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Content

Environmental Issues


Environmental Issues



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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ATOMIC HOMEFRONT

By Rebecca Cammisa

ATOMIC HOMEFRONT shines an urgent and devastating light on the lasting toxic effects that nuclear waste can have on communities. Focusing on a group of moms-turned-advocates in St Louis, Missouri, the film follows the women as they confront the EPA, government agencies that are slow to provide aid, and the corporations behind the illegal dumping of dangerous radioactive waste in their backyards.

Both a harrowing indictment of institutional misconduct and a tribute to the heroism of mothers fighting to protect their families, ATOMIC HOMEFRONT is essential viewing for anyone interested in environmental grassroots activism, government and corporate responsibility, and the effects of nuclear waste on human health.


DVD (Color) / 2018 / 96 minutes

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BACKFIRED: WHEN VW LIED TO AMERICA

Directed by Dale Bell

Investigates the largest auto scam in the world, tracing VW's deliberate installation of defeat devices in their diesel cars to circumvent California and US vehicle emissions standards.

BACKFIRED: When VW Lied to America tells the inside story of the VW scandal as it unravels beginning at West Virginia University in 2013 where a group of unsuspecting students accidentally discover the defeat device while doing rare on-road testing. They immediately share their stunning discovery with CARB (California Air Resources Board) that verifies the findings and engages with the EPA and DOJ to plot carefully filing suit against VW's top executives. VW is slapped with the largest fine in US auto history: $15 billion in what's now known as "Dieselgate." And, it gets worse. Most recently, it was discovered that VW secretly tested emissions from defeat devices on innocent monkeys at a lab in New Mexico.

From West Virginia to California, to Washington DC, to Germany and Paris, we hear from those who broke the case and sought justice. BACKFIRED will leave viewers with new insight into the role of regulators, the power of money, and the willingness of major corporations knowingly to endanger the health of millions and to increase carbon emissions dramatically. Most important, it will inspire viewers to think about our obligation to our children and to continue the fight for clean air and a livable planet.


DVD / 2018 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 61 minutes

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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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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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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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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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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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BLUEFIN: THE LAST OF THE GIANTS

Directed by John Hopkins

In North Lake, Canada, the spectacular Atlantic bluefin tuna are so plentiful they eat out of people's hands but scientific evidence shows the species is on the brink of collapse.

BLUEFIN is a tale of epic stakes set in "the tuna capital of the world," North Lake, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The film explores the baffling mystery of why the normally wary bluefin tuna no longer fear humans. Local fishermen swear tuna are so starving and abundant now that they will literally eat out of people's hands like pets. But something is not right. Have these "endangered" tuna stocks suddenly recovered as the fishermen claim? Or are we actually hunting down the last of them--like the buffalo--as scientists claim? One thing is certain: this sudden and incredible abundance of tuna off their shores flies in the face of scientific assessments claiming endangered stocks are down by 90 percent.

With stunning cinematography, director John Hopkins documents this mystery and brings the issues into sharp focus. At the heart of this documentary lies a passionate concern by all about the fate of the giant bluefin tuna. Isn't it time we learned to appreciate the giant, and relentlessly hunted, bluefin as extraordinary "wildlife," in the same way we love whales, dolphins and panda bears?


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 53 minutes

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DAUGHTERS OF THE FOREST

Directed by Samantha Grant

A group of girls in a remote forest in Paraguay are transformed at an experimental high school where they learn to protect the threatened forest and build a future for themselves.

DAUGHTERS of the FOREST tells the powerful, uplifting story of a small group of girls in one of the most remote forests left on earth who attend a radical high school where they learn to protect the threatened forest and forge a better future for themselves.

Set in the untamed wilds of the Mbaracayu Reserve in rural Paraguay, this intimate verite documentary offers a rare glimpse of a disappearing world where timid girls grow into brave young women even as they are transformed by their unlikely friendships with one another. Filmed over the course of five years, we follow the girls from their humble homes in indigenous villages through the year after their graduation to see exactly how their revolutionary education has and will continue to impact their future lives.


DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2016 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 56 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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FOOTPRINT: POPULATION, CONSUMPTION AND SUSTAINABILITY

By Valentina Canavesio

FOOTPRINT takes a dizzying spin around the globe, witnessing population explosions, overconsumption, limited resources, and expert testimony as to what a world straining at its limits can sustain. We spend time with indigenous health workers, activists, and the ordinary people in the Philippines, Mexico, Pakistan and Kenya, women who all challenge the idea that our world can continue to support the weight of humanity's footprint on it. FOOTPRINT offers unprecedented access to the people on the ground who are all in their unique way challenging the status quo and making us rethink what's really at stake. There are surprising revelations on who are the players standing in the way of solutions and those pushing for it, without losing sight of the array of possible solutions that open up when we take the time to ask this critical question of how many of us there are in the world and what the Earth can sustain if we are to all live a dignified life.


