Australian premiere
Year: 2010
Country: France
By: Yann Sinic
In this 27 minute visual essay, ten short narratives describe various aspects of the increasing urbanisation of the planet and their consequences: disappearing woodlands, standardised landscapes, privatisation of public land, and the threat of a major food crisis.
The narrator questions the restricted worldview that has led to this situation and asks the important question: wouldn't it be possible to create a modern life that would respect nature, create social networks, and lead to a more harmonious future?
Victorian premiere
Year: 2010
Country: USA
By: Monte Thompson
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All over the world species are becoming extinct at an astonishing rate, from 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than normal. The loss of biodiversity has become so severe that scientists are calling it a "mass extinction" event.
"Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction" is the first feature documentary to investigate the growing threat to Earth's life support systems from this unprecedented loss of biodiversity. Through interviews with leading scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and indigenous and religious leaders, the film explores the causes, the scope, and the potential effects of the mass extinction, but also looks beyond the immediate causes of the crisis to consider how our cultural and economic systems, along with deep-seated psychological and behavioral patterns, have allowed this situation to develop, continue to reinforce it, and even determine our response to it.
"Call of Life" tells the story of a crisis not only in nature, but also in human nature, a crisis more threatening than anything human beings have ever faced before.
Saturday, 15th Oct
2:30pm
Call of Life
Australian premiere
Year: 2011
Country: Australia
By: Hollie Fifer
Leaning over green beans in Melbourne's Federation Square Uncle Bob looks at Hollie, "Come to my home this Tuesday".
Home was half across Australia on the bright side of Uluru. Our documentary was in the making.
Uncle Bob is a desert man and Hollie grew up in the concrete walls of Melbourne. They couldn't be more different. However while reconnecting with the Australian landscape they find common ground.
Australian premiere
Year: 2010
Country: Iceland
By: Porfinnur Gudnason and Andri Snaer Magnason
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How much unspoiled nature should we preserve and what do we sacrifice for clean, renewable energy? "Dreamland" gradually turns into a disturbing picture of corporate power taking over small communities.
"Dreamland" is a film about a nation standing at cross-roads. Leading up to the country's greatest economic crisis, the government started the largest mega project in the history of Iceland, to build the biggest dam in Europe to provide Alcoa cheap electricity for an aluminum smelter in the rugged east fjords of Iceland. Today Iceland is left holding a huge dept and an uncertain future.
In "Dreamland" a nation with abundance of choices gradually becomes caught up in a plan to turn its wilderness and beautiful nature into a massive system of hydro-electric and geothermal power plants with dams and reservoirs. Clean energy brings in polluting industry and international corporations. It's the dark side of green energy.
Sunday, 16th Oct
4:00pm
Dreamland
Year: 2010
Country: USA
By: Miranda Bailey
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Movie people are legendarily liberal and left-leaning, particularly when it comes to the environment.
"Greenlit" puts their commitment to the test as filmmaker Miranda Bailey (executive producer of "The Squid and the Whale") follows the production of "The River Why", starring Zach Gilford ("Friday Night Lights") as it attempts to keep an environmentally friendly set thanks to the supervision of a "green" consultant.
What starts off with great enthusiasm quickly devolves into this insightful and hilarious film.
Australian premiere
Year: 2010
Country: Sweden
By: Jacob Andren, Helena Nygren, Margarete Jangard and Fredrik Gertten
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Jacob Andren, an ordinary kid going to school in the 80s, was, as at many schools in the western world, involved in fundraising actions to save the rainforest. Their teachers urged them to help by buying a piece of forest.
Now a grown up young man he is wondering about what happened to all those trees that he and his classmates bought with the money they made by selling stuff on the flea market. He remembers getting a certificate, but that was 20 years ago. Jacob decides to buy a plane ticket to try to find his trees and to find out if their effort did make a difference.
He starts with looking for the old certificate but it is hard to trace. While searching, he learns that over 400,000 Swedish kids did buy trees in the rainforest as well, and even more kids in other countries. But is that forest of 20 years ago still there? And where? And what threats are these forests facing today. Jacob wants to find the answers. He manages to find his old teacher from primary school, who tells him the forest he helped saving is in Costa Rica. She tells him that the forest was said to be protected forever, but she is only a teacher and cannot promise him that it is still there. This is when Jacob decides to go tracing his trees and look for himself to see what has become of them.
