YouTube to Sundance:
Independent Filmmakers Wanted
Hummm, maybe Green Planet Films should get in on this. We already have a YouTube Channel.
…. we (YouTube) are excited today to announce our partnership with the Sundance Film Festival to make five films from the 2010 and 2009 festivals available for rent for U.S. users on YouTube starting this Friday and running through Sunday, January 31. In addition to these five films, a small collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries, including health and education, will be made available in the weeks ahead. We’re also excited to put out the call for more independent filmmakers to join the rental program as part of our “Filmmakers Wanted” campaign at the festival.
If you ever wanted to make a trashy video, now is your chance! Cash prizes too…
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sponsoring a video contest that challenges filmmakers to produce short, creative videos that highlight the “Three Rs” of individual consumption: reduce, reuse, and recycle. The agency is accepting submissions for the contest, called “Our Planet, Our Stuff, Our Choice,” through Feb. 16.
Entries should be either 30 or 60 seconds in length. The video should creatively promote steps individuals and organizations can take to minimize negative environmental impacts within their communities on the following topics:
Reducing and reusing
Recycling
Composting
Consumption and its effect on environmental footprint
The winning submissions will be announced in April 2010 in time for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. Awards will be given to the top three videos in the following amounts, as well as a special “Student Winner” category exclusively for submissions by persons 13 to 18 years old at the time of entry.
1st Place – $2,500
2nd Place – $1,500
3rd Place – $1,000
2 Student Winners (13 to 18 years old) – $500 each
Want to learn how your family can reduce your consumption and waste? Just watch this fun family film.
GARBAGE! The Revolution Starts at Home.
Filmmaker Andrew Nisker enlists the average urban family, the McDonalds, to keep every scrap of garbage that they produce for three months in their increasingly smelly garage. From organic waste to dirty diapers, from plastic bottles to Christmas wrapping, the McDonald’s discover that for every action there is a reaction that affects them and the entire planet.
Called “…this year’s out-of-the-blue discovery” by Bill Gosden of the NZ International Film Festival, This Way of Life has been selected to screen at the 60th International Berlin Film Festival, held Feb 11-21, 2010 in Berlin. Esteemed Director Werner Hertzog is serving as President of the Jury. Follow Cloud South Films “Road to Berlin” blog.
Shot over four years, This Way of Life is an intimate portrait of Peter Karena and his family. Masterful in the saddle and Hollywood handsome, Peter lives by an internal code of values and honor largely lost in modern times. Though European, Peter was adopted into a Maori family and is Maori in all but skin. He is a horse-whisperer, philosopher, hunter, and builder, a husband and father. Despite seemingly overwhelming challenges, Peter refuses to compromise. Especially troubling to Peter is his broken relationship with his adopted father – a malevolent man who refuses to leave him alone.
Peter’s wife Colleen Karena (Ngati Maniapoto) is the keeper of her family’s taonga tuku iho (heritage). A true matriarch, Colleen sees family as the center of the universe and mothering as the world’s most important job. As the film progresses, we discover her quiet exterior conceals a profound and beautifully articulated approach to parenting resulting in the physical competence and emotional openness of her children.
The film portrays the intimate life of the Karena family. In their early 30’s, Peter and Colleen have six kids and 50 horses. We follow them up into the Ruahine ranges and down to their hidden beach camp. Against these isolated backdrops we explore family relationships, their connection to nature, their keen survival skills and their absolute intimacy with each other and their horses.
We watch as Peter and Colleen celebrate the birth of a child and cope with a late miscarriage. Their attempts to navigate the discord between Peter and his father culminate in the theft of his valuable herd of horses and the burning of their beloved family home. Now homeless, we watch as Peter steers his family toward a new way of living and being. Regardless of their hardships, the Karenas manage to never lose sight of the magic in the everyday.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Karena children. Untamed and unafraid, the idea of risk is alien to them. To watch seven-year-old Aurora expertly ride a massive stallion bareback with no more than a rope halter asks us to reexamine our ideas of what children are capable of.
In This Way of Life, the Karenas unite their philosophy with their circumstances, turning hardship into a meaningful and satisfying life.
About Cloud South Films
Cloud South Films is the midlife lovechild of cinematographer Tom Burstyn and journalist Barbara Sumner Burstyn. They describe themselves are escapees from the fantasy world of feature filmmaking and corporate media. They work from a converted cottage on the beach at Bay View in the Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. “We believe in factual storytelling. Our documentaries are personal, well researched, visually compelling and socially relevant. For us, this is the only medium worth investing in.”
Cloud South Films is committed to sustainability, both personal and professional. We are working toward being the change we want to see in the world.
