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Environment and Society


Environment and Society



GLADESMEN: THE LAST OF THE SAWGRASS COWBOYS

Directed by David Abel

In a classic battle of competing interests, gladesmen and their airboats are being banned from Everglades National Park in the world's largest attempt to restore a damaged ecosystem.

Gladesmen: The Last of the Sawgrass Cowboys is an award-winning documentary about the federal government's ban on Florida's iconic airboats in much of the Everglades. The measure is part of the world's largest and most expensive effort to repair a damaged ecosystem, a vast river of sawgrass and cypress swamps that has been ravaged by more than a century of development, pollution, and other environmental degradation. The outcome will determine the future of the region's water supply and its ability to withstand rising sea levels. It may also lead to the demise of the Gladesmen, who for more than a century have hunted alligators and gigged frogs, sought peace on isolated tree islands, and taken refuge from the ever-increasing development that has carved up the Everglades.


DVD / 2018 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 86 minutes

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PLANE TRUTHS

Directed by Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin

With the "Pivot to Asia" increased activity at the navy base on Whidbey Island, WA is making life unbearable for locals and wildlife - collateral damage in the ever increasing militarization of our society.

The recent expansion of Navy training activities in the Northwest has many local residents concerned. Will more of our communities become collateral damage?

Community members on Whidbey Island, the San Juans, and the Olympic Peninsula are disturbed by an increase in noise caused by new EA-18G "Growler" jets based at Naval Air Station Whidbey (NAS)--and a significant proposed expansion of daily Growler test flights. On Whidbey, communities have been additionally impacted by water system pollution caused by chemicals (PFOA & PFOS) used for firefighting on NAS landing strips.

PLANE TRUTHS explores a variety of perspectives on these issues from farmers, current and retired military personnel, environmentalists and other citizens of the affected areas. Viewers will learn how the noise of the Growler jets has affected daily life and business operations in many communities, about the regional environmental impacts of expanded Growler flights and newly approved Navy training in Olympic National Forest, the potential economic ramifications of increased Navy activity and associated population growth, and the status of--and Navy response to--water system pollution on Whidbey Island.

As the ideology of perpetual war becomes ever more embedded in our economy, communities near US bases here and around the world face similar problems.


DVD / 2018 / (Grades 7-9, Colleges, Adults) / 33 minutes

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SYMBIOTIC EARTH: HOW LYNN MARGULIS ROCKED THE BOAT AND STARTED A SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

Directed by John Feldman

Explores the life and ideas of Lynn Margulis, a scientific rebel who challenged entrenched theories of evolution to present a new narrative: life evolves through collaboration.

SYMBIOTIC EARTH explores the life and ideas of Lynn Margulis, a brilliant and radical scientist, whose unconventional theories challenged the male-dominated scientific community and are today fundamentally changing how we look at our selves, evolution, and the environment.

As a young scientist in the 1960s, Margulis was ridiculed when she first proposed that symbiosis was a key driver of evolution, but she persisted. Instead of the mechanistic view that life evolved through random genetic mutations and competition, she presented a symbiotic narrative in which bacteria joined together to create the complex cells that formed animals, plants and all other organisms - which together form a multi-dimensional living entity that covers the Earth. Humans are not the pinnacle of life with the right to exploit nature, but part of this complex cognitive system in which each of our actions has repercussions.

Filmmaker John Feldman traveled globally to meet Margulis' cutting-edge colleagues and continually asked: What happens when the truth changes? SYMBIOTIC EARTH examines the worldview that has led to climate change and extreme capitalism and offers a new approach to understanding life that encourages a sustainable and symbiotic lifestyle.


DVD / 2018 / (Grade 8evel: 10 - 12, College, Adults) / 147 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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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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COMPANY TOWN

Directors: Natalie Kottke-Masocco, Erica Sardarian

Crossett, Arkansas is home to about 5,500 people, one Georgia-Pacific paper and chemical plant owned by billionaire brothers Charles Koch and David Koch, and a startling rate of cancer and illness. This groundbreaking investigative documentary follows local pastor David Bouie as he fights to save his community. It offers a rare look inside a small town ruled by a single company, where the government's environmental protections have been subverted and ignored, leaving its citizens to take on entrenched powers in a fight for justice.

Crossett's residents are up against one of the nation's largest industrial company: Koch Industries. Pastor Bouie worked at the Koch's Georgia-Pacific plant for ten years, and on the street where he lives, 11 out 15 households lost someone to cancer. He seeks answers and actions to help protect the lives of his neighbors, many of whom have worked their entire lives at the plant, making products like Angel Soft, Brawny Paper Towels, Quilted Northern and Dixie paper cups. He galvanizes the town, revealing untold stories of health and medical crises.

Crossett is just one of hundreds of towns across America polluted by big business and failed by local, state and federal environmental protections. Company Town ultimately asks, what do you do when the company you work for and live next to is making you sick? It is the story of a modern-day David vs. Goliath.


