2017 • USA • 29 min • Siobhan Landry, with assistance from Garth Evans & Leila Philip

The film, based on the book, Water Rising, by Garth Evans and Leila Philip, interweaves poems from the book read by the Philip, conversation with the authors of Water Rising and music by the composer, Shirish Korde. In addition, the film includes photographs taken by the authors of their local landscape along with recorded environmental sounds and images of the production of three watercolors as they evolve.

2019 • USA • 6 min • Cameron Mattson & Kevin Paczesny

Filmmaker in Attendance

Lakeshore’s Skiff highlights the dream of the Marquette Community Boatbuilding. Their dream? Building a 22’ St. Ayles Skiff, a Scottish four-oared rowing craft. Follow the works of Mike Potts and many other talented local craftsmen throughout the creation process.

2018 • USA • 79 min • Chad Terpstra

Has Subtitles, Subject in Attendance, Filmmaker in Attendance

Father The Flame follows Lee Erck, a world-renowned pipe maker from Negaunee, as he travels the globe to explore the nearly forgotten art of tobacco pipe making.

2018 • USA • 15 min • Harrison Mendel & Robb Thompson

Beautiful Idiot takes you on a ride through the mindset and motivations of those who feel driven to pursue greatness, how it can feel to fall short, and the consequences of reaching a lofty goal when the struggle to get there has defined you for so long. Featuring professional freeride mountain bike rider Brett Rheeder.

2019 • USA • 29 min • Jennifer A. Berggren

“A Change of Practice: Leadership in Medicine for the Underserved” is a half-hour documentary film that follows third- and fourth-year LMU students as they help residents in Flint navigate the lead water crisis and the insidious impacts of poverty. LMU students learn they are called to be more than physicians; their role is to change the practice of medicine. As one of the LMU students says in the film if they don’t advocate for patients, who will?

2019 • USA • 6 min • Henna Taylor

Adult Content

Experience fear and emotion alongside climber Jenny Abegg as she ascends a route while fighting the self-criticism and doubt from that little voice we all have in the back of our heads.

2018 • USA • 4 min • Dana Saint

Family Friendly

Traveling with a baby is an interesting thing. They add all sorts of challenges to any trip . Long flights, strollers, nap schedules, and car seats all seem to pile up and complicate what is supposed to be a relaxing vacation. Sometimes, you may even find yourself wondering…is all this effort worth it for a baby who won’t even remember the trip? All these experiences and memories will eventually disappear, like a fading dream. So is it worth it?

2019 • Mexico & USA • 35 min • Sophie Danison & Hilary Byrne

Has Subtitles

Through individual experiences living in tourism-driven mountain communities, The Quiet Force explores social and economic impacts of the Latino immigrant workforce relating to the current national immigration policies.

2019 • USA • 17 min • Audrey Buchanan

Adult Content

In the short film, The Mystery of Now, artist and Apache Skateboards founder, Douglas Miles shares socio-political context around the history that lead to life on the San Carlos Apache reservation, and the personal history of how and why he started a skateboard brand and team of local youth leaders. His advice on cultivating resilience, creativity, and joy, provides guidance in a time that for many feels uncertain, polarizing and divisive in our living rooms and around our dinner tables.

2019 • USA • 13 min • Colin Scott

Movements is the symphonic saga – in four parts (Rainbow, Steelhead, Musky, Striper) – of three Alaska fishing guides who road trip their way home in a 2003 Dodge Caravan (best known as ‘Van-a White’) from AK to NYC. From an Edenic paradise to a modern-day Gomorrah in a single month – arriving in Time Square on Halloween night – these four MOVEMENTS make our original symphony “Agartha.”

2018 • USA • 8 min • Ryan Peterson

A woman quits her mid-career job as a scientist to become a commercial fisherman. A humorous story of her unlikely mentorship within a gang of young party dudes. Set in the world’s biggest, rowdiest salmon fishery of Bristol Bay, Alaska.

2018 • USA • 13 min • Miranda Fox

A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of two very different Michigan communities, small-town Evart and industrial Flint, that have found their futures inextricably linked by a threat to the one thing that all life requires: water.

2018 • USA • 6 min • Palmer Morse & Rachel Weinberg

Detroit Hives follows Tim Paule and Nicole Lindsey, a young couple from East Detroit, who are working hard to bring diversity to the field of beekeeping and create opportunities for young Detroit natives to overcome adversity. It is estimated that Detroit has with well over 90,000 empty housing lots to date. In an effort to address this issue, Tim and Nicole have been purchasing vacant lots and converting them into bee farms. Detroit Hives explores the importance of bringing diversity to beekeeping and rebuilding inner-city communities one hive at a time.

