Patagonia's Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival

Children's Show

Recommended for children ages 8 and up. This family screening features a 50-minute program celebrating children who are learning to respect and advocate for the environment.

"...an awesome way to bring people together in the name of community and to help us wake up to the fact that the living system of the earth is in peril and we all need to do the right thing; we each need to make a difference." - Charlie Woodruff, Winter Wildlands Alliance

The Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival stands apart from the hundreds of festivals around the world by inspiring and motivating viewers to go out and make a difference in their communities and the world. This is a festival for activists by activists, organized and hosted by the South Yuba River Citizens League, a grassroots environmental organization that has been bringing their community together around the protection of the Yuba Watershed for 25 years.

Learn new ideas from a selection of inspiring environmental films with hard-hitting topics including bioengineering, water issues, wilderness preservation, citizen activism and more. Explore the issues and movements with leading environmental activists and professionals, filmmakers and celebrities. Join us for this 3-part film festival, featuring over 20 short films, on Wednesday, July 9 and Sunday, July 13.

Since the Wild & Scenic Film Festival began touring in 2004, it has traveled to over twenty locations nationwide. Its founders have a goal of reaching over 50 communities in 2007, and plans to tour to 100 towns and cities over the next three years. An Appalachian Summer Festival is pleased to serve as a venue for the Wild and Scenic tour and a vehicle for our local conservancies' messages of environmental preservation.

July 13, 2008 Children's Show Program

Not Just Mine: Kids and Plovers on the Beach (USA 2007)
Joe Golling
Running time: 12 minutes
Lucas is a procrastinating schoolboy trying to make the grade. He learns about the predicament of the small shorebird, the Western Snowy Plover, and finds the enthusiasm within himself to help make a positive change for the bird and for the beach they both share.

Hawaii Reef Etiquette (USA 2005)
Ziggy Livnat
Running time: 8 minutes
With the spirit of Aloha, learn how to enjoy, respect, and preserve the Hawaiian reefs. This Public Service Announcement encourages action and shows viewers that one can make a difference. Best PSA (International Wildlife Film Festival).

Rita (USA 2006)
Alison Teal Blehert-Koehn
Running time: 6 minutes
This film is a true story about Alison, a seven-year-old girl who has been dragged around the world by her adventure travel guide / photographer / yoga-teaching parents and longs to be a kid and stay in one place long enough to have friends and go to school with children her own age. Unexpectedly, during one of the family's expeditions high in the Himalaya of Nepal, she befriends a seven-year-old Sherpa girl named Rita. Alison sneaks out to join Rita and they embark on a wild and touching adventure over an 18,000 ft. pass near the base of Mt. Everest—a journey that plops them right in Alison's dream world. Kids Choice (Telluride Mountainfilm); Best Family Short (Boulder Adventure Film Festival); Nominee (MTV Movie Award).

Antarctica... the End? (USA 2006)
Sam Lowe-Anker
Running time: 10 minutes
Seen through the eyes and voice of a 13-year-old boy, Antarctica looks at how climate change and human impact is affecting the frozen continent. Best Youth Environmental Film (Telluride MountainFilm, 2006).

Water Loving Doggies (USA 2007)
Will Kier
Running time: 3 minutes
There are places in this world and moments in time when PARADISE does exist... join some furry friends down on the Yuba.

Carpa Diem (Italy 2006)
Sergio Cannella
Running time: 2 minutes
Before sleeping, a child in her apartment is lovingly watching a fish in the aquarium. In the meantime her younger brother is being mindless of the open tap the water flowing out of the washbasin ... a waste that could turn into a tragedy. Many awards include Best Short (Vatavaran Film Festival); Best Spot (Festival International Du Film Sur L'Énergie de Lausanne).

Feed the Worms (USA 2007)
Philip Hassan
Running time: 6 minutes
Local students at Scotten School answer the question, "How can you help the environment?"

Other screenings:

• Wednesday, July 9, 2008 · 8pm
• Sunday, July 13, 2008 · 8pm

Special Exhibition

A special visual arts display in the Catherine J. Smith Gallery, curated by Hank Foreman and Brook Bower of the Turchin Center, features a preview of a series of paintings by local landscape artist Lowell Hayes that documents the loss of the hemlock trees to the Hemlock Wolly Adelgid. Other displays feature information about our local nature conservancies.

History of Patagonia's Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival

The South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL, pronounced 'circle') started the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival to promote community-building within the Yuba Watershed, as well as a way to explore environmental issues through an exciting and influential medium. SYRCL is a watershed advocacy group that was started in 1983 by a small group of concerned citizens who banded together to fi ght against several proposed dams.

The festival's namesake is in celebration of achieving Wild & Scenic status in 1999 for 39 miles of the South Yuba River. After twenty-five years, 7,000 supporters and 600 active volunteers later, SYRCL is one of the largest single-river organizations in the nation and the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival is now the largest film festival of its kind in the United States. The festival's annual 3-day event in Nevada City, CA features over 125 award-winning films, plus speakers, celebrities, and activists who bring a human face to the environmental movement.

The tour allows SYRCL to share their success with other environmental groups nationwide. It is building a network of grassroots organizations connected by a common goal, to use film to inspire activism. By showing the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival to diverse audiences across the country, we collectively want to inspire more individuals to take environmental action.

The festival's national partners have joined together to support this campaign. These partners include Patagonia, Clif Bar, Tom's of Maine, Brighter Planet, Earth Cinema Circle and Whole Foods Market.

Additional information:

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