I bought a rainforest shows that individual action can make a difference, it is at the same time a reflection on the freedom of childhood and about using that inspiration to make a change.
Victorian premiere
Year: 2011
Country: USA
By: Marshall Curry
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In December 2005, Daniel McGowan was arrested by Federal agents in a nationwide sweep of radical environmentalists involved with the Earth Liberation Front-- a group the FBI has called America's "number one domestic terrorism threat."
For years, the ELF - operating in separate anonymous cells without any central leadership - had launched spectacular arsons against dozens of businesses they accused of destroying the environment: timber companies, SUV dealerships, wild horse slaughterhouses, and a $12 million ski lodge at Vail, Colorado. With the arrest of Daniel and thirteen others, the government had cracked what was probably the largest ELF cell in America and brought down the group responsible for the very first ELF arsons in this country.
"If a Tree Falls: a story of the earth liberation front" tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of this ELF cell, by focusing on the transformation and radicalization of one of its members.
Part coming-of-age tale, part cops-and-robbers thrilller, the film interweaves a verite chronicle of Daniel on house arrest as he faces life in prison, with a dramatic recounting of the events that led to his involvement with the group. And along the way it asks hard questions about environmentalism, activism, and the way we define terrorism.
Drawing from striking archival footage - much of it never before seen - and intimate interviews with ELF members, and with the prosecutor and detective who were chasing them, "If a Tree Falls" explores the tumultuous period from 1995 until early 2001 when environmentalists were clashing with timber companies and law enforcement, and the word "terrorism" had not yet been altered by 9/11.
Year: 2010
Country: Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Italy
By: Michael Madsen and Lise Lense-Moller
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Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storages, which are vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes. In Finland the world's first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock - a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous.
Once the waste has been deposited and the repository is full, the facility is to be sealed off and never opened again. Or so we hope, but can we ensure that? And how is it possible to warn our descendants of the deadly waste we left behind? How do we prevent them from thinking they have found the pyramids of our time, mystical burial grounds, hidden treasures? Which languages and signs will they understand? And if they understand, will they respect our instructions? While gigantic monster machines dig deeper and deeper into the dark, experts above ground strive to find solutions to this crucially important radioactive waste issue to secure mankind and all species on planet Earth now and in the near and very distant future.
Captivating, wondrous and extremely frightening, this feature documentary takes viewers on a journey never seen before into the underworld and into the future.
Year: 2011
Country: Germany and Ukraine
By: Rainer Ludwigs and Tetyana Chernyavska
A Soviet family searching for a modest paradise is swept into an immense disaster. This magically animated film combines drawing, photography and documentary video to capture the surreal emotions of the too-real tragedy: Chernobyl 1986.
Leonid grew up in the village next to the reactor. The catastrophe broke his life, ruined his health, and threatened his unborn child. This animated film tells his story.
The film comprehends the development of this world disaster through the destiny of the protagonist and his family. The small episodes reconstruct the emotional dimension of the tragedy: The children which run to the burning reactor, getting a look on the spectacular drama, the unsuspecting village people in the surrounded area, the animals which remain behind after the evacuation, and the helpless tries of mankind to eliminate the follows of the nuclear disaster, accompanied with the faceless, communist Sovjet system.
After all there is a happy end: The triumph of life over the catastrophe.
Year: 2011
Country: Australia
By: Julia de Roeper and Jeni Lee
Adelaide Hills author Lolo Houbein believes that growing food is the most important political act we can undertake.
Her book, "One Magic Square", inspired this unique project in the City of Onkaparinga. Under the guidance of grower Tori Moreton, residents were invited to create a food plot in one square metre of their own gardens. The film follows the process from start to finish, from the initial community meetings, through workshops as participants learn how to compost, plant and look after their gardens, to the celebratory harvest and community feast at the end of the season.
It documents the trials and tribulations of first time gardeners, and follows their progress as they struggle and triumph against weather, pests and inertia to grow and cook their own food. It is an idea as simple as it is radical as it inspirational.
Australian premiere
Year: 2011
Country: UK
By: Shelley Lee Davies, Or Shlomi and Christo Hird
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"Planeat" is the story of three mens' life-long search for a diet that is good for our health, good for the environment and good for the future of the planet.