DVD (English, Swahili, Urdu, Tagalog, Spanish, Color) / 2016 / 82 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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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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DEATH BY DESIGN

Directed by Sue Williams

Debunks the notion that electronics is a 'clean' industry by revealing the human and environmental cost of electronic gadgets that are designed to die.

Consumers love - and live on - their smartphones, tablets and laptops. A cascade of new devices pours endlessly into the market, promising even better communication, non-stop entertainment and instant information. The numbers are staggering. By 2020, four billion people will have a personal computer. Five billion will own a mobile phone.

But this revolution has a dark side that the electronics industry doesn't want you to see.

In an investigation that spans the globe, award-winning filmmaker Sue Williams investigates the underbelly of the international electronics industry and reveals how even the tiniest devices have deadly environmental and health costs.

DEATH BY DESIGN tells the stories of young Chinese workers laboring in unsafe conditions, American families living with the tragic consequences of the industry's toxic practices, activists leading the charge to hold brands accountable, and passionate entrepreneurs who are developing more sustainable products and practices to safeguard our planet and our future.

From the intensely secretive electronics factories in China, to the high tech innovation labs of Silicon Valley, DEATH BY DESIGN tells a story of environmental degradation, of health tragedies, and the fast-approaching tipping point between consumerism and sustainability.


DVD / 2015 / (Grades 7-9, College, Adults) / 73 minutes

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FEED THE GREEN: FEMINIST VOICES FOR THE EARTH

By Jane Caputi

FEED THE GREEN: FEMINIST VOICES FOR THE EARTH, by Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies professor and scholar Jane Caputi, challenges the cultural imagination surrounding the destruction of the environment and the link and influence on femicide and genocide.

No nation is immune to the effects of global warming, but the impacts of climate change are felt disproportionately by those who face racial and socioeconomic inequalities. In the US, African Americans, Hispanics and other racial and ethnic minorities are more vulnerable to climate change. Globally the effects from global warming are likely to be unequal, with the world's poorest and developing regions lacking the economic and institutional capacity to cope and adapt.

FEED THE GREEN features a variety of feminist thinkers, including ecological and social justice advocates Vandana Shiva and Andrea Smith, ecosexual activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens; ecofeminist theorist and disability rights activist Ynestra King, poet Camille Dungy, scholars and bloggers Janell Hobson and Jill Schneiderman and grass roots activist La Loba Loca. Their voices are powerfully juxtaposed with images from popular culture, including advertising, myth, art, and the news, pointing to the ways that an environmentally destructive worldview is embedded in popular discourses, both contemporary and historical. Required viewing for Women's and Environmental Studies as well as Pop Culture.


DVD (Color) / 2015 / 35 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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TREES IN TROUBLE: SAVING AMERICA'S URBAN FORESTS

Directed by Andrea Torrice

The first film to document how a city responds to the imminent tree crisis caused by invasive insects such as the emerald ash borer.

It seemed to happen almost overnight. Thousands of trees started dying unexpectedly in SW Ohio. Cincinnati almost went broke cutting down trees and trying to keep the invasion from damaging property - or worse. The killer was a tiny insect known as the emerald ash borer, a new invasive insect from Asia that will wipe out every ash tree in America...unless we do something about it. First found near Detroit in 2002, emerald ash borers have now infested trees in 35 states, from New Hampshire to South Carolina and as far west as Colorado.

TREES IN TROUBLE: Saving America's Urban Forests tells the compelling story of how one community in SW Ohio confronted their tree crisis and fought the invasive pest by taking action and joining together. Through partnerships with scientists, city officials and everyday citizens, this community was able to fight the pest and protect their urban forests for future generations. The film also explores the rich history of urban forestry in the United States and the exciting new research linking human health and trees.

Designed for audiences of all ages, TREES IN TROUBLE inspires viewers to take action, and points towards first steps.


DVD / 2015 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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BANKING NATURE

By Denis Delestrac & Sandrine Feydel

"Buying landscapes, protecting landscapes, accumulating new landscapes - it's a phenomenal opportunity." -- Steve Morgan, CEO, Wildlands Inc.