DVD / 2017 / 90 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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TRIPLE DIVIDE (REDACTED)

Directed by Joshua Pribanic, Melissa Troutman

Exposes the mishandling and cover-up of drinking water contamination related to unconventional natural gas extraction - aka fracking - in Pennsylvania.

This award-winning "bombshell" documentary covers the impact of fracking in one of the country's most pristine watersheds. With exclusive interviews from oil and gas industry leaders, independent experts and impacted residents, TRIPLE DIVIDE [REDACTED] covers five years (2011 - 2016) of cradle-to-grave investigations that reveal how regulators and industry keep water contamination covered up.

The documentary's title pays homage to one of only four Triple Continental Divides in North America, a place that provides drinking water to millions of Americans, signaling to the audience that everything, and everyone, is downstream from shale gas extraction.

Award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo co-narrates this film.


DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 53 minutes

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BLUESPACE

Directed by Ian Cheney

Contrasts sci-fi ideas about terraforming Mars with the state of NYC's waterways, and questions the viability of colonizing Mars before making our own planet sustainable.

Could humans live on Mars? Would we want to? Emmy-nominated filmmaker, Ian Cheney, provides insight into our currently unsustainable relationship with our home planet by examining the sci-fi speculation of "terraforming," or making another planet Earth-like, by altering its atmosphere. He calls on a multifaceted brain trust to process this big idea including a desert camp of Mars hopefuls, a bevy of sci-fi writers, Hurricane Sandy survivors, the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, and a who's who of astrobiologists and earth scientists. BLUESPACE makes a strong case for taking better care of our water-rich planet so that future generations won't have to resort to interplanetary colonization.

At times whimsical and funny, serious and poignant and always stimulating, this is a unique exploration of current thinking about the origins and evolution of life and its relationship to water.


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10 -12, College, Adults) / 73 minutes

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DENIAL

Directed by Derek Hallquist

A unique film about the filmmaker's father, a utility executive and smart grid pioneer in a nation in denial about climate change, who battles his own denial about his true identity.

Every day our changing climate pushes us closer to an environmental catastrophe, but for most the problem is easy to ignore. As people we often find it difficult to face change. We'd rather be in denial.

David Hallquist, CEO of a Vermont utility, has made it his mission to take on one of the US's largest contributors to this global crisis, our outdated and vulnerable electric grid. Under David's leadership his utility was one of the first to implement a smart grid. In order to make the widespread use of renewable energy sources practical, David argues, we first have to build a smart grid which uses digital communications technology to detect and react to local changes in usage, thereby decreasing outages and increasing efficiency.

But when his filmmaker son, Derek, tries to tell his father's story, the film is soon derailed by a staggering family secret, one that forces Derek and David to turn their attention toward a much more personal struggle, one that can no longer be denied. With stunning access to intimate family moments and behind-the-scenes energy deals, and with unique humor in the face of overwhelming events, DENIAL manages to present insights into two important topics - one global and one personal - through a funny, informational, and enormously compelling personal narrative, and at the same time to throw light on the messy business of change.


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 92 minutes

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HOW TO LET GO OF THE WORLD AND LOVE ALL THE THINGS CLIMATE CAN'T CHANGE

Directed by Josh Fox

Oscar-nominated director Josh Fox contemplates our climate-change future by exploring the human qualities that global warming can't destroy.

In his new film, Oscar-nominated director Josh Fox (GASLAND) continues in his deeply personal style, investigating climate change - the greatest threat our world has ever known. Traveling to 12 countries on 6 continents, the film acknowledges that it may be too late to stop some of the worst consequences and asks, what is it that climate change can't destroy? What is so deep within us that no calamity can take it away?

Featuring, among others, Lester Brown, Elle Chou, Van Jones, Elizabeth Kolbert, Michael Mann, Bill McKibben, Tim DeChristopher, Petra Tschakert.


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 127 minutes

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ONE BIG HOME

Directed by Thomas Bena

Trophy homes threaten Martha's Vineyard. When he feels he is complicit in wrecking the place he calls home, one carpenter takes off his tool belt and picks up a camera.

Gentrification comes in many forms. On the tiny island of Martha's Vineyard, where presidents and celebrities vacation, trophy homes threaten to destroy the island's unique character.

Twelve years in the making, ONE BIG HOME follows one carpenter's journey to understand the trend toward giant houses. When he feels complicit in wrecking the place he calls home, Thomas Bena takes off his tool belt and picks up a camera. Bumping up against angry homeowners and builders who look the other way, he works with his community and attempts to pass a new bylaw to limit house size.


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 88 minutes

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SACRED COD

Directed by Steve Liss, Andy Laub, David Abel

Captures the collapse of the historic cod population in New England, delving into the effects of overfishing, climate change and government policies on fishermen and the fish.

For centuries, cod was like gold, driving men to extremes. Cod were so abundant in the waters off New England that fishermen used to say they could walk across the Atlantic on the backs of them, and generations of men from places like Gloucester and Cape Cod spent their entire lives chasing the coveted fish.