Presented at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, and streamed online for free from Dec 9-18th 2009
In 2003, after completing The Earth Seen from the Sky, photographer/conservationist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, with Sybille d’Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, launched the project “6 Billion Others”. 5,000 interviews were filmed in 75 countries by 6 directors who went in search of the Others.
From a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, all answered the same questions about their fears, dreams, ordeals, hopes: What have you learned from your parents? What do you want to pass on to your children? What difficult circumstances have you been through? What does love mean to you? Forty or so questions that help us to find out what separates and what unites us.
Yann on How the Project was Conceived:
Everything began with a helicopter breakdown in Mali. While I was waiting for the pilot, I spent a whole day talking with one of the villagers. He spoke to me about his daily life, his hopes and fears: his sole ambition was to feed his children.
My work for a magazine interrupted, I suddenly found myself plunged into the most elemental of concerns. He looked me straight in the eyes, uncomplaining, asking for nothing, expressing no resentment or ill will.
Later, flying over the planet making The Earth seen from the Sky, I often asked myself what I could learn from the men and women I glimpsed below me. I dreamt of understanding their words, of feeling what linked us. Because, from up there, the Earth looks like an immense area to be shared. But as soon as I landed, problems emerged. I found myself confronted by inflexible bureaucracy and barriers laid down by men, symbols of the difficulty we have in living together.
Living together…
We live in amazing times. Everything moves at a crazy pace. I’m sixty years old, and when I think about how my parents lived, it seems scarcely believable. Today, we have at our disposal extraordinary tools for communication: we can see everything, know everything. The quantity of information in circulation has never been greater. All of that is very positive. The irony is that at the same time we still know very little about our neighbours.
Now, however, the only possible response is to make a move towards the other person, to understand them.
For in struggles to come, whether it is the struggle against poverty or climate change, we cannot act on our own. The times in which one could think only of oneself or of one’s own small community are over. From now on, we cannot ignore what it is that links us and the responsibilities that this implies.
There are more than six billion of us on Earth, and there will be no sustainable development if we cannot manage to live together. That is why 6 Billion Others is so important to me. I believe in it because it concerns all of us and because it encourages us to take action. I hope that each one of us will want to reach out and make these encounters, to listen to other people and to contribute to the life of 6 Billion Others by adding our own experiences and expressing our desire to live together.
From the beginning, The French Ministry of Ecology and ADEME (French Environment and Energy Management Agency) supported this project, and made it a reality. “6 billion Others. Climate Voices.” is also supported by the UNITED NATIONS (UNEP, WMO, IPCC, ISDR and UN-Habitat) and Voyageurs du Monde.
This project will be shown in December 2009 for the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen.
We want all these interviews and videos to be free for all broadcasts and TV channels to increase public awareness of this critical problem of climate change. One of the most important French TV channel (France2) will organize a special evening the 8th December about climate change with extracts of “6 billion Others. Climate Voices.”.
THEMATICS:
Thaw of the underground/ Flooding/ Scorching heat/ Dryness and Fire/ Thawing of glaciers/ Ecosystem modification/ Cyclone and Storm/ Water warming/ Rising sea level
PLACES OF SHOOTING, FROM WEST TO EAST:
- United States, Alaska: Evolution of fishing professions.
- Canada, Quebec and Northwest Territories: Thawing of permafrost. Moving of villages. Disappearing of native communities.
- United States, California, San Diego: Drought. Growing forest fires.
- United States, Texas, Houston: Displaced people from New-Orleans.
- Peru, Altiplano: Thawing of glaciers. Raise in altitude of the freezing level.
- Mali, Bamako, Tombouctou: Desertification, overgrazing, conflict between breeders and farmers.
- Spain, Malaga, Almeria: Hard droughts.
- France: The 2003 heat wave and its consequences. Evolution of farming and fishing professions. Migration of species. Glaciologists, experts on climate, migrations of species…
- Netherlands: Increase in the water level.
- Germany, islands of Halligen: Increase in the water level. Disappearing of lands.
- Kenya: Extension of malaria, drought.
- Madagascar: Deforestation, drought.
- India, Ladakh, Calcutta: Thawing of glaciers, floods, pollution.
- Bangladesh, south-east: Rise in the water level, natural disasters, increase of salinity in the arable lands.
- China, north area, near Beijing: Desertification.
- Taïwan: Natural disasters, typhoon Morakot August 2009.
- Maldives: Rise in the sea level. Exodus to other lands.
- Australia, Murray-Darling, Queensland: Strong droughts. Floods. Blanching of corals.
The impossible white knuckle 6 week Design-Build challenge is now on DVD.
ScrapHouse was a temporary demonstration home, built entirely of salvaged material on Civic Center Plaza adjacent to San Francisco City Hall.
