Arts Writer
THE annual SA Eco Film Festival returns with engaging program content, Q&A’s, audience interaction and guest speakers from March 31 to April 3. It aims to showcase intriguing and creative content from across the world to highlight the issues that effect us all – whilst introducing participants, film-makers and audience members to sustainable living choices and lifestyle changes that are available today.
With themes from new economics to eco-friendly transport, social justice to conservation and recycling, upcycling and waste cooking, the line-up covers every aspect of informed eco and environmental debate.
International fare enjoying their local premieres include multi-award winners, Landfill Harmonic(Best Family Friendly Feature Award 2015 Maui Film Festiva l, Environmental Award 2015 Sheffield Doc Festival), How to Change the World(a Hot Docs, Sheffield and Sundance winner) and This Changes Everything, the Naomi Klein film based on her latest best-seller. Revenge of the Electric Car makes an overdue debut on the big screen- and the hotly tipped Bikes vs Cars is bound to stimulate debate over the future of transport.
The main programme films include Baobabs – Between Land and Sea(55 minutes, Madagascar /France 2015). The baobab’s sheer size and shape make it one of the most remarkable trees on the planet. In Madagascar, a great source of inspiration for filmmakers and photographers with it’s unique biodiversity, these giants are currently threatened by deforestation. French ecologist Cyrille Cornu documents travel by pirogue, exploring 400km of wild coastline accessing the world of the Vezo, a nomadic tribe of the sea, and the heart of isolated forests that are home to the baobabs.
Bikes vs Cars(91 minutes, Sweden 2015) depicts a global crisis that we know we need to talk about: climate, earth’s resources and cities where an entire surface is consumed by the car. An ever-growing, dirty, noisy traffic chaos. The bike is a tool for change, but the powerful interests who gain from the private car invest billions each year lobbying to protect their business. Here you meet activists from three continents fighting for better cities who refuse to stop riding despite the increasing numbers killed in traffic.
Gambling on Extinction(Germany/Canada 2015) is a powerful documentary that takes you from the killing fields in Kenya and SA to the trading hubs of Vietnam and China with undercover investigators, rangers, ex-poachers, conservationists and buyers.
Director Jakob Kneser exposes the lethal mechanisms of the global trade, the terrorist connection, explains who the customers are, what generates demand, and what can be done to stop the slaughter.
How to Change the World(109 minutes UK/Canada 2015) is a thrilling, sometimes terrifying film chronicling the adventures of an eclectic group of young pioneers – Canadian hippie journalists, photographers, musicians, scientists, and American draft dodgers – who set out to stop Richard Nixon’s atomic bomb tests in Amchitka, Alaska, and end up creating the worldwide green movement. When youthful energy comes up against the complexities of a growing organization, the group find their battle to save the planet forces them also to fight each other. This insightful film is also a reflection on the struggle to balance the political and the personal.
Landfill Harmonic(85 minutes 2015 Paraguay/USA) features The Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, a Paraguayan group who play instruments made entirely out of garbage. When their story goes viral, the orchestra is catapulted into the global spotlight. Under the guidance of director Favio Chavez, they must navigate a strange new world of arenas and sold-out concerts. However, when a natural disaster strikes their country, Favio must find a way to keep the orchestra intact and provide a source of hope for their town. The film is a testament to the transformative power of music. (English subtitles)
Racing Extinction(94 minutes 2015 USA) sees Oscar-winning director Louie Psihoyos ( The Cove) assemble a team of artists and activists on an undercover operation to expose the hidden world of endangered species and the race to protect them against mass extinction. Spanning the globe to infiltrate the world’s most dangerous black markets and using high tech tactics to document the link between carbon emissions and species extinction, his film reveals stunning, never-before seen images that can change the way we see the world.
This Changes Everything(89 minutes 2015 USA/Canada) was filmed over 211 days in nine countries and five continents over four years. It attempts to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change. Inspired by Klein’s non-fiction bestseller, the film presents seven portraits of communities on the front- lines – from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.
Wastecooking(82 minutes 2015 Austria) follows David Gross, who has a car that runs on used vegetable oil, a mobile stove and a host of culinary ideas in his backpack. An entertaining road movie detailing a journey through five European countries, where the only thing on the menu is what others call garbage. David whips up creative meals aimed at fighting food waste and our consumption-driven society, and at the same time inspire us to search for creative solutions. (English subtitles)
Revenge of the Electric Car(90 mins 2012 USA) examines electric cars, who first appeared on the market in the 1990s, mass production and commercialization was abruptly—and dubiously shut down, a story told in Chris Paine’s first documentary.
Years later the race is back on to develop an affordable, stylish electric car and win over a skeptical public. Revenge Of The Electric Car goes behind the closed doors of Nissan, GM, Elon Musk’s innovative Tesla Motors and a car converter named Greg “Gadget” Abbott .
The Anthropologist(80 minutes 2015 USA) airs the parallel stories of two women – Margaret Mead, who popularized cultural anthropology and Susie Crate, an environmental anthropologist currently studying the impact of climate change. Revealed from their daughters’ perspectives, Mead and Crate demonstrates a fascination with how societies are forced to negotiate the disruption of their ways of life, whether through encounters with the outside world or the unprecedented change wrought by melting permafrost and rising tides.
Hope For All – Food Matters. You Matter(101 minutes 2015 Germany) is an eye-opening documentary uncovering the effects of Western dietry habits to our health, the environment and our treatment of livestock. Evidence-based scientific arguments and solutions send a clear message of hope, if we change the way we eat, we change ourselves and the planet – for good.
Groundbreaking True Cost(92 minutes 2015 USA) is about clothing – what we wear and the impact the industry is having on our world. It asks, who really pays the price for our clothing?
l At The Labia, 021 424 5927, Info: www.saecofilmfestival.com, www.facebook.com/ecofilmsa Book: webtickets.co.za