2018 • Australia • 11 min • Beau Miles

Family Friendly

Collecting thrown-out, railway-side, road-side, dumpster-filling, perfectly good wood between my train station and the office, this is a short and meaningful story of a junk-made paddle.

2018 • Canada • 23 min • Anthony Bonello

Has Subtitles

In March 2017, former World Champion sport climber Liv Sansoz, set out to climb all 82 4000m peaks in the European Alps in a single year. As she’s learned several times throughout her life, things don’t always go as planned.

2018 • Australia • 5 min • Krystle Wright

For the past 20 years, Australian photographer Nick Moir has been chasing weather systems throughout the world. Nick journeys through the famous Tornado alley that stretches through the American Midwest that produces catastrophic yet beautiful storms that earn the appropriate nickname, monsters on the plains.

2018 • Spain • 11 min • Ignasi López Fàbregas

Adult Content

Marcel and Andrezj are a legendary pair of mountaineers. They have been the first ones to conquer the highest and hardest peaks. Despite their different temperaments, they make a great team. Marcel has taken the lead and popularity, whereas Andrezj always plays a secondary role. Now they face the biggest challenge: reaching the virgin summit of the highest mountain. In order to achieve this, they will have to overcome formidable obstacles, suffer hardships and stand each other for a long time. But Andrezj is no longer willing to continue in Marcel’s shadow.

2018 • USA • 9 min • Jack Cronin

Family Friendly

With a perspective at once granular and cosmic, this gorgeously shot, immersive tone poem cpatures the ebb and flow of seasons along Michigan’s Upper Peninsula lakeshore.

2018 • USA • 6 min • Morgan Heim & Jenny Nichols

Discover the daily work, hope, and perspective of one professional female tree-planter in Oregon — from an early start with coffee, through planting countless saplings in the Willamette River Valley with her team, Ash Creek Forest Management. A new analysis says forests are shrinking on state and private land in Oregon, where an estimated 522,000 acres of forest cover have disappeared since 2000. This project was conceived and funded by reforestation nonprofit One Tree Planted.

2019 • USA • 17 min • David Freid

Has Subtitles

For many years, this river’s ownership was under dispute. Now, it owns itself. In what is believed to be a world’s first, the Whanganui River’s been granted legal personhood, with the same rights and responsibilities as you and me. But determining where a river ends and the rest of nature begins — that may be up for some debate.

2018 • USA • 9 min • David Freid

Has Subtitles

They say that when you’re hit by the polar bug, you never leave. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Nobody dies in Longyearbyen, or so goes the rumor. We went to the northernmost city in the world to find out why and stumbled into the first act of a science fiction flick about something deadly, long buried in the permafrost.

2019 • Netherlands • 6 min • Tim Visser & Sander van Iersel

Has Subtitles, Family Friendly

Back in 1980, Willem bought a remote potato farm and transformed it into a butterfly paradise. He has worked the land with shovel and scythe for almost 40 years in order to preserve the butterflies. Willem’s paradise has become one of the most important habitats in the region for these fluttering beauties, but there is a problem. Due to an overload of nitrogen in the air, a monoculture of grass slowly drives away this flower-rich butterfly paradise. Butterflies that used to be common just a few decades ago are rare these days, or have completely disappeared.

2019 • USA • 23 min • Peter Byck

A North Texas couple lets nature dictate how they graze their cattle. They are having tremendous success in regenerating their land and their lives.

2019 • USA • 5 min • Dorian Warneck

Zoe Keller is a graphite artist creating large-scale, highly detailed drawings. Using the traditions of scientific illustration, she weaves complex visual narratives about at-risk species and wild places. Collapsing Time takes a look at the motivations behind her work. Made by production company Person People.

2018 • USA • 6 min • Benjamin Drummond & Sara Joy Steele

Blue carbon is carbon that is captured and stored by coastal wetlands, helping to mitigate climate change. This film is about mud and the multiple benefits that estuaries provide for us. “You never go into a wetland and just restore one benefit,” says wetlands ecologist John Rybczyk. It improves water quality, provides salmon habitat, protects our shorelines, and also benefits our climate. Restore America’s Estuaries recently lead a first-of-its-kind study in the Snohomish estuary to quantify the climate benefits of estuary restoration. Set in the Snohomish, this film helps to build awareness of blue carbon as a climate mitigation tool and to encourage more investment in wetland restoration at local, state, and federal levels.