Challenge 1: Design
Rethinking a standard single-family home floor plan, the ScrapHouse Design Team generated an elegant design solution, inspired by the abundance of scrap material. Every material, from the foundation to the front door, was reclaimed and re-used.
Challenge 2: Search
Finding appropriate innovative materials was the next challenge. The team spent three weeks scouring the Bay Area for building materials, furnishings and finishes; purchasing new only hardware and fasteners. Some salvaged materials were re-used for their intended purpose, while others were reincarnated in unusual ways.
Challenge 3: Build
The ScrapHouse team’s final challenge was a two-week blitz build, kicking off the last week of May and concluding with the public opening of the house itself on June 2, 2005. With walls sheathed with everything from street signs and shower doors, ScrapHouse drew tens of thousands of passersby. ScrapHouse illustrated the possibilities—as well as the challenges—of green building, recycling, and reuse.
Over the course of just six weeks, a team of volunteers scoured Bay Area dumps and scrap yards. A group of architects, landscape architects, lighting specialists, and metal fabricators repurposed the materials, giving them new life. Solid core doors recovered from a school construction project became an interesting floor material. Outdated phone books became a wonderfully textured insulating wall. Retired firehoses from the San Francisco Fire Department were deployed as wall paneling, dramatically transforming a double height living space.
And when it was all said and done, “scrap” had taken on a whole new meaning. BUY DVD HERE.
New DVD is a two act, one set play about the last two days Henry David Thoreau spent in his cabin at Walden Pond.
The play takes place in September, 1847. Thoreau, a young man of 30, has contemplated his life and his place on this earth for the last two years and two months while living alone in a small cabin he built for $28. His friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, gave Henry a small plot of land along the shores of Walden Pond near their home in Concord, Massachusetts to make his intellectual escape.
A failed author, Henry would write in his journals everyday and imagined that, someday, his experience alone in the woods would have meaning and importance. The play is not a biography of Thoreau. It is a conversation and intellectual argument that occurs between two collegues who love and respect each other a great deal. It is a peek into what made Henry a great writer, and the rejection he was facing. It is a play of farewell as Henry leaves the cabin on Walden Pond. Ultimately, it is a play about friendship and loyalty, of believing and supporting a writer, thinker, visionary, and artist who was a generation ahead of his time. BUY THE DVD HERE.
Hauntingly poetic, GREEN, a film about tropical rainforest destruction in Indonesia is awarded both Best of Festival and Best Conservation Film at the recent 2009 Jackson Hole International Wildlife Festival.
Multi award winning. Her name is GREEN, she is alone in a world that doesn’t belong to her. She is a female orangutan, victim of deforestation and resource exploitation. This film is an emotional journey with GREEN’s final days. It is a visual ride presenting the devastating impacts of logging and land clearing for palm oil plantations, the choking haze created by rainforest fires and the tragic end of rainforest biodiversity. We watch the effects of consumerism and are faced with our personal accountability in the loss of the world’s rainforest treasures.
48 minutes
No narration
PAL and NTSC DVDs available
Watch free streaming
GREEN was the surprise winner, generally programs with larger production budgets from the BBC, Discovery, National Geographic tend to secure Best of Fest at JHIWFF. However, this small self-financed film by Patrick Rouxel was the buzz of the conference. It is the 2nd film in a series of 4 that Rouxel will document in his visual style. TEARS of WOOD, about Borneo rainforests is completed. Brazil has been shot, and ready for editing. Please DONATE to the Patricks’s finishing funds, so he can completed editing early 2010, then head to the Congo to film the next project.
AWARDS: Jackson Hole International Wildlife Film Festival 2009 — USA
Best of Festival
Best Conservation Film
Durango Film Festival 2009 — USA
Best short documentary
Best audience buzz
International Wildlife Film Festival 2009 – USA
Sapphire award, second place of Festival
Best Sound design
Best Editing
Best Conservation and Environmental Issue
Festival Albert 2009 – France
Grand Prix
Meilleur scenario
Festival International du Film Nature et Environnement 2009 (FRAPNA) – FRANCE
Hérisson de Bronze
Bourges International Ecological Film Festival, 2009 (France)
Meilleure fiction et prix Ushuaïa TV
The current state of oil and energy cannot possibly be captured in one film. Here are a few more documentaries about crude which together can create a comprehensive guide.