After years of working to undermine environmental regulations, governments and corporations are starting to think about the value of nature - and how they can profit from it.

BANKING NATURE is a provocative documentary that looks at the growing movement to value the natural world - and to turn endangered species and threatened areas into instruments of profit. It's a worldview that sees capital and markets not as a threat to the planet, but as its salvation - turning nature into "natural capital" and fundamental processes such as pollination and oxygen generation into "ecosystem services."

In the film we meet economist and former banker Pavan Sukhdev is perhaps the world's leading authority on the valuation of nature (one square kilometre of Hawaiian coral reef: $600,000). In his view, the best way to protect endangered species and ecosystems is to assign them a value - because if we can't measure the services nature provides, we can't recognize them within our current models.

In Uganda, we meet men who measure trees to determine how much carbon they store - and a banker from the German firm that sells the resulting carbon credits. Meanwhile in Brazil, steel giant Vale destroys rainforest, replaces it with tree plantations, and reaps the benefits of environmental credits.

Once we start measuring the value of nature, we can start turning it into securitized financial products. BANKING NATURE asks, can we trust the very same people whose management of the mortgage market nearly led to a global economic collapse to safeguard nature by turning it into financial instruments for speculators?


DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2014 / 90 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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SURVIVING THE TSUNAMI - MY ATOMIC AUNT

By Kyoko Miyake

Film director Kyoko Miyake remembered Namie, a fishing village ravaged by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, as her childhood paradise. Revisiting her family's hometown after 10 years abroad, Miayke's multilayered documentary examines the disaster's profound personal, social and environmental impact.

While Namie's younger generations have permanently relocated elsewhere, Miyake's Aunt Kuniko, like other older residents, has clung to dreams of eventually returning to her home. Over the course of a year, Miyake follows this warm, indomitable businesswoman as she recalls happy family memories and strives to adapt to life outside the contamination zone. In the process, Kuniko starts questioning her unconditional trust in Fukushima's plant operators and pro-nuclear past in a community that once hoped to house a nuclear power station.

A timely reminder of Fukushima's continuing meltdown, this insightful, often funny film offers fresh perspectives on Japanese national identity and today's most pressing global concerns around nuclear energy.


DVD (English, Japanese, With English subtitles) / 2013 / 52 minutes

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BESTIAIRE

By Denis Cote

Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Denis Cote's mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. This strikingly beautiful film about looking - starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal - that blurs the line between observer and observed. There may be no traditional narrative, yet there is breathtaking dramatic tension in every exquisitely framed shot: the sight of a lion attacking the doors of its cage or the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a holding pen. Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is cinema at its purest.


DVD (Color) / 2012 / 72 minutes

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STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BEES, THE

By Mark Daniels

THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BEES is a frightening documentary about how mass deaths of bees have recently swept all over the world. Increasingly each spring, beekeepers open their hives to find entire colonies wiped out. And beekeepers aren't the only ones who are worried. Bees pollinate at least a third of the world's crops. If the dramatic decline in worldwide bee populations continues, essential food crops could disappear, along with entire ecosystems.

Bringing together the latest scientific research, THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BEES looks at the dramatic colony collapses in beehives around the world. There is no one smoking gun responsible for killing bees. Instead, a constellation of factors is stressing bees more than ever before: from parasitic mites that infect them with deadly viruses, to novel pesticides incorporated into the very cells of plants, and industrial operations that truck millions of bees all over the country.

California's Imperial Valley provides an almost perfect storm of these factors, with 36 billion bees providing essential pollination for nearly a million acres of almond trees. When the trees are in bloom, the Valley looks like a lush paradise. But it's a pesticide-intensive environment in which bees are under such strain they need to be artificially fed - and even then, many perish.

But bees don't have to live under these conditions, and beekeepers don't need to adopt them in order to succeed. In Scotland, Willie Robson has become one of the country's most productive beekeepers, using natural methods to breed and raise his insects. Rather than breeding bees for docility, he encourages natural selection that boosts bees' immunity.

Featuring stunning photography, THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BEES takes us right into beehives and onto plants along with the pollinators. It also surveys the science through conversations with top researchers such as entomologist May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and biologist Paul Ehrlich of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.

There may be no easy answers as to why bee colonies are collapsing, but this documentary makes a convincing case that the current industrial agricultural model may to blame - killing off the very pollinators that it requires in order to survive. As Ehrlich puts it, bees have the task of keeping the world alive. If they go in sufficient numbers, we may well follow.


DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2011 / 58 minutes

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