Award-Winning Films For A Sustainable Future

Together We Grow is a 40-minute documentary telling the story of Common Unity, in Aotearoa New Zealand. Introducing a thriving hub helping to build resilience into its local community by growing, sewing, repairing, sharing – you name it, Common Unity is doing it! Too many of our communities, here and around the world, are facing housing crises, food insecurity, social isolation, and more. In addition, the multiple impacts of the Covid pandemic and climate change are current and ongoing. How can we most effectively confront these challenges, and help our communities thrive in an economic system that leaves many feeling trapped in poverty? Founder Julia Milne and her team have created a completely replicable model for developing strong, connected, resilient communities – a model that could be put in place across thousands of communities in Aotearoa and millions of communities across the world. They’ve proven it can be done, this film was made to help them share the story!

Star is a bird of many names. Kārearea, kāiaia, the New Zealand falcon. Aotearoa was once a nation of manu. Winged creatures reigned: bats, bugs and birds. Whilst flightless creatures crawled the land, the skies were ruled by aerial predators, some of these birds almost mythical in size. Yet with the arrival of humans came great change. Today, many manu linger only in legend. But a few birds of prey remain, including the feisty kārearea. The New Zealand falcon didn’t survive these changing years unscathed. Kārearea are even rarer than the kiwi. But they won’t go down without a fight. Through both traditional filmmaking and stop-motion animation, Tōku Waiata / My Song soars Aotearoa's skies alongside Star, an advocacy falcon at Wingspan Birds of Prey Centre. Here, a rather different conservation practice is used to conserve New Zealand's only falcon; the ancient art of falconry.

Cultivating the Wild focuses on six Southerners committed to reclaiming the nature of the South through art, science, and culture. Their inspiration is William Bartram, 18th century naturalist and America’s first environmentalist. From 1773 to 1777, a plant-collecting trip took Bartram from the Carolina coast west to the Mississippi. Far more than a botanical catalog, Bartram’s 1791 book Travels provides a captivating window into the past and continues to fire the imagination of readers over 200 years later. Despite the passage of time, Bartram’s words speak to current issues of critical importance. The film responds to an America hungry to re-connect with the natural world around us, an America increasingly focused on sustaining this planet we call home. Often called “the South’s Thoreau,” Bartram’s reverence for all aspects of nature lies at the heart of these modern environmental movements and in the people we meet in Cultivating the Wild.

The Eastern Black Rail is a federally Endangered and extremely secretive marsh bird, found primarily along the mid-Atlantic and Southeast coast of the United States. Habitat loss from development and sea-level rise inundation has reduced populations by 90% since the 1990s. Without intervention, the remaining east coast population is projected to be extirpated before 2070. Black Rails’ breeding success is incredibly vulnerable to minute changes in water level, and in coastal regions experiencing dramatic changes in storm regimes and steadily rising seas, their future depends on precise water-level management within the critical sites that remain. South Carolina’s ACE Basin is a one such landscape, uniquely comprised of historically dike-impounded wetlands, which today provides a stronghold for some 30 breeding pairs. A grassroots partnership among private landowners, non-profit conservation groups, and state and federal agencies is working urgently to understand the rails’ precise and cryptic needs, and to develop the techniques—and support—required to create those conditions on the ground. The Cornell Lab’s Center for Conservation Media has produced “Weathering Tides” (13 minutes), a short film highlighting the unlikely partnerships and pioneering techniques of this dedicated coalition. The film will be used by agency and non-profit partners in South Carolina and across the Atlantic Coast to build the support and participation necessary to scale effective management efforts beyond the ACE Basin, and to recover Eastern Black Rail populations. To learn more about the work in South Carolina, visit southcarolinablackrails.org. To learn more about efforts to recover Black Rail population across the Atlantic Coast, visit acjv.org/black-rail This film was made possible through generous support from the Robert F. Schumann Foundation.