2018 • USA • 8 min • Ben Masters

Combining stunning scenery with insightful commentary on the state of river conservation from Senator Tom Udall, Theodore Roosevelt IV, American Rivers president Bob Irvin, Rio Grande waterkeeper Jen Pelz, river guide Austin Alvarado, and others, this is a powerful call to action for protecting our country’s remaining wild rivers for future generations.

2018 • USA • 3 min • Corey Rich

Family Friendly

The concept of this film was born out of the idea that so many of us really try to make our mornings count. Whether we’re writers or artists using those early hours to tap into our creativity, or we’re parents or spouses who are trying to make the first moments of our day really count, mornings are a sacred time of day.

2017 • USA • 3 min • Sriram Murali

Family Friendly

Lost in Light, a short film on how light pollution affects the view of the night skies, beautifully illustrates how the view gets progressively better as you move away from populated areas.

2018 • Canada • 16 min • Chrisann Hessing

Joshua DePerry, also known as Classic Roots, is a Toronto based music producer and performer pioneering “PowWow Techno.” Redefining what it means to be urban and Indigenous, he prepares to start the next chapter of his life as an artist and educator in the world’s techno capital: Berlin.

2018 • Canada • 14 min • Alexandra Lazarowich

Has Subtitles

Fast Horse follows the return of the Blackfoot bareback horse racing tradition in a new form: the Indian Relay. Siksika horseman Allison RedCrow struggles to build a team with second-hand races and a new jockey, Cody Big Tobacco to take on the best riders in the Blackfoot Confederacy at the Calgary Stampede.

2018 • USA • 27 min • Emily Thomas

Has Subtitles

At the height of American political polarization hundreds of Iraqi Christians living in Detroit face deportation from the President they helped elect. Blessings of Liberty follows two families from the community awaiting their fates as they question everything they thought they knew about America.

2018 • United Kingdom • 7 min • Amanda Bluglass

Loch Hourn on the Knoydart peninsula in the Western Isles of Scotland is one of the last wildernesses of Europe. Access to sea lochs is difficult. Salt water mingles with fresh water as it runs off the mountains, icy even in high summer. This mesmeric film immerses us in the physicality of cold water swimming, asking why we put ourselves in the path of discomfort and risk; why does the search for adventure take us to ever more remote and inhospitable places? Join the originators of the UK’s Outdoor Swimming Society, ‘swim twins’ Kate Rew and Kari Furre, as they set out to chase the sublime.

2017 • Canada • 8 min • Julia Kwan

In moments of rawness and realness, we find our true selves. While dealing with one of the darkest times of her life, processing family trauma and recovering from injury, Azzah becomes captivated by the question, “what do you want to do before you die?” Although she has never seen herself as much of an adventurer, she realizes she’s capable of more than she ever imagined.

2018 • United Kingdom • 34 min • Chris Prescott

In 2011 Steve Bate was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a severe form of tunnel vision that is slowly robbing him of his sight. At the age of 34, Steve was forced to give up his dream of becoming a mountain guide, lost his driving licence and was registered disabled through visual impairment.
Focus documents Steve’s life since his diagnosis, exploring how the knowledge that his sight could disappear entirely at any moment has affected his outlook on life. The burden of blindness has manifested into an almost obsessive drive to achieve his ambitious dreams, from attempting to solo El Capitan to cycling in the 2016 Paralympic Games. The film follows Steve as he participates in the Rovaniemi 150, a gruelling self-supported fat bike race through the Arctic tundra of Finnish Lapland, where temperatures can drop below -35°C and 80% of participants don’t make it to the finish line. With the long hours of darkness testing his limited eyesight even further the race gives Steve one of his greatest challenges to date.

2018 • USA • 3 min • Darby McAdams

This film is all about big whitewater and where a woman’s place is; wherever the hell she wants it to be.

2017 • France • 3 min • Mathieu Le Lay

Family Friendly

A vast silence swallows the sound. A kingdom of mountains rise majestically toward the heavens. A call of the wild to a wandering soul.

