SUNY Fredonia’s Sustainability Committee will host a free environmental film festival from 3:00 to 8:30 p.m. today in Room 101 Jewett Hall. Designed to introduce audience members to a range of sustainability issues, the film festival will feature five award-winning environmental documentaries.
Opening the series is A Sense of Wonder (2008), which pays tribute to pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson. In this D.C. Environmental Film Festival selection, actress Kaiulani Lee embodies this extraordinary woman, portraying Carson in the final year of her life. Struggling with cancer, Carson recounts with both humor and anger the attacks by the chemical industry, the government, and the press as she focuses her limited energy to get her message to Congress and the American people.
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Room 101, Jewett Hall
4:00 - Addicted to Plastic (85 min.) 5:30 - The Digital Dump (23 min.) 6:00 - Water First (46 min.) 7:00 - The 11th Hour (92 min.) |
Environmental Film FestivalA finalist for the Overall Audience Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Addicted to Plastic is a point-of-view style documentary that encompasses three years of filming in 12 countries on 5 continents, including two trips to the middle of the Pacific Ocean where plastic debris accumulates. The film details plastic's path over the last 100 years and provides a wealth of expert interviews on practical and cutting edge solutions to recycling, toxicity and biodegradability. These solutions—which include plastic made from plants—will provide viewers with a new perspective about our future with plastic.
Next in the line-up, starting at 5:30 p.m., is the Basel Action Network’s photo-documentary report “The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-Use and Abuse to Africa” (2005). The short riveting film exposes the ugly underbelly of what is thought to be an escalating global trade in toxic, obsolete, discarded computers and other e-scrap collected in North America and Europe and sent to developing countries by waste brokers and so-called recyclers. Mark Delcamp, Assistant Director of Facilities Services at SUNY Fredonia, will be on hand to answer questions about the college’s electronics recycling practices and the April 25, 2009 Campus and Community Electronics Recycling event.
Continuing with an examination of international sustainability issues, Amy Hart’s highly acclaimed film Water First: Reaching The Millennium Development Goals (2008) will begin at 6:00 p.m. Through the inspiring story of Charles Banda, a humble Malawian fireman turned waterman, the documentary shows how water is a solution to many of the problems in his impoverished, sub-Saharan country. From hunger and poverty to women's equality and population control, HIV/AIDS to environmental sustainability, Banda makes it clear that the best way to assist and empower people in developing nations, and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), is by putting water first.
Providing an overview of today’s most pressing environmental problems, The 11th Hour will begin at 7:00 p.m. Narrated by Academy Award® Nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, this captivating documentary explores the perilous state of our planet, and the means by which we can change our course. Contributing to this crucial film are noted politicians, scientists and other ambassadors for the importance of a universal ecological consciousness. The 11th Hour is directed by Nadia Connors and Leila Conners Peterson and features brief interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Paul Hawken, Stephen Hawking, and other leading sustainability experts.
As part of the film festival, a reception with light organic and fair trade refreshments will take place outside Jewett 101 from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. The film festival and a native planting event that day mark the beginning of SUNY Fredonia’s 2009 Earth Week events. All of the events are free and open to the public. For more information about the film festival or other Earth Week programming, please contact Dr. Christina Jarvis, Earth Week Coordinator, via phone (679-9254) or email (jarvisc@fredonia.edu).