In recent decades, something began to change in the Gulf of Maine. As the region's cod catch plummeted, government surveys of the iconic species reported increasingly dire results. Scientists and environmental activists raised alarms about overfishing and the warming ocean. They urged officials to act.

On Nov. 10, 2014, after years of ignoring warnings, NOAA officials banned virtually all cod fishing throughout the region. Fishermen were infuriated. They challenged the findings and accused the government of trying to destroy their livelihood. Environmental activists feared the government's action had come too late to save the cod.

In 2016, officials estimated there were fewer than 200 cod fishermen left in the fleet, and they're now in the fight of their lives, struggling to hold fast to a tradition that has endured for centuries in New England.

SACRED COD gives us an up close look at the challenges many will have to face in the age of climate change.


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 65 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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AFTER THE SPILL

Directed by Jon Bowermaster

The oil and gas industry has historically dominated Louisiana politics and is largely responsible for the state's rapidly disappearing coastline.

Ten years ago Hurricane Katrina devastated the coast of Louisiana. Five years later the Deepwater Horizon exploded and spilled more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the worst ecologic disaster in North American history. Amazingly those aren't the worst things facing Louisiana's coastline today. It is that the state is fast disappearing through coastal erosion caused largely by oil and gas industry activity.

A follow-up to our 2010 film SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories, this film introduces us to some of the spill's most aggrieved victims as well as those who are desperately trying to save its coastline. Writer and historian John Barry who launched a suit against 97 oil and gas companies attempting to get them to pay their fair share for reparations caused by their explorations. Consultant and native son James Carville who manages to find some hope in new technologies that may save the coast. And Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, the man who saved New Orleans post-Katrina, whose new passion is for a Green Army he has recruited.

Fishermen, scientists, politicians, environmentalists, and oil-rig workers document how the coast of Louisiana has changed. What really happened to all that oil? What about the dispersant used to push it beneath the surface? How has the spill impacted local economies as well as human health and the health of both marine life and the Gulf itself? How much resilience is left in the people and coastline?


DVD / 2015 / (Grade Level: 7 -12, Colleges, Adults) / 62 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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CENTRAL PARK: THE PEOPLE'S PLACE

Director: Martin L. Birnbaum

Central Park: The People's Place is a loving portrait of New York's collective backyard. It is a biography of a living place that continues to evolve as the city changes. The documentary explores its historic creation as the first truly public park, its psychological and sociological significance, artistic design, and role as an urban oasis as the world becomes increasingly aware of the importance of green spaces. The film celebrates nature's seasonal changes with beautiful photography and original music that capture the 'good vibes' of a park filled with New Yorkers at play. Home to birdwatchers, sunbathers, kids playing, musicians giving impromptu concerts and big events like Shakespeare in the Park and the New York City Marathon, Central Park is central to the life of the city.

Central Park: The People's Place examines both the collective and individual experiences of Central Park, rejoicing in the diversity and splendor of an American experiment in social democracy


DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 97 minutes

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QUEST FOR MEANING, A

Directed by Nathanael Coste, Marc de la Menardiere

Two childhood friends take an impromptu road trip attempting to uncover the causes of our current global crisis and discover a way to bring about change.

A QUEST FOR MEANING tells the story of Marc and Nathanael, two childhood friends who take an impromptu road trip attempting to uncover the causes of our current global crisis and to discover a way to bring about change. The two friends invite us to share their quest as they meet with activists, biologists, philosophers, and custodians of ancient traditions. Equipped with nothing more than a tiny camera and a microphone they document some of the solutions that are laying the foundations for a sustainable world. This life-changing journey restores confidence in our ability to bring about change both within ourselves and in society.

Among the people they talk to are Vandana Shiva, Trinh Xuan Thuan, Satish Kumar, Pierre Rabhi, Herve Kempf, Bruce Lipton and Cassandra Vieten.


DVD / 2015 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 87 minutes

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LAST SEASON, THE

Director: Sara Dosa

Every September over 200 seasonal workers, most of them Cambodian, Lao, Hmong, Mien and Thai, set up a temporary camp near the tiny town of Chemult, Oregon. They remain until the first snowfall, searching the lush woods of Klamath County for the rare matsutake, a fungus highly prized in Japan. This sensitive, probing documentary examines the bond between two of these hunters in one unusually hard season.

Elderly Roger Higgins is a Vietnam vet who returned from the war traumatized and alienated. "We couldn't get a job, so we made our own jobs. I would get out there in the woods and just work." Kouy Loch is a Cambodian immigrant whose experience as a starving slave laborer under the Khmer Rouge taught him the foraging skills that now afford him a living. The men cemented their relationship years before over the shared pain of their Southeast Asian experience, becoming almost like father and son as they traipsed through the trees together. But Roger is too sick to do much hunting this year, and Kouy must walk the forest on his own.

The Last Season contrasts the past with the present, the camaraderie of the mushroom hunters' camp with Higgins's remote home in the woods and the hope of a yearly treasure hunt with the vagaries of climate and falling prices. The result is a poetic film about friendship, nature and life.


DVD / 2014 / 78 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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