2018 • USA • 12 min • Justin Clifton

Filmmaker in Attendance

Garret Eaton just doesn’t fit into a box. Which makes him a great subject for a short film. Especially for a filmmaker like Justin Clifton, who has a natural empathy for everyday heroes like Garrett and who knows how to let people – and places – tell their stories through his lens. The result: In the space of mere minutes we get to not only meet a man worth knowing but to become fully vested in his rich story.

2018 • Norway • 5 min • Paulius Neverbickas

Family Friendly

A Nordic Skater is a very first film about this little known sport. It features Per Sollerman, a photographer who has been skating on frozen lakes and fjords for the past 10 years. During 6 captivating minutes, the viewer is transported to the region of Oslo to have a peek at a story of a man who uses every sense he has to travel on thin ice. Per tells the story of how the little known sport of nordic skating came to play a big part in his life. “It is rooted deep in our bones that we need to be out in the nature,” he says.

2018 • USA • 5 min • Danny Copeland, Jaclyn Aliperti, J.P. Lawrence, Tanya Martinez

Discover a novel way of studying elusive carnivores…using snow! Join two scientists – Jessie and Tommy – as they re-purpose an old technique in a way that not only revolutionizes how we study threatened species and manage our landscapes, but also highlights the importance of collaboration in conservation.

2017 • USA • 4 min • Lynne Cherry & Peter Rhodes

Family Friendly

Nine-year-old Milo expresses his concern about the millions of straws that pollute waterways, waste fossil fuel, and harm ocean creatures. He convinces restaurants to “be-straw-free”, addresses Congress, and is championed by international media. His campaign has now been adopted by many environmental groups. In the end, three Cape Cod girls suggest that you, “take the pledge to skip the straw!”

2017 • Canada • 4 min • Jason van Bruggen

Dr. Konrad Steffen, the Swiss climate scientist whose research propelled Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”, reveals his alarming findings around glacial melt impacts on global sea level rise, climate change, and mass migration. Greenland Melts is stunningly filmed at remote polar monitoring stations where Dr. Steffen has been tracking the melting of the Greenlandic Ice Sheet for over 25 years. Made by production company Dot Dot Dash.

2018 • USA • 5 min • Samantha Bates & Danny Schmidt

Welcome to the southwest, where the land is wild and the women…might be even wilder. Introducing the Great Old Broads for Wilderness and their fight to keep southwestern Colorado’s wilderness an intact and restore one of its missing icons – the gray wolf. These women have come together to find their voice, and now are using it to give these lands, and the gray wolves that used to call it home, a fighting chance.

2017 • USA • 7 min • Will Sardinsky

Lani Malmberg, a self-identified “gypsy goat lady”, brings life back to the land with her herd of 500 goats.

2018 • USA • 17 min • Danny Schmidt & Eric Bendick

Amidst the backdrop of massive development and population growth, three friends embark on a journey through the Everglades Headwaters in Florida to survey a fragile wilderness corridor before it disappears forever.

2018 • USA • 12 min • Ben Moon

After serving in the Vietnam War, author and eco-warrior Doug Peacock spent years alone in the Wyoming and Montana wilderness observing grizzly bears. This time in the wild changed the course of his life. With the protection of Yellowstone grizzlies now under threat, Peacock reflects on the importance of habitat and why he continues to fight for wild causes.

2018 • USA • 6 min • Will Parrinello

LeeAnne Walters led a citizens’ movement that tested the tap water in Flint, Michigan, and exposed the Flint water crisis. The results showed that one in six homes had lead levels in water that exceeded the EPA’s safety threshold. Walters’ persistence compelled the local, state, and federal governments to take action and ensure that residents of Flint have access to clean water. Narrated by Robert Redford, Flipping the Switch shows how ordinary people can effect extraordinary change. LeeAnne was a winner of the prestigious 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize.

2018 • USA • 7 min • Tahria Sheather

Nature has a rhythm – it just takes one to tune into it. Jess Kilroy – musician, climber, and conservationist – travels to wilderness areas around the West creating music from the natural sounds she finds there, with the goal of sparking people’s love for these wild lands. Creek Sessions follows Jess on a sensory journey to create music in Utah’s Indian Creek, reminding us that wild places are worth protecting not simply for their landscapes, but for their soundscapes too.

2018 • USA • 4 min • Chema Domenech

Family Friendly

Clay Bolt is a natural history and conservation photographer for World Wildlife Fund and has been featured in prominent magazines such as National Geographic. Affectionately referred to as the bug guy, Clay explains how and why he focuses on 99% of life on earth that is smaller than your finger.