2012 Films

The culmination of a years-long project to cultivate talented young filmmakers from the hillside favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro...

Seashells have held an eternal fascination for many cultures. No other natural history objects, it could be argued, have more thoroughly gratified our human impulse to collect beautiful items from a world beyond our own...

Shown with EXPLORING BLOODY BAY WALL

Bhutan is one of the hot spots of environmental preservation on earth as 70 percent of its surface is covered with forest and it hardly contributes at all to CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, it is facing the undisputable effects of global warming as melting ice continues to weaken the walls of the Himalayan glacier lakes...

Shown with BHUTAN: LAND OF THE BLACK NECKED CRANE

In the small Czech village of Nošovice – as the locals put it – a UFO has landed in the form of a kilometer-long factory: a Korean Hyundai automobile plant...

In this special evening, Plympton presents two new animations, Summer Bummer and a restoration of the 1921 The Flying House, as well as a sneak peek at an upcoming project. He also screens a selection of his classic shorts and discusses his oblique, off-beat style...

In a world of climate change and environmental catastrophes, two sisters, Anna and Emma, and their companions, the California Condors, stand out as a beacon of hope...

Shown with ENDANGERED HAWAI'I and HISTORY OF PATUXENT, THE: AMERICA'S CONSERVATION RESEARCH STORY

Journey through the layers of history that have shaped the South Korean city of Anyang and its environment...

Water Shorts Program

Shown as part of the multi-day, multi-venue Health and the Environment Film Series

Once the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water, the Aral Sea is now a notorious example of ecological calamity...

Shown with EXTINCTION, CARBON FOR WATER and MISSION FOR MERMAIDS

From the aesthetic influence of her early childhood and her groundbreaking career as a Harvard-trained architect to her emergence as a cutting-edge artist, the broad spectrum of this important artist’s life is traced in this film...

Clambering over rugged coastal headlands and dangling into their precipitous and little-known world, an inquisitive biologist encounters an Arctic that is surprisingly colourful and teeming with life, including prolific seabirds that represent some of Canada’s most spectacular wildlife...

The video, photography and performance artist Janet Biggs discusses her work, including a recent project for which she scaled a not-quite-dormant volcano in Indonesia. She explains her attraction to remote sites and extreme filming conditions, and shows her video work, “Arctic Trilogy.”

An Evening with Chris Palmer, Director, Center for Environmental Filmmaking, American University

In this special evening, Palmer contrasts the results of a troubling trend toward sensationalism, extreme risk-taking, falsification and even wildlife abuse in filmmaking to filming wildlife with honest, “straight shooting” techniques, highlighting the worst and best examples of the genre...

Shown as part of the multi-day, multi-venue Health and the Environment Film Series

A firsthand investigation of BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, this film uncovers what really happened, why it happened and who benefited from the catastrophe...

Shown as part of the multi-day, multi-venue Health and the Environment Film Series

Examining the aftermath of the catastrophic industrial disaster, the massive leakage of poison gas from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in the central Indian city of Bhopal...

Embark on an exotic journey to the small Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan high in the Himalayan Mountains...

Shown with 86 CENTIMETERS

Shown as part of the multi-day, multi-venue Health and the Environment Film Series

Examining the causes and consequences of the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, this deeply personal documentary investigates the corporate negligence and political corruption that have made Louisiana more of an “oil colony” than a state in our union...

Shown as part of the multi-day, multi-venue Health and the Environment Film Series

Embark on a journey from our evolutionary past and the origins of architecture to the world’s most celebrated buildings in a search for the architecture of life. The film showcases buildings that connect people and nature...

Shown as part of the Lucy Walker Retrospective

Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Himalayas, Blindsight follows the gripping adventure of six Tibetan teenagers who set out to climb the 23,000 foot Lhakpa Ri on the north side of Mt. Everest...

The astonishing life of Richard Leakey, paleoanthropologist, conservationist, statesman and provocateur, is illuminated as the film investigates four decades of exploration around Kenya’s Lake Turkana, which have given rise to both breakthroughs and controversy in the contentious field of human evolution...

As climate change threatens their water supply, a family of Himalayan nomads is torn between tradition and modernity...

The most charismatic tiger cub Colin had ever seen, Broken Tail lived in Ranthambhore, one of India’s premier wild tiger reserves. Impossibly cute, but when he was three years old, Broken Tail abandoned his sanctuary and went on the run, disappearing into the wilds of rural India for almost a year...

Shown with ELSA: THE LIONESS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, HELGOLAND: ISLAND IN THE STORM, LIFE: CHALLENGES OF LIFE and MY LIFE AS A TURKEY

Protecting Wild Lands, 20th Anniversary Environmental Film Festival Retrospective

For 50 years, many people have fought to protect San Bruno Mountain, a rare fragment of wild San Francisco and the largest undeveloped urban area in the country...

Shown with MONUMENTAL: DAVID BROWER'S FIGHT TO PROTECT WILD AMERICA