Mountainfilm Program 4
Mountainfilm Program 4
Strong environmental films should tell stories that people need to hear, and this program certainly fits that category. But these films do it in their own ways by focusing on artists and activists, innovators and an eel man—yes, an eel man.
eel / water / rock / man
Hal Clifford & Jason Houston, USA, 2010; 7m
IN PERSON: Jason Houston & James Prosek
This short film, which is simple, balanced, and richly shot, is fully consonant with its theme of Nature’s timeless cycles, unchanging truths and abundance. Watch the Delaware River as it flows around, past and through an ancient stone weir designed by a decidedly old-school fisherman to catch migrating eels. The moving river creates a sound like applause—a rippling, bubbling, liquid ovation—for the virtues of patience, acceptance, and devotion.
One Plastic Beach
Eric Slatkin & Tess Thackara, USA, 2010; 8m
IN PERSON: Judith Selby Lang
For 12 years Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang have collected plastic trash along a one-kilometer stretch of beach near their home in N. California. At a rate of 35 pounds per hour, it isn’t surprising that they have accumulated tons of debris. What may be surprising is the art they produce with it: sculptures and abstract prints reminiscent of Paul Klee and Henri Matisse that feature 1949-vintage toys, Korean lighters, Astroturf (a common find), bubble blowers and hair curlers that may have last adorned a human head thirty or forty years ago. Let’s hope that those pieces never find their way back to the sea where they would join an estimated 46,000 visible pieces of plastic that float in every square mile of Earth’s oceans.
My Toxic Reality
Tom Dusenbery, USA, 2011; 5m
The Goldman Environmental Prize is perhaps the most important—and generous—environmental tribute of its kind with an annual financial award that goes to grassroots environmental heroes from each of the world’s six inhabited continents. My Toxic Reality is about one of the winners, Hilton Kelly, who saw a need for someone to take a stand in his community of Port Arthur, Texas, a place where eight petrochemical refining facilities loom over that town’s residential areas. Hoping to reverse the severe economic and environmental decline of his hometown, and reduce the alarming incidence of respiratory and cancer-related illness, Kelly spent years learning all he could about policies governing industrial pollution. Then he galvanized his community to take action: to clean up historical damage and degradation and protect against future threats.
Spoil
Trip Jennings, USA, 2011; 44m
Filmmaker Trip Jennings (whose film Flathead Wild played at Lincoln Center last year) returns with Spoil, a film in which he follows the International League of Conservation Photographers and the Gitga’at First Nation people of British Columbia in their search for the illusive spirit bear. All white, but not albino, and rarer than the panda, the spirit bear lives only in the Great Bear Rainforest on the north coast of British Columbia, a place that is at risk from a proposed oil pipeline. In an effort to oppose the pipeline, Jennings’s mission is to create images of this rare bear and the unique ecosystem that it relies on. At risk is an intact and rare-in-the-world temperate rain forest that is home not only to the Gitga’at, but also to a host of animals, from the spirit bear and genetically distinct wolves to an array of marine mammals.
Followed by a conversation with M. Sanjayan of The Nature Conservancy!
M. Sanjayan is the lead scientist for the Nature Conservancy, specializing in conservation, Africa, and wildlife ecology.
Hal Clifford & Jason Houston, USA, 2010; 7m
IN PERSON: Jason Houston & James Prosek
This short film, which is simple, balanced, and richly shot, is fully consonant with its theme of Nature’s timeless cycles, unchanging truths and abundance. Watch the Delaware River as it flows around, past and through an ancient stone weir designed by a decidedly old-school fisherman to catch migrating eels. The moving river creates a sound like applause—a rippling, bubbling, liquid ovation—for the virtues of patience, acceptance, and devotion.
One Plastic Beach
Eric Slatkin & Tess Thackara, USA, 2010; 8m
IN PERSON: Judith Selby Lang
For 12 years Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang have collected plastic trash along a one-kilometer stretch of beach near their home in N. California. At a rate of 35 pounds per hour, it isn’t surprising that they have accumulated tons of debris. What may be surprising is the art they produce with it: sculptures and abstract prints reminiscent of Paul Klee and Henri Matisse that feature 1949-vintage toys, Korean lighters, Astroturf (a common find), bubble blowers and hair curlers that may have last adorned a human head thirty or forty years ago. Let’s hope that those pieces never find their way back to the sea where they would join an estimated 46,000 visible pieces of plastic that float in every square mile of Earth’s oceans.
My Toxic Reality
Tom Dusenbery, USA, 2011; 5m
The Goldman Environmental Prize is perhaps the most important—and generous—environmental tribute of its kind with an annual financial award that goes to grassroots environmental heroes from each of the world’s six inhabited continents. My Toxic Reality is about one of the winners, Hilton Kelly, who saw a need for someone to take a stand in his community of Port Arthur, Texas, a place where eight petrochemical refining facilities loom over that town’s residential areas. Hoping to reverse the severe economic and environmental decline of his hometown, and reduce the alarming incidence of respiratory and cancer-related illness, Kelly spent years learning all he could about policies governing industrial pollution. Then he galvanized his community to take action: to clean up historical damage and degradation and protect against future threats.
Spoil
Trip Jennings, USA, 2011; 44m
Filmmaker Trip Jennings (whose film Flathead Wild played at Lincoln Center last year) returns with Spoil, a film in which he follows the International League of Conservation Photographers and the Gitga’at First Nation people of British Columbia in their search for the illusive spirit bear. All white, but not albino, and rarer than the panda, the spirit bear lives only in the Great Bear Rainforest on the north coast of British Columbia, a place that is at risk from a proposed oil pipeline. In an effort to oppose the pipeline, Jennings’s mission is to create images of this rare bear and the unique ecosystem that it relies on. At risk is an intact and rare-in-the-world temperate rain forest that is home not only to the Gitga’at, but also to a host of animals, from the spirit bear and genetically distinct wolves to an array of marine mammals.
Followed by a conversation with M. Sanjayan of The Nature Conservancy!
M. Sanjayan is the lead scientist for the Nature Conservancy, specializing in conservation, Africa, and wildlife ecology.