With an additional cast of pioneering chefs and some of the best cooking you have ever seen, the scientists and doctors in the film present a convincing case for the west to re-examine its love affair with meat and dairy. The film features the ground-breaking work of Dr. T Colin Campbell in China exploring the link between diet and disease, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's use of diet to treat heart disease patients, and Professor Gidon Eshel's investigations into how our food choices contribute to global warming, land use and oceanic deadzones.
With the help of some innovative farmers and chefs, "Planeat" shows how the problems we face today can be solved, without simply resorting to a diet of lentils and lettuce leaves.
World premiere
Year: 2011
Country: Australia
By: Michael J Lutman
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A team of scientists and activists travel across the South Atlantic Ocean by yacht to investigate the extent of plastic pollution.
Australian premiere
Year: 2010
Country: Denmark, Norway and USA
By: Tonje Hessen Schei
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One generation from now most people in the U.S. will have spent more time in the virtual world than in nature. New media technologies have improved our lives in countless ways. Information now appears with a click. Overseas friends are part of our daily lives. And even grandma loves Wii.
But what are we missing when we are behind screens? And how will this impact our children, our society, and eventually, our planet? At a time when children play more behind screens than outside, "Play Again" explores the changing balance between the virtual and natural worlds. Is our connection to nature disappearing down the digital rabbit hole?
This moving and humorous documentary follows six teenagers who, like the "average American child," spend five to fifteen hours a day behind screens. "Play Again" unplugs these teens and takes them on their first wilderness adventure – no electricity, no cell phone.
Friday, 14th Oct
12:00pm
Play Again
(baby friendly session)
Australian premiere
Year: 2011
Country: USA
By: Ian Cheney
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This is a feature documentary about light pollution and the disappearing night sky, premiering in competition at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival. After moving to New York City from rural Maine, filmmaker Ian Cheney asks a simple question, "Do we need the stars?"
Exploring the threat of killer asteroids in Hawaii, tracking hatching turtles along the Florida coast, and rescuing injured birds on Chicago streets, Cheney unravels the myriad implications of a globe glittering with lights – including increased breast cancer rates from exposure to light at night, and a generation of kids without a glimpse of the universe above.
Featuring stunning astrophotography and a cast of eclectic scientists, philosophers, historians and lighting designers, "The City Dark" is the definitive story of light pollution and the disappearing stars.
Saturday, 15th Oct
9:00pm
The City Dark
Year: 2010
Country: Ireland
By: Louise Curran and Juanita Wilson
Sometime in 1986, in the dead of night, a man parks his motorcycle next to an empty amusement park. He hides from security guards as he finds his way to a block of flats and enters one. A guard smashes a window and yells at him to leave. He does, but he's carrying something from the flat.
He is Nikolai, married to Anya, the father of Lena, who is a thin, ethereal waif. In what we later learn is a flashback, we see them packing to leave, hurried by authorities, who tell them to leave everything behind. What's going on, why can they bring nothing? And why would Nikolai return home, sometime later, to steal a door?
Year: 2010
Country: USA
By: Ian Cheney
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"Truck Farm" tells the story of a new generation of American famers. Using green roof technology and heirloom seeds, filmmaker Ian Cheney plants a vegetable garden on the only land he's got: his Granddad's old pickup.
Once the mobile garden begins to sprout, viewers are trucked across New York to see the city's funkiest urban farms, and to find out if America's largest city can learn to feed itself.
Year: 2011
Country: Australia
By: Sophie Alstergren
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"Waste Not" reveals 6 billion containers wasted each year! Excessive packaging, in particular beverage containers, is a total waste of valuable materials which end up buried in landfill. waste not interviews recyclers and environmentalists who are battling the big alcohol and soft drink companies.
"Waste Not" shows the toxic legacy of electronic waste (computers, phones, batteries, TVs, etc) - one of our biggest problems. Right now 260 million e-waste items have been sent or are on their way into Australian landfills.
What's the alternative? "Waste Not" explores a sustainable house in a densely populated suburb of inner city Sydney, which captures all its own waste, sewerage, sunlight and rain water. Residents in the street have been inspired to transform barren nature strips into fruit and vegetable gardens for everyone to use.
Victorian premiere
Year: 2011
Country: Brazil
By: Cassia Itamoto
A Brazilian short animated film taking a sweet and poignant look at over-consumption.