyn and Queens neighbourhoods - have developed and nurtured a close relationship with the body of water that has defined, provided for, and most recently, threatened their lives and livelihoods. In the process of re-discovering their historical relationship to the water and natural habitats of Jamaica Bay, residents have been transformed into urban environmentalists struggling to preserve this precious resource... and their way of life.

DVD / 77 minutes

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SUSTAINABLE

Director: Matt Wechsler

A vital investigation of the economic and environmental instability of America's food system, from the agricultural issues we face - soil loss, water depletion, climate change, pesticide use - to the community of leaders who are determined to fix it. Sustainable is a film about the land, the people who work it, and what must be done to sustain it for future generations.

DVD / 92 minutes

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TOMORROW

Directed by Cyril Dion & Melanie Laurent

Take Concrete Steps Toward A Sustainable Future

One of the most essential and inspirational viewings of how we can save the next generations by making a difference in the fields of food, energy, finance, democracy and education.

In 2012, "Nature" published a study led by more than 20 researchers from the top scientific institutions in the world predicting that humankind could disappear between 2040 and 2100. It also said that it could be avoided by drastically changing our way of life and take appropriate measures.

Shortly after giving birth to her first child, French actress and director Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Bastards) became increasingly aware of the dangers and the state of urgency that her son will face in the future. Along with friend and activist Cyril Dion and their crew, she decided to travel the world in search of solutions that can help save the next generations. The result is Tomorrow, an inspiring documentary that presents concrete solutions implemented throughout the world by hundreds of communities.

From the US to the UK and through Finland and India, together they traveled to 10 countries to visit permaculture farms, urban agriculture projects and community-owned renewable initiatives to highlight people making a difference in the fields of food, energy, finance, democracy, and education. Their common ideas and examples make Tomorrow (Demain) one of the most essential and unexpectedly inspirational viewing experiences of our time.

DVD / 120 minutes

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