CRUDE The Incredible Journey of Oil
From the food on our tables to the fuel in our cars, crude oil seeps invisibly into almost every part of our modern lives. It is the energy source and raw material that drives transport and the economy. Yet many of us have little idea of the incredible journey it has made to reach our petrol tanks and plastic bags. Crude takes a step back from the day to day news to illuminate the Earth’s extraordinary carbon cycle and the role of oil in our impending climate crisis. Nearly seven billion people have come to depend on this resource, yet the Oil Age that began less than a century and a half ago, could be over in our lifetimes. Filmed on location in 11 countries across five continents, the program’s award-winning Australian filmmaker Richard Smith consults the leading international scientific experts to join the dots between geology and economy and provide the big-picture view of oil. watch online
The Cost of Oil
The pressure to drill for oil in the Arctic has intensified with the increasing prices of crude oil. But the potential for lower oil prices is at what cost? In this feature-length documentary the Alaskan Inupiat show how oil drilling in their nearby seas will forever alter their subsistence-living lifestyle and multiply the struggles of preserving their rich cultural history. Members of the oil industry and expert scientists also highlight the predicted effects of oil drilling on the delicate Arctic ecosystem, and in turn, the effects on a society dependent on that ecosystem. Through this film viewers discover the irony of drilling for oil in order to become a more self-sustaining nation, and in doing so, likely destroying one of the last remaining self-sustaining cultures.
The End of Suburbia
Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. The film explores the American Way of Life and its prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply.
Oil on Ice
Oil on Ice is a vivid, compelling and comprehensive documentary connecting the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to decisions America makes about energy policy, transportation choices, and other seemingly unrelated matters.
PetroApocalypse Now?
Is the oil beginning to run out? Shot over four years in 13 countries this film uncovers the myths surrounding the future of world oil supplies. The producers lift the lid on the ‘Peak Oil’ theory – whether oil production is about to fall.
Crude Impact
Crude Impact is a powerful and timely story that explores the interconnection between human domination of the planet, and the discovery and use of oil. This documentary film exposes our global, deep-rooted dependency on fossil fuel energy and examines the future implications of peak oil – the point in time when the amount of petroleum available worldwide begins a steady, inexorable decline.
A Crude Awakening – The Oil Crash
OilCrash, produced and directed by award-winning European journalists and filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology. Compelling, intelligent, and highly entertaining, the film visits with the world’s top experts and comes to a startling, but logical conclusion – our industrial society, built on cheap and readily available oil, must be completely re-imagined and overhauled.
New film about oil drilling in North Dakota releases on DVD September 21, 2009
Crude Independence Poster
Currently in the film festival circuit, Crude Independence is a documentary film about the heartland in the process of transplanting itself, and the new heart is pumping oil. In 2006, the United States Geological Survey estimated there to be more than 200 billion barrels of crude oil resting in a previously unreachable formation beneath western North Dakota. With the advent of new drilling technologies, oil companies from far and wide are descending on small rural towns across America with men and machinery in tow. Director Noah Hutton takes us to the town of Stanley (population 1300), sitting atop the largest oil discovery in the history of the North American continent, and captures the change wrought by the unprecedented boom. Through revealing interviews and breathtaking imagery of the northern plains, Crude Independence is a rumination on the future of small town America—a tale of change at the hands of the global energy market and America’s unyielding thirst for oil.
Willy the off course sea turtle found in England hitched a free ride on American Airlines accompanied by a BBC film crew earlier this summer. In January 2007, a young “Kemp’s Ridley” sea turtle that began life in the warm waters off the southern United States got very lost. She swam all the way across the Atlantic and ended up in Devon, nearly dead from hypothermia and starvation. We read about this story on Jock Whittlesey’s interesting Environmental, Science and Technology blog. Mr Whittlesey is the Environment Counselor for the US Embassy in London.
We also read that the US Embassy in London hosted an environmental film series in April and May of 2009, showing The 11th Hour and Frogs: the Thin Green Line. The Earth Day 2009 screening of The 11th Hour was attended by more than 150 environmental experts, journalists and NGO leaders.
We think of environmental films as the ‘newsreels‘ of today…where people go to film screenings to find out what is really happening in the world today. These investigating documentaries are truly Mother Earth’s reality TV. Because Green Planet Films distributes films on the environment, we have noticed an increasing number of government agencies using films to help educate their employees or residents on environmental issues.
Hummm, maybe Green Planet Films should get in on this. We already have a YouTube Channel.
WASHINGTON
We watch as Peter and Colleen celebrate the birth of a child and cope with a late miscarriage. Their attempts to navigate the discord between Peter and his father culminate in the theft of his valuable herd of horses and the burning of their beloved family home. Now homeless, we watch as Peter steers his family toward a new way of living and being. Regardless of their hardships, the Karenas manage to never lose sight of the magic in the everyday.
From a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, all answered the same questions about their fears, dreams, ordeals, hopes: What have you learned from your parents? What do you want to pass on to your children? What difficult circumstances have you been through? What does love mean to you? Forty or so questions that help us to find out what separates and what unites us.
Living together…
he Incredible Journey of Oil
The Cost of Oil
The End of Suburbia
Crude Impact
A Crude Awakening – The Oil Crash
